SummerdayStudio: January 2009

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Day 1: Basketball and Home Service Pedicure

Saturdays are for... getting a pedicure! hehe I have super dirty feet from wearing slippers all the time. So this nice lady comes over and does the pedicures around here. I got french tips. It'll be nice and clean for the weekend at least haha. All my sisters had their pedicures done too.

My youngest brother has a basketball team now, and they had a game in a neighboring barrio. It was a beautiful day and they won the game! Dear Husband plays for the team too.

Friday, January 30, 2009

And he crafts

Dear Husband often drops by my craftroom/office/room-with-a-shared-bathroom-as-our-room. And sometimes he likes to tinker with what I have lying around. I was a bit surprised a couple days ago to find some fresh cuttings of my linoblock on the desk.

And the culprit was finally captured! hahaha. Too cute. He was making a little heart stamp.

When we were still dating, I brought him on a craft mission in the city to find some stamp carving blocks. We knew they existed here cause there are a lot of artisans on the side of the road who make stamps. He asked one of them where we could score some, and he gladly told us. I (of course) wanted to buy a huge block, but he told me to try a little first for I was used to carving erasers and this seemed way thicker and harder than that!

Well...he was right. What the artisans were using (and I had now bought), was not a linoblock, but the material used for making soles of shoes!! My carving tools were just slipping and sliding the whole time! No progress at all. Hats down and applause to all our local artisans.

Eventually I did get some real blocks in Manila (the BIG City). But that material-for-the-sole-of-shoes is still there in his room in his parents house. A constant reminder of an impulsive crafter wife.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Stitch swap stitch

Nothing thrills me more than getting stuff in the mail :-). When I was studying and living with my grandparents in a small seaside town a long time ago, we (kids) were not allowed to go out except to go to school. So I spent most of my youth in the house, which probably can be credited for my love of creating useless things.

In the school, there was a black board in the hallway that was used as a bulletin board. On the side they also wrote the student mail list. A lot of students had penpals and had their letters addressed to the school. My classmate/friend Eugel Mae had a penpal from Pennsylvania and started me on the road of getting my own mail. Since that time, I have been sending little useless things all over hehe. Not useless all the time.

When I was living in California, I joined some swaps on-line, at that time the site that you could go to was Nervousness.Org. It focused on art swaps and I had fun. Some times I didn't get any back. There was one swap I joined in Xanga that happened while I was moving between apartments (including one month living in a friends' place), and I got my package in the mail, but never got to mail mine back. And it keeps haunting me, but I cannot find her address anymore for I lost so much of my stuff with all the moving. But I will find her one of these days and send her something and say sorry.

Then, SWAP-BOT came along. While pregnant with begotten son, I discovered swap-bot on one of my nights surfing the net. It was a playground for crafter-swappers :-). And since that time, I have once again gone back to that time long-ago, staying up all night, filling up a package/envelope with little wonderful gifts to send far away.

Some of the stuff I have made and sent for swap-bot swaps:

And there is always something wonderful waiting for me in the mail too.

Peace.Love.Dream. Swap.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Lazy Sunday

Our friends and cousins were over for the weekend, and we had a lazy afternoon. I spent the day taking photos and playing Farm Frenzy hehe.

Home-grown, home-brewed coffee....and I must add that the sugar is made at the mill next door. That's what these guys need. (They decided on beers though, after waking up.)

P.S. It takes me approximately an hour to write a post with photos. That is how slow the net is. Sigh.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Sublime Stitching

The winner for the Mini Monogram Challenge at Sublime Stitching has been announced! No, I did not win it :-) BUT, this little "A" made it to the customer gallery!!! Yey!! Do check it out!

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

28th

Yesterday, January 20th, I turned 28. And it was a lovely day. Dear husband surprised me with cake and lechon. It was really a happy, happy, birthday.

He wanted to surprise me with a sewing machine cake :-) but our baker friend didn't have time, so it was a plain cake that looked like it had a piece of fabric on top! Lovely and super yummy.

Sigh. Thank You. For a wonderful life, filled with wonderful people and everything else!

Peace. Love. Dream. Our beautiful world.

Friday, January 16, 2009

Teeny Tiny Monogram

I have just been surfing the net the past few days. The joys of a fast connection when I'm in hubby's town. At the craftzine blog, I found out that Sublime Stitching was hosting a Micro Monogram Challenge. FUN!

I picked up one of the monograms from this site, and luckily I had some supplies here. My craftroom-in-a-plastic-tub that I left the last time we were here. I found the green and pink polyester threads in my bag (apparently it had fallen there when I got out my huge plastic bag of threads before coming here).

Everytime I have to do super fine stitching, and specially if I did not put any backing to my fabric, I use a beading needle so the fabric won't tear. I ♥ beading needles.

Now the fun part isn't over yet, because this has to be turned into a teeny tiny pillow!! Hehe. It's getting dark though, so I'll finish this tomorrow. The deadline is on the 20th of this month, which happens to be my birthday!

The monogram measures a mere 2.5 x 2.5 cm.. Micro-love for sure! So fun! I am not sure I can wait till tomorrow to finish this... I'm so happy to have time to craft again. This year, I will make time. Now, that is a resolution.

