Life Hacking

I love how something so mundane as using a sock instead of a cardboard insulator for your paper coffee cup has become so fashionable. Life hacking is something that I discovered relatively recently. To be honest, I've mostly found it useless since I guess I'm a natural born life hacker - if I need a little box to keep my "Buddha beads" from when I was 15, I just go make one.

It's a sign of the times really, everything must be renamed to make it cool, re-conceptualised to make it fun to be around. Making things out of random household things to make your life a bit easier is life hacking. Making an object with a previous specific use that you don't want any more into something else, like knitting needles into bangles is called upcycling. Kids today. Crazy stuff.

On Hold

Seems I have a billion-and-one things that I could be doing right now. I have at least ten projects on the go, none of which I can actually be getting on with. As you may or may not know, I'm in the process of moving house, which involves a certain degree of packing up all of your belongings. I, in my infinite wisdom have managed to pack up half of my supplies in different places, forgetting to note down where everything is. I can pick up my kawaii embroidery and find that I've packed away the embroidery thread in another box.

So for now I've taken to staring at the Internet, wondering what else I can do for fun. I'm very tempted to start writing a novel, or a comic, although I have no talent with drawing at all. If it was a comic about boxes maybe, I could do that. Or robots, very square robots. I aced technical drawing when I was at school studying graphics but I can't draw people.

I'm also really tempted to start another website. It's funny really, I actually have my own website that I pay for each month but I'm dying to start my very own fan site for Project Zero. To be honest I know that it will be fleeting, that eventually I would get frustrated and bored with updating the site. I also know from experience, people lose interest in subject matter like this and your site becomes useless - all your hard work is for nothing. I might transform Amaloli.co.uk into more than just a sale site. Watch this space!

Translachuns

I've got myself hooked on Japanese again.

I've recently been baffled by the "finish it later" efforts of an individual who has somehow gained the reputation of the top source for information a certain subject I wish not to name here in case they read this. I'd been to the website before, and found numerous errors. It was something simple, errors in Japanese translation but I decided to drop them an email about it.

I got a nasty reply stating that she actually knew the information was wrong and hadn't published the correct information because people had started to steal the information from her site as well as the layout. Again I was baffled by the phenomena that is late twenty something year old online girls. They can be very petty and very sharp. Not sure if I explained all about this before, but I've previously had some lovely experience with a 27 year old English girl who sent hate mail to my jewellery myspace profile telling me that I "suck at photography" and that my designs "are crap".

On another note, I decided to try to translate the subtitles from a Japanese version of the game call Rei (the English version, called Project Zero or Fatal Frame isn't released yet, if it ever will be). Too hard! I've been using a playthrough video on youtube, which means that it's near impossible to get a clear and big enough picture of the kanji to be able to count how many strokes there are in the character. Then you have to search manually through a list of kanji with that many strokes (of which there are averagely over 100). Then you have to figure out what that kanji means. By the way, babelfish is useless. I have no trouble if the kanji is big enough, and I figure that I could develop my kanji recognition skills and stroke counting and order and so on doing this. Rambles.

To sum up: I like to translate Japanese text. I can't unless the kanji characters are big enough. Late twenty-something girls are mean. Babelfish sucks.

Ahhhh I love it when that happens

Every time I decide to try out a new technique in jewellery making or crafting I end up frustrated. I guess you could argue it's the same for everyone, it's just that some people make everything look a lot easier.

From rifling through my old jewellery supply receipts, it looks like I decided to try my hand at setting stones for the first time well over a year ago. Not one to have much of a stash, I always get to work as soon as things arrive. With this ring, I set the first stone, the big one, and it ended up lopsided. At the time I thought it would be ok, it still looked alright even if some of the claws were a little bit weird looking. I set the second stone, a small one and then dropped the third stone, never to be found, still lurking somewhere deep in the carpet.

About four months ago I reordered the stone so I could give it another go, to be yet again stumped and frustrated. I haven't actually got any of the right tools to do the job, which has probably got something to do with my lack of success. I thought that if I end up hating setting stones, or I really suck at it, what do I do with these tools? I'm sorting through my belongings right now in preparation for the upcoming moving of home, and I found the ring again.


