Saturday, July 30, 2011

Art from the Recycling

Here is a little treat I finally put together today after those garlands of paper beads have been sitting around for at least eight years. The beads were made from the pages of Famous magasine. In middle and high school, I used to pick up the Famous magasine every time I went to a movie theatre. They sat around and got used for collages and this. I took the IKEA frame from the recycling room in my apartment building. Voila, the result is a rearrangeable piece of wall decor.



Gelato Genius

Marlena over at Leap of Faith made a post about the greatness of ice cream, and it inspired me to recount last night's delightful gelato experience. Gelato Simply Italian sounds like it is run by actual italians, which I deduced from our gelato server man who said "prego," which brought back nostalgic memories of my time in Italy this summer. The flavours I had were pink grapefruit, a strong aroma with some zap to it, and coriander-lime. Coriander-lime was a genius flavour, extremely refreshing, and unsual in a way that worked. Move over, rolo-flavoured frozen dessert!
I ate the gelato, so all I have left to picture is the paper cone sheath.

Friday, July 29, 2011

Red and Green Thai Curry Pastes

In February this year I decided I was going to make my own red and green thai curry pastes. I looked into some recipes and found some interesting ingredients that I had never heard of: galangal, and kaffir lime leaves.

Galangal is a root that looks vaguely like baby ginger and tastes like "has a citrusy, piney, earthy aroma, with hints of cedar and soap" according to Wikipedia, although I can't describe it myself. Kaffir lime leaves taste vaguely lime-like and look like this:

Kaffir lime leaves


Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Amimono knit blue tank

This knit top was my first foray into a real knitting project that transcended making scarves! It is made of 100% mercerised cotton, and I followed a pattern for the first time!

Monday, July 25, 2011

Handbag Heaven

If I had $200 to invest right now, I would get this great Kate Spade bag. Or better yet, learn how to make one! I had a date with a girl to teach me basketweaving (which I think can be related to bagweaving if I want it to) but it didn't work out. I'm still holding out though!


And if I had another $150 to spend I would pair it with this beautiful blue flowy dress handmade by crusheleptic.

Hair removal

I had wanted to try this two-parted tutorial because the concept of pulling out hairs in the direction of growth versus opposite would really solve the hair breakage problem, and also it looked super cool. Previously I had been using this excellent Canadian sugar waxing product:


Thursday, July 21, 2011

Roma, Italia (May 24 - 26)

I won't say too much about Rome because as they say a picture says a thousand words, and if I start writing about Rome, I'll end up writing a novel!


Interior of St. Peter's Basilica

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Construction

Please excuse the state of my blog, which will be changing in strange ways today as I try to make it prettier.

 This is my mascot and logo, a coffee stain turned into a doodle.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

No More Dryer Sheets

Instead, use these tightly woven and felted woolen balls to fluff and remove static from garments! They last for a long time, and will prevent you from spending $6 on dryer sheets every couple months. I don't think I will make many of these because Etsy already has a lot of sellers doing exactly this! So I made a set for myself to test it out. I love the results.



Monday, July 18, 2011

Vintage* Chairs

Today's post is about some vintage* chairs which really spice up the home. 

Note the distressed vintage style that comes from years of wear on high quality goods**

Nice, France (May 21 - 23)

Nice was a little touristy for my taste, but Marc* says that this is what has happened to the Provence area of France, that it had been "discovered," and none of the real French people ever take their vacation there anymore! The city was beautiful, of course, and so were the beaches.

View of Nice from Villa St-Exupery's room window

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Souvenir from Hawaii

Thanks for this souvenir from Hawaii from SY  :) Much appreciated

Just a little carving on a wine cork for a new lid.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Camera Trouble

Immediately before my trip to Europe, my >8 year-old Sony Cybershot died. It displayed only a white screen and would not take snaps! Up until then nearly all my pictures were done with that camera, as poor as its low-light performance and stability were. When I got back from Europe I decided to see if I could fix it at all. There had been a previous problem a couple years ago when I got a lens error which I fixed by smacking the camera on my knee (thank you, internet). This time it suggested resetting the screen by pressing all the buttons at once. I was sceptical, but it worked! The lens however started making the most horrible buzzing noise. Hitting it against my knee didn't work this time, and the internet suggested there could sand or hair stuck in the lens casing. I found a camera mod that allowed remote shutter control, which also happened to have instructions on taking the camera apart. I am always for taking apart electronics! 

 
Here is the result, which unfortunately doesn't involve the lens behaving afterwards. I think it is time for a new camera. Meanwhile I will have to rely on my Milestone camera (I used it for this picture), which has flash and zoom but only takes decent pictures in high sunlight situations.