Please Throw Me Some Fairy Dust! + a mini craft update..

Yah, I am seriously in need of some Fairy Dust to magically jump start my burning passion for making things. This past month has been pretty much an arid craft desert for me.

Perhaps it's the extremely bad weather. Besides the occasional pockets of heavy downpour, it has been really humid and hot. It's the kind of weather which you'll have totally no mood to do anything. And when I have no mood, everything just spirals into procrastination and the non-existence of motivation! Maybe I should just shift my resin/jewelry workspace from the non-air-conditioned living room area to my air-conditioned sewing room... Or perhaps I should just kick my butt and just get the sewing going! Sigh.

Well. There's still a tiny glimmer of crafting magic in the air last week. I'm planning (oh yeah, though I lack the motivation to do any physical crafting, I have tons of ideas and plans in my head... Oh, the irony!) to include some mixed media buttons and jewelry pieces involving metal work and wood work. 

I finally got some of the materials and tools needed for torch soldering and got my hands dirty on some first time soldering. I tried some gold-filled solder-filled wire first... And it was a total failure.. None of my test pieces soldered properly! I guess the omission of flux was what caused my failure. == I thought I should stop wasting more of the gold-filled wire (which ain't cheap) and wait till I have some flux on hand before testing that again.

Anyway, I switched to Argentium silver for my next testing. This is the material which I intend to use for my future pieces for the shop. And you know what? I love Argentium silver, a lot! Together with the Argentium silver soldering paste, it's quite a breeze to work with! I managed to create a letter 'a' and a geometric focal piece of triangles, which I later made into stackable bracelets.

I used half-hard wires and personally, I had to anneal them before creating the tiny triangles. In case you're wondering, I learnt quite a lot from the various YouTube soldering videos and the metalsmithing classes on Craftsy.

On the sewing front, I made a waterproof lunch bag, which was really a quick and simple project. And that was doubled up as a gift bag which contained some yummy gifts for another friend of mine. BUT, I'd forgotten to take a photo. Man. ==

Slapped by the Snake's Tail

So, the year of the Snake will be ending in just 2 days' time. Have been busy making more stuffs for my Etsy shop, but I am still kinda far from done (with all the spring cleaning in between). I was hoping to get some things completed for these couple of days but 2 certain emails managed to throw me off course and sucked me into another spiral of self-doubt and well, uncertainty.

The first email I received was actually a comment notification from Blogger. So someone commented that I gave 'a really pathetic review' of the Honey Mustard pretzels from Daiso. Well, in the first place, Daiso Maniac isn't exactly a reviewing platform, but okay.. It's just that getting this type of comments after putting the effort to share is kinda discouraging. =( We, craft bloggers, do appreciate a bit of encouragement from our readers, ya?

The next email was from a blog advertising community which I have an account. I cashed out my earning (which is actually very little after accumulating for a year or so) 2 months back, only to be slapped by them now saying that the cash out was rejected because my account has been involved in a click fraud.

??????????? As far as I know, I did not click on my own ads repeatedly, and I've never asked anyone to click on them either. 

So they removed the portion of earning which they suspected was from click fraud and put back the remaining amount back to my account. After checking my account, I realized the amount deducted was not a lot, but because the total amount fell below their minimum cash out amount, they can't pay me until I hit the minimum again and I re-cash out. What?

I am really considering removing their ads since it only adds clutter, and they kinda de-value me by branding me a click fraud anyway. Not really worth it just trying to earn that SGD 50 bucks after a year of waiting.

What a way to end the year of Snake.

Heart and Doubt

Hey peeps, sorry for the missing Daiso post last Saturday. Had been extremely busy for the past 1 week prepping extra materials and doing some deep thinking on elderly-friendly "tools" for 2 community paper craft events that I was involved in as an instructor.

Before everything, when I agreed to be an instructor for the elderly sessions and assistant for the children's sessions, I was looking pretty forward to the sessions. But with sudden change in plans and what felt almost like "backstabbing" from a hiccup, it nearly made me feel that all the effort, time, money and sleepless nights that I forked out was not worth it.

Thank God I have the smiles from the lovely senior citizens as my saving grace.

Anyway, here are some samples that I made for the events. (Note, the base pop up cut out design and iris-folding star design were created by the lady who "sorta hired" me. I just tried to upgrade them a bit. =P)

I need to get a new sewing machine.... =(

Everything was fine until my sewing machine decided to stop working properly after I changed the spool of thread.. My upper thread tension knob now seems to be spoilt and I can't adjust the tension again..!! Arrghhh...

It might seem okay on the outside, but the inside of the belt band is totally messy! >< Looks like this pair of culottes needs to be thrown into my home-clothes bin. =(

Anyone knows how to repair the upper thread tension knob??

Back from Taipei (with bonus gift from Mr. 病気)

Yeap, I'm back. And yes, I spent my New Year there. And nope, I didn't join the crowd in the countdown near Taipei 101.. In fact, I didn't join any crowd. Watched the countdown live on TV in my hotel room instead. Sounds kinda sad, huh?

