What I've been up to …

I started to tat again yesterday during Nafis’ registration. I got bored sitting in the theater not doing anything so I took out my tatting shuttles and started to tat.

I eventually managed to finish a bookmark, and last night I finished another one in blue. Here are the two tatted bookmarks:

I also tried to create my own pattern and produced this today:

I don’t know what to do with it, and am not so proud of it either, but at least I have my own pattern .

In between the above items, I tatted a few little motives :

I think I am going to tat more before I get bored with it and stop.

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I’ve been very behind with my blogging. A few hectic weeks with occasional slow connection to the website didn’t  help. There are many things that I want to blog about but they just passed by, and by now they are no longer that great to write (or maybe I’ve fogotten about them to..).

Anyway, over a month ago, the company where I work had an outing for all the staff and their family members. We had it at Suria Cherating Beach Resort. The resort was a bit run down, but otherwise, it was very private and cosy.

Nuni blogged about it much earlier here.I thought it was well written. Nuni even put a link to her gallery of pix of the day here.

I am going to use some of Nuni’s pix in my blog here.

We had so many games for our telematch. We had to even cancel a couple of the games (much to the disappointment of many of the kids!) because we were running out of time.

Water-filled balloons:

It was about 3pm, but we lucky to have the shade:

Limbo Rock:

The ever favourite tug-o-war (ladies version):

I was one of the organising committee members and was given a hat to wear that day. Nuni happily called me Makcik Sayur (The Vegetable lady), obviously referring to the lady vegetable growers who normally wear similar hats!

But later that day Nafis enjoyed wearing it too:

Later in the night we had a BBQ dinner with some shows planned. I was in charged of the “Costume Show” by the kids who were below 9 years old – now.. that was fun!

And here’s me busy calculating (manually!!) the marks given by the judges:

We also had some lucky draws (EVERYBODY stood to win something, only the values of the gifts varied). Mine was among the last 10 and I won an Electrolux Fruit Juicer (which is still in tact in its box – no attempt to open it, since we prefer to eat the fruits than to juice them).

Kudos to us, the committee members :

The above pic was taken at almost midnight!!!

For more pix on the games, etc.. please visit Nuni’s Gallery.

I am too tired and sleepy…

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This is a long over-due blog. I wish I can write more but time doesn’t permit me to do so. I got many lovely gifts from these great ladies!! I wish to be able to list them one day, but no promise ya!

Date: 27th March 2010

Venue: My house

Time: 10 am – 5pm

Menu: Pot luck.

We certainly had a great time. I only cooked chicken rendang, and fried some beehoon. I also prepared guava cordial. The rest were brought by the other attendees. Nobody came empty handed. So much food and so much fun. There were Malays, Chinese and Indians – no need to listen to the 1Malaysia slogans. We are united in our hobby and passion for Needles and Crafts.

Let’s see the food:

I am going to cheat on this blog by linking you to some that blog entries that have been posted by some of these great ladies:

• Nik Ainun’s blog
• Alynn’s (See Alynn’s gift for me here, and mine to her too)
  
• Tini’s
• Mel’s (see the gift Mel made for me here)
  

Did I miss any other related blogs?

Anyway, here’s the group photo that I pinched from Tini’s page:

Tini, I hope you don’t mind me using this photo! By the time we took this group pix, some of us had left already .

Just the week before that I joined some friends of the same group in attending Rose’s son’s wedding reception at Hotel Singgahsana.

There are a couple of photos that I’d love to add here, maybe later?

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No, not the first earring I own, but the first earring that I made! Yes, earring, and not earrings, because I’ve only made one, and not a pair. Here it is:

I’ve used 925 silver parts that I bought recently, hence (hopefully) it doesn’t tarnish.

I’ll make the other one this weekend .

I’ve also made another pair of earrings but I haven’t got the pic yet.

In the mean time, if you care to read, Nuni has blogged about the Iceroom here.

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Remember the rose and daffodil that I made recently?

Tonight (or rather, last night if you consider that now is past midnight) I tried to make another flower, and here’s the result:

I think it’s much better than the previous rose, but if you take the top view, there’s still a lot of room for improvement:

Here’s the previous rose, for comparison:

The collection so far:

That’s all for now… I think I’ll take a breather from felt flower-making .

Thank you to DH for holding and capturing the bloom.

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I am still excited about this felt-flower making, so I made another one, attempting to produce a daffodil. Here it is:

Another shot:

The flower is still not complete:

Can do, ya? Now I need to find a satay bamboo stick for the stalk.