Miraculously I managed to not only successfully set the third stone, but reset the large stone and tighten the grip of the claws on the second stone. It's near perfect. Perfect enough for me! Love it, love it, love it.

Yay! Palm-Size Stuffies!

I ordered the elusive Palm-Size Stuffies book on eBay a couple of weeks ago and was expecting it to take around 6-10 weeks to arrive as warned by the seller. It came all the way from Japan, which means none of it is in English. I thought at the time I bought it, it would be pretty self explanatory as many non-Japanese-speaking crafters have bought this book and sung it's praises for being so... self explanatory. I've already had a flick through it and got a bit scared because it looks a little confusing.

But I will press ahead with it, eventually. I need to stop adding new things to my list of projects to complete. I have crochet patterns, knitting projects, jewellery supplies untouched, recipes piling up in my bookmarks folder, shrink plastic projects, clay sitting in a box waiting to be used, the list is endless. It's OK though, with this book I don't want to rush into anything too fast. I want to buy really nice fabrics and materials to work with. I realised a little while back that the reason why some people make everything look flawless and easy is that they are good at hiding the fact that they try, try and then try again to perfect their work, never giving up until they have the perfect result. So that is what I'm going to try with this book. I'm going to practise first until I'm ready to use the good stuff. This will undoubtedly frustrate me because I'm used to churning things out first time, probably because jewellery making is such an easy hobby.

I laughed when I first saw the package, because of the deco tape that the seller had used to secure the envelope. I've had the nickname Bunny since university, even if it is only used by one person. This book had my name on it :D

Birthday keki

It's been a while since I last updated, so I'll do it backwards just to be awkward. I've been on a complete cookery rush for a while now. Most recently I made little fairy cakes with icing on top. They were edible, but a smidge of a disaster thanks to my inability to convert cooking times with added fan power in the oven, and my inability to create delicious icing. It never ceases to amaze me at how crap I am when given a camera. You may know by now, I got a new camera recently, and it gave me amazingly crispy results. But as I always say, give me a camera get poo, give someone else same camera, get good.

This was taken by Tom. He got the lighting right, the angle right, and it looks rather artsy to me. Maybe I've found a new career for him in photographing all my blog material and jewellery.

I also make his birthday cake entirely from scratch, which I was promised would take only 2 hours and ended up taking 4. I was surprised to find that it was actually edible! Entirely from scratch is probably a small overstatement, I did buy pre-made icing and icing writers. I iced by hand "otanjoubi omedetou" which means happy birthday in Japanese :D

I also bought him a bento box (among other things) and made my own lil version of a bento lunch, with sushi made with canned tuna, flowery shaped veggies and cheese, noodles and hot dogs and so on. I can see why they only make it using leftovers from the previous meal, it took ages to prepare everything because there are so many components that you have to cook and prepare. Next time I might make it a bit simpler.

That's my bento box that Tom bought me for Christmas by the way, I got him a nice manly black one :p

Sesame chicken and not-so-udon noodles

Today I decided to brave the cooker again and go on another culinary adventure using a recipe I found for sesame chicken and udon noodles. For one thing I didn't have any Chinese leaf, which sucked because I used to love it as a kid. So I had to swap that for regular lettuce. I also couldn't find any udon noodles, which is probably because I didn't venture far enough into china town, or even into the area at all so the noodles became regular egg noodles. The recipe came out rather nicely, i even put in effort enough to toast some sesame seeds. It's sort of minimal effort for a nice presentation too, just pile everything in according to the recipe. It took a little longer than it said on the recipe to make, but that's probably just because I'm not the greatest or most practised cook in the world, and maybe something to do with the fact that I kept having to check and re-check the recipe to see if I was doing it right.

It was nice, the chicken seemed a little unhealthy as it was fried and the peanut rich sauce was amazing but tasted like it had evil amount of calories (high calories = yum) but this was all balanced out by the healthy veggie salad. Mmm!

Burrminghum

Today I broke my must-not-make-any-impulse-purchases pact in Birmingham. It's not often I get a Saturday off so it's always fun to go out and investigate the more pushy/shovey side of shopping life which happens to fall on a weekend. I made the mistake of going to Muji. Every time I visit this shop I make complaining noises about how against mass production and overpriced designer items I am, yet still every time I find something to buy. I've been eyeing up a stamp set there for some time, lucky for me and my bank balance they hadn't got any, so I settled for a little fine line pen in purple.