Truth was, that's not the sad thing. What's sad was I threw up almost 3/4 of my whole day's worth of meal a couple of hours into 2011. What's even sadder was I could actually feel my head spinning throughout the night, and my tummy acting kind of weird. And yes, I spent the next few hours getting out of bed and throwing up the rest of the meal. Sigh.

By the time XB woke up, I was actually "half-dead" from the constant waking up-and going to toilet-and-puke routine. Thank goodness he had dizziness and nausea pills with him. But that made me half-concussed for the rest of the day. Having no appetite didn't help either. And that concluded my last day in Taipei.. Sigh.. LUCKILY, it was only the last day that this happened... =(

Now I'm back, and my appetite has not fully recovered. Guess what, I'm now having some slight sore throat too! "Banzai"! ==

My Scary Yarn Stash...

Hahaha... My mum and XB can attest to that... =|

No photos to show though, coz they're all now packed up in luggage bags and zip lock bags.... >< Trying to use up 6 balls of gray-colored merino yarn at the moment for a Keito Dama Summer 2008 crochet top...

I'm already almost finishing one side of the top, and realised a while back that I might not have enough yarn!! Went back to spotlight in the hope to buy a couple more of the same yarn, only to find out that the yarn section had terribly shrunken! I couldn't find the yarn I need!!! >< Sigh... I did buy 2 balls of yarn of another brand.. Hopefully, I could use that for the edgings..

Oh well.. Just something random..

Oh! XB got me a very very very very advanced birthday gift! A Canon EOS 1000D! And it came with loads of freebies which my mum was complaining the whole of today... =( She kept telling me the dry cabinet's taking too much space.. (GRRR!! It's not even the width of my sewing machine!!) And she forbade me to turn the dry cabinet on for the 5 days my family will be going Hongkong!!... AARGHH... There's not even a chance for me to change her mind! (Was practically pissed off the whole of the afternoon... ><)

Grr..

What the......

Fell sick again... 1 month apart... What's up with me!?? Arrghh.. Brother's still not in a very good mood... But better.. Went to Kukup with XB and his family yesterday... Think I was still not feeling very well... Felt kinda dizzy... And tummy felt a bit funny... Today, had a bad bout of dizziness while looking around at Causeway point.. Want to find something for Julienne.. Got something.. But.. going to add something to it..

It's insane... There're tons and tons of people at Causeway point... Came back home, feeling very dizzy and puky... Went to have a short nap.. And had some weird dream... Woke up to have dinner.. Felt better, but head was still spinning... Then went to watch some charity show...... Head now is still not feeling much better.. @.@


My finished ballet wrap!

Modified the pattern for a sweater... Reason's because.... I've not enough yarn.. HAHAHAHAH... Well... I bought 4 balls... I know it's not enough.. but.. I thought I could always go back to Spotlight, but it's gone when i went back.... AArghhh..... Then again... it was on sale... =
Here ya go~

Had a hard time figuring out how to do the front panels.... Coz the original sweater is just one piece... Tried to find some patterns on the net that I could borrow some ideas from.. But no luck... Well... I ended up crocheting based on my instincts.. hahahah...

Another shot...

Note the picture of Harry Potter.. Hahahha.. Drew it a couple of years back...

Also did a bit of finger knitting... hAHAHAH.. haha...

A Bad Start

Don't feel like talking about it... A bad start to a bad day... =

Itching season...

I realise my itching seasons are when the weather starts to turn hot or when the weather starts to turn cold.. Bah.. >< I scratched till the skin tore again..


Printing errors...

Am at the end of Book 2... Realise there were a few errors in the book... Printing errors, I hope... (The errors are quite misleading... 四分 should be read as yon pun and not yon fun... and 晴れます should be in Group 2 (i.e. the え-sounding group) instead of group 1...) Will be starting on studying my Book 3 soon... Hope to go through the tutorials and past year papers starting next Monday..


Happiness?

I've a habit of thinking too much when I'm in a bad mood. (I've terrible mood swings anyway..) There was a TV prog. on Channel U called "Hooked" depicting the lives of people who were addicted to drugs. In the bid of wanting freedom and happiness, these poor souls turned to drugs, only to receive a short spark of momentary freedom and a life of regrets and misery.

Then again, what is true happiness? Opinions differ, but I believe true happiness lies in oneself. It depends on whether you want to live life happily. And to me... To live life happily is to live life simply.. Full Stop.. hahahahhaaa... Maybe I'm just being not down-to-earth.. But to worry this and that everyday is certainly not making me happy... Whatever..


My Shawl.........

I wonder if I should bind off my shawl and start blocking it... It seems long enough, but... Would love it to be a bit longer..... Haha.. The Gemenians in me are at work again, sorry..


This is the shawl~~


Some size comparison.... With my sweater... Haha..


Trying to be funny....