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I’ve made all sorts of flowers before. The first flowers I made were those using some velvety sticks, when I was in primary school. I also followed the craze in the 1970s to make flowers from rubber foam, plastic and straws.  When I was in secondary school I learned to make crepe paper flowers from my seniors. I also learned to make flowers from ribbons, stockings and tissue paper(I still make them for fun, esp during internal meetings/discussions).

I however have NEVER made any flower using felts! And to make things worse, I’ve not made any of those earlier mentioned flowers for at least 10 yrs now!

For our forthcoming NNC anniversary meet, I’ve enlisted myself  in the the lucky draw where each member is expected to handmake something, and on that day we will have a draw to determine who get’s what. One of the requirements is to have an accompanying felt flower.

It took me quite a while to find felts. Finally it was  Nuni who managed to get some for me from Lily Craft, Subang Parade.

So tonight, while watching “The Biggest Loser Asia”, I decided to try make a felt flower. And, here’s the product of the night:

Ah, too small for you to see? Here’s a close-up:

Actually the color is a very shocking pink! All the felts that Nuni bought (several colors altogether) are striking, except for the brown one.

I tried to get better shots of my maiden felt flower, but managed only this:

and this (on the sofa):

And finally, another perspective of the bloom:

I am glad that we are asked to only make ONE flower and not a whole bouquet!

Before the end of the tv programme, I managed to make a bud to go with it:

And here’s the combo:

Actually making this flower really reminded me of the foam/sponge flowers that my late mum taught me to make.

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Today I managed to make this bracelet for my friend, Siti.

I also decided to make a simple matching brooch for her. I promised to send these tomorrow, as my belated birthday gift for her. I used grey Swarovski crystals and Japanese imitation pearls.

While I was at it, I decided to re-do Nury’s broken crystal bracelet as well as her fresh-water pearl bracelet that was too tightly strung. So, Nury, here are your bracelets:

I used the extra crystals to make the brooch but I could not do the same with the pearls because the holes are too small for the pin. So I decided to have the dangling pearls added to the bracelets. I hope Nury likes it. And Nury, sorry for keeping the bracelets for so long…

Footnote: I used gold-filled wires (suasa) and gold-filled  little beads for all the bracelets, so they shouldn’t tarnish.

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Remember my recent blog about the Valentine Exchange?

I finally managed to open the packet on the morning of 14th February 2010, and here are the beautiful gifts that Nik has sent me:

The other side of the pouch has my name clearly embroidered:

These pix were taken from Nik’s blog .

Nik did the embroidery using her latest sewing machine, which she named Em.  With Nik’s creativity, she has produced quite a number of beautiful machine-embroidered items.

Thank you Nik for the gifts. They are just lovely. I’ve put some of my tatting threads in the pouch.  The little stuff (what do you call them?) will come handy when I do other crafts, I am sure.

As for my gift for the exchange, Usha from Klang is my partner and I’ve sewn her a tote bag:

It’s not so crafty, is it? Hmm….

Neverthe less, I hope Usha will find it useful. I even put a couple of pocket on the inside of the bag for her to put her wallet and othe small items such as her handphone, as shown here:

apart from the tote bag, I also gave Usha a patchwork/hand-embroidered handbag that I bought in Laos (or was it Cambodia) and a pair of panda keychains which I got in Chengdu. Dang, I forgot to snap any photo of these two. I was already late in sending the gifts, so in the rush I forgot to snap a pic of the handbag and keychains.

Anyway… one exchange done, and a few more to go, as listed here.

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Last Thursday, I had the pleasure of not working. I took the opportunity to unpack some of the boxes and catch up with ironing (apart from the routine cleaning, doing the dirty laundry, etc..).

In between the work and Facebooking, I took some quick time off  to organise the storage of my beads and stones. I then made these phone accessories:

The little golden beads and the wire that I used to connect the beads are gold-filled (in Bahasa we call it suasa) so they will not tarnish. I posted on my FB wall, and was surprised that quite a number of friends commented that these are cute.

Today, I had my monthly breakfast with Sh, As & Al. I came home at 11.30am.

Later in the afternoon, I felt like playing with the beads again, so I ended up with the following pins:

I wonder who would be the lucky owners of these pins (apart from me and Nuni)?

In the mean time I am also doing some knitting as well as having a few ongoing crochet projects. I also would like to do some patchwork quilting! Hey, there are only 3 more days of long weekend (minus today, which is almost gone now). Will I ever get to do so?

Oh! While I am playing with beads, I need to re-do Nury’s bracelets… Will blog later once they are done!

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