New Craft Book

I got this the other day at Kinokuniya. The projects are so cute ! Only problem is I don’t know how to crochet :0 … I am trying to learn and one day I will make this for the kids’ play kitchen :

By the way, the ISBN is ISBN13:978-1-58008-858-9

Full Body Probe

Ngaaaa, I went for the much dreaded health examination. I bought the package that involves the boobies squashing mammography, the gel smearing ultrasounds, and The Pap Smear <- those 3 words alone is graphical enough. The funny thing is, after the mammography ’s results were out, the nurse asked if I’ve done body piercing ( on the nipples ) because the X-ray showed some kind of stud/staple embedded inside. The following ultrasounds couldn’t find any trace of it and now The Husband’s trying to convince me that it is some sort of black magic. OOhhh, Happy Halloween.

I have to go to another hospital to get my eyes checked. Just great, I can pissed off more opticians there. I can’t control it, it’s all reflex !! The reason my left eye won’t do as you order it’s because it knows what you’ve done to my right eye. It’s all reflex !!

There was a blood donation thing going on there at the hospital. Out of impulse, I got in line and found out I have iron deficiency. Failed the blood drop test. The test where they drop a teeny drop of blood into a jar of bluish liquid ? Mine gelled into a ball and floated aimlessly for quite a while before it sank. The nurse gave me half a dozen pack of iron supplement pills, told me to eat more liver and dark greens, and to come back 3 months later. I’m not sure I will. Initially , I thought they take only a test tube size of your blood ? Well, they don’t . They take a bag full of them. Me faint.

Dingbats idea : Applique on Tshirt

I love dingbats, the fonts, that is.  I like to use them for appliques , sometimes to make worksheets for the kids. The above bird is from a font set called “Birds of a Feather“, where there are sihouettes of sparrows, owls, dodo birds, eagles ,etc..

To make the pattern, you’ll need a photo editting software that has the “Rasterize” function. This function will turn the text into a picture. After you have chosen the dingbat , type it out using the biggest font size and rasterize it. Use the magic wand to select the picture, then contract the border. ( In Photoshop, this function is in Select->Modify->Border->Contract. ) Contract it by about 5 pixels ( this will also depend on the resolution ), press “del”, and you will have an outline of the image. Crop the picture to delete the white spaces around it. Now it is time to print it out. Choose A4 size paper and selet ” Scale to Fit Media “. This will give you a large image  that is suitable for appliquing on a T-shirt.

Now to transfer the pattern onto the fabric, you will need to back the fabric with stabalizer. This will make it easier to cut and to embroider. I’m using ” pa gao” ( in Thai it means glue cloth ). Iron the bumpy side of the “pa gao” onto the back side of the fabric. Place the pattern face down onto the stabalized side and iron over it. The ink will transfer fadely onto it. Then cut it out and embroider onto your T-shirt. ( By the way, if anyone knows where to get double sided “pa gao” here in Bangkok, please leave me a note. Thank you very much )

The bird looks lonely all by itself, so I drew a tank to make the Tshirt more me. Attack of the Monster Bird !!  or Puny Human Destroyers !! , depends on which way you look at it. I think I will have to machine embroider the more flimsy area of the appliques. I don’t like to handwash anything at all.

Hair bun clips

I found a tutorial that shows a step-by-step how to make this Japanese style flower. So I’ll just link   I use the base of a cup to make mine. They are large size, perfect to add volume to the back of your head when you don’t have a head full of thick hair. *sigh*

For the above flower, the diameter of the pattern is 2.5 inches which makes a flower 2 inches wide. The clip is 3 inches long.

Mmmm… melamine

Have anyone checked the thai FDA site ? On the front page, there’s the warning on Mali’s Unsweetend condensed milk with the 92.82 mg/kg melamine contamination. They posted the “or yor” number of the batch with the expiry date. That’s good, right ? We should know these things especially when the limit is 2.5mg/kg, like, is there any milk in there ?

