Though our island wasn’t affected in any way by the Asian tsunami back in 2004, the event hit home closer than we could have expected. My family and friends either knew someone or knew someone who knew someone who was in Phuket when the mighty tidal waves crashed through the shores.

Recently some parts of Asia have been badly hit by a series of disasters. Hub knows a Filipino contractor working in Singapore whose brother’s family and sister’s family are badly affected by the flooding in the Philippines. Their homes are gone. His wife and kid who are living in another part of Philippines are safe and well.

We want to help him raise funds and have started a donation drive among family/friends/their circle of friends. I made bracelets during the weekend to go alongside with the fund-raising…hoping to raise whatever amount we can. We are also accepting clothing.

Since I started working on my Exposing Garlic project, I’ve accumulated a little pile of garlic paper (aka outer peel). One day I wanted very much to know what would happen if it came under a paper puncher. Being curious also if it can withstand like a nori sheet would. And as you’ve already seen from my previous post, it turns out not too bad at all!

So what can you do with the punch-outs? You can glue them onto all sorts of paper crafts. Or maybe as confectti? Just a thought. No one will know that they came from garlic :-)

I’ll have more punching scenes to show in time to come. Watch out this space!!

More:
Sweet pink doily
Doily + brown paper package

The illustrations of Toronto-based artist Afsaneh are so sweet and adorable. And they are housed in her shops JooJoo + Persian Garden. Then equally sweet are the polymer clay figurines and jewelry she makes, many which are based on her drawings and these are housed in JooJoo Land. In Afsaneh’s new 2010 calendar cards, the sweet drawing of 2 hugging penguins for February makes me want to hug someone (I know) too!

Btw have you started your Christmas shopping? I started mine officially last month (unofficially almost any other day :D) and am restricting myself to buying handmade as much as possible. I’ll be scouting around for great buys and will jot them under chapter “Great buy”. If you like to recommend something or direct me to a shop, just let me know!

I bought leather lace thinking that I should try knotting something wearable, but procrastination slowly set in because I wasn’t sure if the knotwork would turn out nice. This is a 3.5mm thick leather strip and its squarish perimeter doesn’t make it suitable to even begin to consider jewelry knotting. Normal people knot with thinner and roundish cords.

Well, I don’t know what came over me (maybe work stress…) that I finally had the courage to pull out the leather and do a clover knot, as a start.

I’ve shown the clover knot here before but haven’t taken the opportunity to elaborate more. This 2-leaf clover looks like a bow tie, doesn’t it? But of course it’s not. It’s more secure than a bow once the 2 loops are pulled to their optimum tightness. Like most of the knots in Chinese knotting, its origins go way back to ancient imperial times.

I’ve made the clover into a pendant (adding a pink brocade near the clasp) and am happily wearing it whenever it matches my outfit.

That’s not all, having conquered the clover, I was UNSTOPPABLE and carried on to knot a 6 petal brocade!

I’m liking these knotty results VERY much.

These funny totes by All Ordinaries not only has that HALF or Full emphasis but an additional pair of handles at mid point to play along. The more I look at them the more they make me smile.

Surprise!!! I hope you are :-) Will show you how I did it next week. Enjoy the weekend!

Hands down, I give my award for the kawaii*est-looking cable winder to these little women in Select Penguin, one of my favourite shops at Rakuten.

And btw, I hope you’ll check out the newest matryoshka in Micasita House. She’s as sweet as can be!