I also made the mistake of saying, "oh hey let's go to Selfridges, you know, just to look around". I bought a jar of Fluff and a couple of boxes of Hello Panda biscuits in strawberry and chocolate. I also discovered an entire stationary section with owls on everything which was just proof that retailers see me coming from a mile off. I bought a notebook (of which I have almost an entire bookshelf worth) and a set of stickers (I love stickers, I have piles of them).



I also (again) made the mistake of walking into the Bullring. One of the stores had an entire window devoted to the promotion of Gwen Stefani's new fragrance line from her Harajuku Lovers brand. There are 5 little bottles with a little plastic dolls as a lid. They are all very different fragrances which seem to really reflect the personas of the doll. One is Gwen and the other four are her dancers Love, Angel, Music and Baby. I chose Love. It's a nice smell, sort of fruity and flowery at the same time. I want Music now. Lucky for me these are only around £12 a bottle!

All in all I only spend around £25 on random purchases, none of which I have regretted, so maybe I'm getting better at this? If only there weren't so many things I want!

Oscar

>.<

手 のひらサ イズの ぬいぐるみ!

First things first... it snowed today! And the UK as always had grinded to a halt. The transport network is in bits, and even TV presenters are taking snow days leaving everyone else to pick up the pieces! Of course this gives me the chance to show of the capabilities of my new shiny camera. This was taken through a window on the easy setting. It takes the picture almost instantly, which is better than the other camera which took around 2 or 3 seconds to open and close the shutter after the button is pressed. Here's my back garden, excuse the mess!

I'm guessing this must mean that my Japanese studies have paid off? My certificate came in the post this week - I am officially certified for level 1 Japanese. That's about the level before GCSE. I'm wishing now that I'd taken it to level 2 because I would have had a GCSE equivalent! Just in time, I saw this amazing Japanese nuigurumi book on etsy for a mind blowing price, and decided to try to find it elsewhere for less. Only having the cover (with Japanese title) to use as a reference, I got my geek specs on and quickly translated the title. The cheapest site for Asian books (although with rather frustrating customer service from previous experience) is always yesasia.com, alas they are out of stock. I'm not one to sit around and be patient while they restock. I found out you can enter an ISBN into BookButler.co.uk and it will search 115+ shops for the lowest price. Of course there are no shops that stock the book which is kind of the story of my life! Anyway, it looks like I'm going to have to fork out the £25 on etsy if I want this book any time soon. :(

Want want want

I think I have too many hobbies. It all started with jewellery, and that was about 4 years ago. Now I knit (badly), crochet (even worse), am trying to play the violin (haven't got around to fitting the new strings yet so "play" is a bit of an overstatement), am learning Japanese (even though I have forgotten most of what I spent a year learning last year) and now am sewing. It used to be tough enough to just fit in making jewellery every day. But with all these new things I'm finding myself with an unfinished project here there and everywhere. I think it's time to take things back to basics, concentrating on one thing at a time, or allocating certain days to certain things. My life doesn't seem to have enough hours spare.

Crafting isn't the only thing that needs to go back to basics. It's probably one of the lowest cost hobbies you could find, especially when you get something out of the other end that you can actually use or enjoy - a finished product. But there's something else I love that saps up a lot of my resources. And that thing is called cute. If it's cute I can't resist. But as I pointed out in my last post, I'm starting to appreciate things less - I'm starting to miss that buzz of childhood when you have to save your £2 a week pocket money to buy something you'll really love, and at Christmas or on a birthday when you'd get something to really treasure for years. I'd like to recapture that, so here's my mission. I've seen a journal I'd really love to have, with the ultimate for cute on the cover.
This is a journal by Meomi which ticks all the boxes. If you know me at all you'd know I love books. Especially hard back books. With lines preferably but still, this book is beyond cute. It's only £7.65 but I think I should take the time to evaluate whether or not I'll still love and want this. So I'm not allowed to buy it until next pay day, that's 13th February. Agh the willpower will have to be strong.

