After a long hiatus, Woolly decided to put her hands to do something she found at the MPH bookstore. She has been attracted by the little red rose in the glass display – an elegant crystal red rose which comes in a box of plastic puzzles. Check out this website printed on the box. This is a 3 dimension puzzle. By the way, Woolly hates jig-saw puzzle and does not have a knack for such things. She has given plenty of thought before buying this little piece of pricey puzzle rose; pacing at least a dozen times in front of the display and mumbling to herself many times before she decides to part with her hard-to-earn cash. “If I can’t complete this, I have Croaky! He should have a knack for putting things together mah… he’s very good with cross-word puzzles anyway…” Or so she thought!

And so Woolly bought the puzzle and spent a really long time scrutinizing the instructions while watching her VV drama on demand. She felt that it was too tough. And so she waited for Mr Croaky to come home to work on the rose. The half-baked man spent a long time in front of the instructions as well and could not find the first piece of puzzle to start work on. He started to blame Woolly for being so irresponsible and bringing things home “for him to do”.

Woolly knew that she could not depend on this nit-wit to finish the puzzle. He would rather stick his bum watching his “Air Plane Investigation” than to work on the puzzles. (Yaah, he was that lazy!)
Then she came up with a brilliant plan…

She took out the tray table which she has specially bought to make her handicrafts, lay out the 44 pieces of plastic puzzles and grab hold of a stack of yellow stickers (which were used to label her nail polishes and date her cosmetics). She swore she would find the puzzles one by one! Some of the pieces looked almost identical and the diagrams on the instructions were drawn disproportionately.

Then the pieces were labelled and arranged in ascending order. Whenever there was a mistaken identity, she would look through the diagrams and start all over again – the elimination trick worked very well. And when she figured she was lost, she would carry on with her cooking and come back again later.

So 2 nights with 6 episodes of VV drama serials, and this was completed! Isn’t this nice? Talk about sheer determination! Mr Croaky was still gloating that Woolly would not be able to complete it by herself the day she bought it. Heh.

Moral of the story: Depend on no one (especially XY chromosome species) but yourself. You can do it alone!

Daiso sells this type of clay in a myriad of colours for $2 each. You can make really beautiful things with this type of soft clay if you spend a bit of time. And you just need to add a few drops of water to make them stick. It becomes soft and light once it is air dried.

For the remaining clay, keep them in air-tight containers for your next use.

Try your hands on it… and you will be hooked.

It’s not easy finding time to knit. To finish one knitting project takes me forever because I have a short attention span and I doze off very quickly doing the same thing.

So the above teddy bear took me 2 months to complete and 1 month to make his jumper. The pattern and materials for the bear were bought for a hefty price of $19.90 from Spotlight. The instructions were easy as it was meant to be written for an eight year old (the box says so). But this bear does not have any clothes on. And I wouldn’t tolerate a naked bear sitting in my midst of soft toys! With much courage, I drafted a design for his jumper, and I surfed the net to find how to do “ribbing” for his collar and his sleeves.

I have thought of knitting an exact replica of this jumper for Croaky. But since Singapore is in the tropics and since I have already spent 3 precious months knitting this prototype, I have concluded that Croaky would be much happier buying scarfs and mittens from Daiso than to wait 6 months for my knitting.

And you know what – he has so much more surface area to cover than this bear!

Recently, I am trying to pick up wire twisting and this is my first creation.
I realise there is such a thing called a wire jig and I have gotten one set from my bead shop.
The wire jig will come in handy when you are making intricate designs and shapes – I suppose so, because I have bought it but have not used it.

He made it!
Croaky presented me with this hand-made duck from Daiso on Valentine’s Day.
This was in response to a dare in this entry.

 If you take a closer look at the duck’s wings, they are crooked. Nonetheless, it was a great first attempt for a man with big hands! It’s a labour of his love and a promise delivered.

I feel proud of my dear Croaky.

I am now a new convert fan of making my own earrings – inspired by the fanciful earrings adorned by the female characters on the period TV dramas. Even their house-maids wear beautiful, long dangling earrings, which are at least 2 inches long. And the materials which are used are exquisite pieces of jade, pearls, rose quartz and other precious stones.

The shop which I particularly fancy is Lai Guan Beads Mart because of its huge array of beads and its affordable prices. There are other smaller shops in the vicinity as the prices are not as competitive as Lai Guan. I also go to Mix N Match (in the same building) to compare prices and to find other pieces which are not available at Lai Guan. There is also this Golden Dragon Store which has been around for the longest time but I do find that the range is rather out-dated and the stock are not as new. (Especially the sections for embroidery, cross stitch and other craft kits).

In my humble opinion, the most ridiculous place to buy your beads will be at Spotlight where the prices are steep and the range is limited. Beads fanatic don’t shop there. Even with the membership discounts, the prices are going to bleed you and your wallet and you might as well buy ready-made pieces from push-carts.