Faking it

Hehe. I was a bit bored a few months back and decided to make my own Fake 'ittons. It's a bit sad really how there is so much fake designer stuff here in the Philippines, and you can find them in stores in the malls too even though it is illegal.

So, it got me thinking. If (you must) fake it, it might as well be a one-of-a-kind Fake 'itton. Then no one else is going to have one, not even the real 'ittons. Hehehe. So out with the carving tools and let's get this over with.

This really all started out when I started doing the 'itton pattern by hand on fabric. I grew quite tired doing repeats by hand, so I thought maybe the stamps would make it faster. As of this point, they have already all be mounted on wood and ready to create that pattern on ANYTHING.

This is for personal use of course. OF COURSE.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Rainy Days and T-shirts

It has been raining...and raining...and raining...and I have just been catching up on Threadless news and voting for my fave tee of the year. Here are some of my faves from Threadless 2008:

Enkel Dika's Flowing Inspiration (winner of ♥'s Drawing Challenge)

Arctic Spa by Matthijs Smit

Hide and Seek by Cheok Siew Yen

Ignorance is Bliss by Leon Ryan

Race by Fawn Fruits

Such a Great Height by Budi Satria Kwan

The Great Escape by Wenceslao Almazan

A Rustic Hat Rack by Michael Blaine Myers Jr.

A Voyage to Lilliput by Patric Schade

Threadless is just such a wonderful site! And I do wish to own one of the shirts someday hehe. I'm still summoning the courage to submit at this point. I tried to make one for the Drawing challenge but never submitted it:

This needs more work. It was an old sketch from 5 years ago or so. One thing great I see on Threadless is that so many people really use a lot of visual perception techniques. Reminds me of the plates we had to do in Freshman year. I miss school hehehe. I would love to do Fine Arts all over again. Just the classes though! Hahaha

Wow it's raining hard...

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Of blessings and the perfect Apple Pie

A few years back I made my first apple pie, and my late father (always the final and most important tester) deemed it tooooo sweet to be edible (not exact verdict, but you get the gist). Since that time, I have ventured in finding the perfect recipes for food that I love to eat. I can now make a mean Peking Duck. And I have memorized the recipe for Siomai. Eclairs are a breeze now and so are Churros.

Even before working on my resolutions, I decided it is about time I tried making the elusive apple pie. And there is nowhere else to begin but with Martha. I get my Martha Stewart Living magazines from BookSale, which can be found in malls all over the Philippines. Their back issues cost around 75.00 pesos. A steal considering all the eye candy you get inside!

I decided on the cheapest apple I could find at the market, which costs around 15.00-25.00 pesos a piece. I modified the recipe from Martha Stewart Living Nov. 2007 for Spiced Apple Pie with Fluted Round Cut-outs and adapted it to ingredients that I could easily obtain in the ranch and the market. I ended up using 6 apples which is roughly 1000 g and substituting the lemons with the local calamansi (albeit making it less for our calamansi is stronger in tanginess).

The crust recipe I stuck by the real deal called Pate Brisee from the same issue. Crusts are always a tricky thing and I was keeping my fingers crossed. Did not wanna mess with Martha on this one for sure! I used margarine (brand was Buttercup, a fairly cheap margarine stick that can be found easily even in small towns here) instead of butter.

Not having a food processor around, I used the classic trick of two knives to cut in the butter into the flour. I did try using a pastry cutter, but I wasn't making much progress on that one. As much as I did not really know how to make a crust, I understood from pie crust recipes that the butter should be cut in for that is what makes it puffy. So judging from the looks of butter obviously dotting the dough, I was feeling better about myself haha.

I made the pie crust cover but making holes into the rolled dough using the apple corer. I did not have the fluted cutter of Martha. This was pretty tricky since I had to work fast since the dough melts the more you handle it. Thus the lack of photos for this part of the process. After the apples were tossed I piled in on the pie plate, making sure to mound it in the middle part as instructed.

All the rounds that were cut-out were then used to dot the rim, joining the two doughs. A quick brushing of egg yolks diluted with a little water (Martha said to use cream, but I had none) sealed it all in. I popped it all back to fridge for an hour before baking.

And tadah!!!! The best Apple Pie ever!!! I held my breath for the tasting (a job which my mother has now inherited), and the verdict was: PERFECT. And my husband cannot get enough of it. I made another one (to be sure I really nailed it) to bring to my in-laws, and they love it too! Thank you Martha!!!

Now I can go back to writing down my resolutions for 2009. The year has started out so wonderfully! Dear husband just harvested our corn crop, and the earnings was beyond our wildest expectations. We celebrated last night with cousins at the local restaurant here in hubby's hometown with some beers and listening to a wonderful acoustic set.

Checking my e-mail also brought some good news for I got an email asking me to join this new site called UsTrendy which features fashion designers. Apparently the lady found me interesting from my flickr set with that "Puffer Bride" DIY wedding gown I designed almost 2 years ago which I had blogged about here. How totally unexpected! And really lovely.

Peace.Love.Dream.Thank you world!