On the site, there are 2 pdf files on products that are tested. Oct 16, 20 items were tested. All passed, except if you look at the last column that shows who did the testings, not all the test were done by the FDA . Some are conducted by the manufacturers of the product. Go on, take the whistle and blow it on yourself. On Oct 17, another 18 done. This lot is confusing. Even though it said no traces are found for all the items, some of them are marked ” awaiting results ” or ” not found ” under the who-did-the-testings column. The FDA’s name didn’t even pop up under the column.

Now to add some bitterness, go and check the Center for Food Safety from Hong Kong. Since the scandal broke, they’ve been doing daily testings from September till present. The results are nicely broken down into categories. Tainted products are placed in a separate file , with pictures and amount of melamine detected. So far, they have found 31 tainted items. Consumers there can be assured that their government are concerned for their well beings. Here, our health minister is more concern about trade relations with China than our livers.

update : it seems that the FDA have updated their Oct 17 pdf file , there are now 9 items on the list with 6 of them tested by FDA themselves ( the rest have been deleted, until the results are out i guess ). They have also posted an announcement on how they are going to handle the problem and what they have done so far.

In  the announcement , they stressed that it is the responsibility of manufacturers of milk or milk related products to test their raw materials before production. FDA will be doing random testing and will file charges on the offenders. ( 6mths to 2 yrs imprisonment, 5000 -20000 bht fine ; revoke license for serious cases ) Companies that import milk/milk-related products from China will have to hand in additional documents to customs including lab results of melamine testing.

They also stated that so far they have sent 857 items for testing , of which they have received results of 640. 120 are tainted, but since they have not entered production line, the manufacturers are asked to return them to the country of origin.

The above are some points that I’ve translated, to read the whole document go here ( it is in thai )

bean bag chair

Done ! Someone has been hoarding it the whole evening. The zipper is on the bottom and while I was shoving the inner bag in, I had a panic attack thinking it will not fit. I may have to rip the seams out and pick up a gazillion loose foam bags . It turns out it just need a lot of punching and kicking around the bag to get it in.

The off white fabric is faux leather. I think that is the part where it can get most dirty, so I use fabric that can be wipe clean. ( The bottom is also faux leather. ) There is also a handle ( which looks like a cow’s ear ) on one of the side panels, so the kids can drag it around the house.

updates …

A week has passed by, so fast. I’m in some sort of sewing spell. Right after I finished a project, I start a new one.  Stuffs I made during the past week :

• 10 shoulder bags for my friend. Part of the fun was making the tiny coin bags. No patterns , just make them up along the way. I especially like this one, cream and beige. It’s a reversible bag, so if I want some colors, I  just flip it over. ( I am going to make one for myself )

• a blouse that I can actually wear in public. Usually, when I make clothing for myself, I ended up creating some abomination from the original pattern. It’s like a jinx. I was so happy the jinx is broken, I make a matching “hair bun” clip. DIY coming soon.
• Bathroom floor mat — from faux leopard fur that I reclaimed from a long time ago project. I think leopard prints are very strong visually , so if you keep the design small and minimalist it will turn out looking good.
• Current project : Bean bag chair for The Husband. This one is like a wrestling match. The diameter of chair is 90cms. I’ve sewn up the inner cover and discovered that the best way to fill it up is to haul the bag of foam balls onto a table and pour them into the cover. Trying to spoon 3kgs of foam balls into a funnel will take forever.

I won’t be posting …

about politics , even though I’ve been trying to watch 2 channels and listen to the radio at the same time. The Nation’s calling it “Black October”. Let’s just pray it won’t end up like the previous ones, especially the “Hok Tula” incident.

So ! I haven’t been blogging much. I’ve been spending much too much time at Cut Out and Keep, a step-by-step crafting website. People there are so friendly and generous in posting their own diys . The site have an “import” feature where you can transfer diys from your own blog to theirs without retyping everything.

I’m planning to sew a bean bag chair , found a local shop that sells the foam ball fillings ( 230bht/kg <- did I get ripped off ? it seems too expensive for foam ). I wonder if one could just use broken up foam trays instead.

okay, back to the TV …

Who is Chamlong Srimuang ?

The second PAD leader who got arrested yesterday ? Read more about him here.