It will be fun knowing more beads fanatic and share wonderful tips/know-how with these people. I need to know more like-minded individuals who share my hobbies.

My second attempt at dress-making. This time, the tribulation was to made a matching pants for my newly bought embroidered brocade from Madam Butterfly. The shop sells satin pants, but only light coloured ones, and it costs $69 for a samfui like pants (which imo is not suitable for daily wear).
Samfui pants are pants with straight cut and flare a bit at the bottom.
Well, I thought straight cut means sewing straight right? How difficult can it be?

So, I bought some materials and decided to make one myself.
Material costs:

Rest of my professional tailor-kit (Sewing machine, bobbins, chalk, measuring tape, ruler): my own
Paper pattern: I didn’t buy! (Grave mistake)

Nonetheless, I made a mess of everything. And this was only 10% of the mess on my living room floor. Men don’t really care because they are so used to living in their pig-sty. It’s true!

As I did not have any paper pattern, I had to draw on the satin on free hand – professional tailors used their measurements and rulers. I took out a pair of my existing long pants hoping to replicate the pattern. It was not a perfect solution and I ended up sewing a pair of pants which was too small for my size. As a result of my folly, I had to spend the entire Friday and Saturday night trying to undo the sewing with my unpicker.

My zest to see the completion of my home-made pants carried me on. And I spent the whole of Sunday afternoon in front of my sewing machine. I realise as you grow older, your hands at the sewing machine becomes steadier. Straight lines just become so easy.

And finally – my very own tailor-made pants!

This is a great step towards making more clothes.

I was so elated when I spotted this handicraft kit at Daiso. They have a range of beaded animal kits on sale at the handicraft section and each kit only costs $2.

I picked this one – bunny with a carrot in its hands. Kawaii right?
And it is not difficult to string all the beads together to make the bunny. The difficulty comes with interpreting the diagrams which are annotated in Japanese. Anyway, the diagrams are self-explanatory and you don’t really need to know Japanese to understand what it means.

I am posing this challenge to Mr Croak to make me a beaded animal for Valentines’ Day. I’d like to see how his big hands fumble and how crooked his handicraft looks. This one surely beats receiving any expensive gift from Tiffany or Louis Vuitton, don’t you think? Not that I care for such material gifts anyway.

I am awaiting the big surprise!

I really hate getting free freshwater pearls every time I make a purchase at OG shopping complex. Sometimes, I don’t bother to step into the escalator to go get this “freebie” because I simply have no use for these free pearls nor do I have the patience to listen to the sales pitch by the counter staff, trying to tell me I should spend another $50 – $80 to frame the pearl into different designs. You see, women are weak creatures, especially when it comes to shopping. Everytime, I will just grit my teeth, walk up to grab my pearl and zoom off.

Over the last few years, I collected so many pearls. But each time I look at them, I am filled with sadness. They are all without holes – this means I cannot string them into earrings / necklaces / whatever. Once I walked up to the counter to ask them how much it costs to drill a hole into my pearls – $18 per pearl is the answer! And I have walked up to a jeweller who would tell me to buy their pearls instead (no doubt those pearls are better quality ones but the fact is I want to make some use for the pearls which I have). This is not a matter of money, but a matter of principles! I shall not be fleeced into paying $18 to drill one pearl.

The other alternative which I have thought about is to “grind” them to make pearl powder, like those in traditional chinese medicine shops. But its such a pity to grind them, really. What else can you do with such not so expensive and not so perfect pearls?

So I did a bit of internet research on electric bead reamers, which had been rather discouraging. Nonetheless, I bought an electric bead reamer (with 3 diamond drill bits) and a hand tool. It’s not easy drilling. But it could be done – with sheer determination, some brute strength and a broken thumb.

I am finally at peace. I can now proceed to make them into earrings.

Here is the complete set

Here comes my prototype for the snowman!

I saw the craft kit at Spotlight for $4.95, but I didn’t buy it. Why would you pay $5 for 3 pieces of pearl, a small piece of felt and a feather hur?

So, I ventured to my favourite craft shop yesterday, armed with a drawing of my prototype snowman, and a photo of the exact design on my handphone (that’s why camera phones are so convenient nowadays!). Happily, I bought strings of pearls, sequins (do you call those little coloured bits for your NailArt sequins?), some metal parts for gosh ($20 ++). And the receipt showed I bought many “spare parts”.

But now I can make as many snowmen as I like – as my yearly Xmas pressies to my friends, my colleagues and Croaky (he doesn’t seem to like all these Xmas things – you see he threatens to tear down my Xmas decorations even in his sleep).

Maybe I should pack all those leftover pearls and sell them off at a bargain price – $2 anyone?