RIP Cybershot

The inevitable happened today, my camera broke. It's something that's never happened to me before, I've always been very psychotic about keeping my things safe and neat and in perfect working condition. My old Game Gear doesn't even have a scratch on it. But it comes with having more money and thus being able to buy more stuff - you start to take things for granted, take less care of your things and become careless. Which is what happened to my camera. I left it close to the edge of an already crowded table and it took a dive for the floor, leaving a little crack on the screen enough to render it useless as a digital camera, all it's good for now is looking through the peephole and shooting, and slowly transferring the images to the computer. So, time to get a new one! It's a sad day, I'd grown quite attached to it actually and will be sad to see it gathering dust in a drawer. On the upside, this is the new one I'm getting.
Very pretty, and much functional. Apparently it has face recognition, you can set it up to recognise and automatically take photos when people smile or laugh! And it also has super- dooper anti shake, which to be honest I will believe when I see. There is no camera known to man that can evade my shaky picture taking. I tend to have to lean on things to keep everything sharp!

Yay for ebay

I finally borrowed some knitting needles as I was given some wool to practise with. I was convinced that there was at least one crochet hook lurking around the house somewhere but I still can't seem to find it. I'm not one to sit on supplies though so I've been trying to knit instead. My first attempt was as to be expected, riddled with mistakes, the biggest of which were two little holes. It's hard for someone like me to knit - I'm used to being able to take apart a necklace and fix the bit in the middle before putting it back together again - which isn't really something you can do when you're knitting especially if like me you don't know how to undo your stitches and put the rest back on the needles. My second attempt somehow ended up in a rainbow shape. The third attempt was a impressive squarish shape with only one imperfect row. So now I consider myself able to knit, well, in one stitch at least!

On the more successful side of life, I've been busy making glass pendants with the chiyogami paper I'm so obsessed with. I love how no matter how many different ways I try to position it, and decide on the best look, the bit of scrap I put on the back for extra detail is always the nicest pattern, and just where nobody will ever see it.

I also received 8 porcelain manekineko beads in the post today. I'm not sure exactly where they are from, I'm beginning to think they are from Japan because they are of such beautiful high quality whereas all the Chinese beads I have seen have been poorly made and painted. They're so cute and so perfect that I actually spent around an hour and a half making one into a necklace, making and remaking links so that the necklace is as perfect and fault free as I can get it. I usually don't spend too long dwelling on minor mistakes. As long as it's nothing that's going to compromise the design or function I simply move on and learn for next time I make something. I actually used a chain making method that I haven't used for about 3 or 4 years, where the wire is wrapped around the link next to each bead. It's a really time consuming method and can be rather painful and frustrating. But somehow I didn't care how long it took or how much wire I wasted redoing it until it was as perfect as I could get it. It's nice to have that kind of love for the craft again, rather than being too business minded.

Stratford and lucky stars

Well, I just got back from Stratford (the Upon-Avon variety). If you didn't know, Stratford is the little town where Shakespeare lived. It has a picturesque river running through it and tons of old old Shakespeare-esque buildings lining the streets, including strangely enough Shakespeare's house. I've been to the town millions of times but somehow I've never managed to actually visit the house, probably something to do with how creepy it feels just standing across the street looking at it.

My new found urge to knit and crochet means that I'm now on the hunt for wool and needles and everything else. Being a small town you'd expect Stratford to be full of strange shops that you wouldn't find everywhere else. It's actually quite weird to walk down a shopping street now, there are so many vacant units because of the current economic situation. It's no wonder online retail is taking off, it seems like it's helped to kill the stores, but the stores' demise has only helped make it stronger as we have no option but to shop online. I can't even seem to find somewhere to go to buy wool to make amigurumi zombies.
Speaking of which I ordered a copy of Creepy Cute Crochet by Christen Haden which I hoped would help me get off the ground with crocheting. I was kinda disappointed to find that there's no guide for beginners for crocheting, you actually have to buy some other book with techniques for beginners before you can start using this book. So I guess I'll be cruising YouTube and other places for some tutorials but I suppose the book will be an incentive to keep pushing forward with learning. I'm famous for my lack of drive, I can pick something up and just drop it when it becomes too challenging or too monotonous only to pick it up months later.

To keep myself occupied while I wait to perfect crochet I've been churning out origami stars which are stupidly simple to make but kind of really addictive. I'm not great at it yet, but as they say practise makes perfect. They'd be perfect as little free gifts to send with Etsy sales, although maybe not these ones I made out of misprints and the Lego catalogue!

Blogging!

It's so easy to spend hours and hours reading over the blogs of complete strangers. If you know me, you'll know I love to make things, especially jewellery but more recently anything at all "crafty". Notice the " around that word? It always somehow conjures up images of old ladies, or tabletop sales in smelly old churches where people are selling doilies and bookmarks made of lace clippings. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just that it's not an image I'd necessarily like to be associated with. So what's going on? Crafting has become fashionable again! Maybe that's in my own little world, maybe you're reading this and your jaw is dropping to the floor, because it's just not the same as drinking binges or... something else that is the thing to do right now. I digress. You'll probably notice that will happen a lot, it's like a talent of mine or something. Anyway, how is crafting suddenly cool? Well, people have started to throw a few more things into the mix...

Sackboy Amigurumi anyone?
For those of you living under a rock Sackboy is something of a Sony icon, being the foundation of the uber-fun game Little Big Planet. Which funnily enough is like crafting for gamergeeks, you create your own levels out of materials so that they look like they have been made from random bits of junk from around your house. It's hard to explain, I guess you have to play it to understand. This little guy below was found in RugRats at Etsy but you can pretty much find Sackboys everywhere at Etsy.


I told you I'd manage to wander off-point. Reading crafter blogs is even more fun than just reading any old blog because you get to pick up new techniques, find inspiration to do something different or just oooh and aaah at the things people are making and doing. This is exactly how I stumbled across the technique for making glass tile pendants, which is my latest obsession. The first crafty blog I ever read was Kawaii~neh, a blog by a girl in Malaysia who is to be fair more obsessed with Tokidoki bags than me, which is rather impressive. Glass tile pendants are pretty common on Etsy alongside scrabble tile pendants, and are usually decorated with Japanese floral patterns. The girl at Kawaii~neh (still not too sure of her name) did a twist on this and cut up little Japanese cartoon characters to make something that I'd never seen done before. So I decided to take inspiration and make my own.

I'm obsessed with all things cute, especially from the center of cute - Japan. Of course this means that I find in my possession a small mountain of cute cartoon memo pads, especially from San-X which is a branch of the company that is responsible for our favourite Kitty-chan, Hello Kitty. It was only natural that I made good use of the resources at my disposal.

On another note it's a brand new year give or take a couple of weeks and everyone's out making their new years resolutions. But this year I decided to try something a little different, instead of just doing something new to improve myself because it's a new year, I'm going to do something new just to improve myself. Because it's always good to have improvement in your life. Whilst having nosey-time around various blogs, I found something that really spoke to me. It was a piece of advice from someone I'd never heard of, but still:
It's almost like in that little bit of text, there's not a single wasted word, not a single misplaced comma, like poetry, aaaaahhhh it's good. It's advice about blogging. But it's kinda true to everyday life too. Apart from the explaining to one person you respect thing, because I only know so many people, and I think it would become annoying if I had to re-explain over and over wouldn't it? Sound advice.

It's been a while.

It really has been a while hasn't it? August was quite a few months ago wasn't it? Well, what's happened since then? No more cookie adventures that's for sure, there's a box of pre-mix shortbread sitting dormant in the cupboard somewhere, but I can't seem to lift my fingers to bake anything. I have all these different flavourings I wanted to try too... like is strawberry shortcake an actual possibility? We shall find out one day. But for now the culinary obsession is bento. I now find myself in possession of 3 bento boxes, 1 octopus hot dog shaper, 1 sushi rice block shaper, several pairs of kawaii chopsticks, 1 packet of sushi rice, mirin (!!), mini hot dogs and sake. Although, the sake's not mine. I shall thieve some nonetheless. Pictures to follow. It sounds like it might be messy.

What else have I been up to? Well, I am now engaged actually, as of 22nd October. *Big cheesy grin*. He's everything I ever wanted. Since I was 17. Very much. Love.

I have mastered the art of glass tile aanraku bail crafty pendant fun, which is really making my day, since it's so very straight lines and symmetry, which if you know me you'll know is the basis of my existence. Or something like that. Only thing is, it's rather 'spensive, so I'm currently draining my bank account for glass pendant fundings....

It's really late... zzz... 'til next time...