A New Optimistic Start - Kids Style

[Designed by my brother in law, Andrew Cheung]

Did everyone have a good holiday? I'm finally back to blogging and to work as well. Everything is back to normal, which is a good thing. Also, my health should be back to normal soon. You've may have gathered that my blogging and crafting went downhill from March/April last year. Well, I've been diagnosed with an overactive thyroid, which explains the unsual weight loss and tiredness. I'm starting to feel better now, my mind is also less muddled. Hee Hee Hee. Hopefully I'll be back to my healthy and organised pre-illness-self soon. The only down side is that I have to watch what I eat now.

What have I been up to during the break? Well;

• spending a lot of time with my Rascal and her friends,


• making gingerbread people,

• visting the Childhood Museum again (I love that place),

[my hubs being silly at the Childhood Museum and lots of 1960s Sindys below]

• eating lots of roast dinners, we also had two steam boat and several dim sum meals,


• yarn sale shopping (I will blog about that later)


• and sleeping really

There is so much to blog about this month, I want to show you the lovely christmas presents we received and a few that I made this year. This will have to wait to the next blog posts. :)

Have a good week everyone!

Holiday

I'll be taking a short break from blogging for the holidays to catch up with family, friends, sleeping and knitting. Hope you will all have a lovely Christmas and a great New Year.

I will see you all in the New Year!

Treats

We had another busy weekend. We went to visit our friends the Edwards, and more importantly their lovely baby J on Saturday. They are in the middle of moving house, so Jaxs helped move some of the large and bulky furniture. I helped look after the baby and carry some lighter items.

On Sunday, we helped move some of the large furniture and then we visited Gracie who invited us to her pre-Christmas Roast. Boy, did we have great meal and I was so stuffed afterwards. Alex's (Gracie's other half) made a great black forest trifle and Gracie made a great Oreo cheesecake. Thanks darlings for a great meal!!

[A non-alcoholic version especially made for my Rascal]

As promised, I have posted some photos of the goodies we bought at the Wemake Craft Fair:

Here is the colouring pencil holder we brought from Florence. Isn't is lovely.


Here, my Rascal is using the colouring pencils to draw pictures inside the Christmas cards for her friends.

A card Sculpture bought from Cool4Cats. The are a huge King Kong climbing up a tower sculpture at the show, my Rascal absolutely loves it.

A pretty crocheted flower hair band.

I have two more days of work then I break up for Christmas, yay! Anyway, have a great week everyone.

One of my Favourite Places: Greenwich

Did everyone have a nice weekend? I spent Saturday shopping and eating dim sum with my parents followed by Chinese Steam boat at friends in the evening. On Sunday I met up with Kyoko at Greenwich and then spent some time relaxing at her place. My daughter was a bit scared of Kumo and Wata (Kyoko's cats) at first, but she liked them afterwards.


Talking about Greenwich, this is one of my favourite places. I use to go to Chinese School on Sundays where I met Gracie and Big Viv. I got my first job there as a group leader at a summer camp for children. I actually got paid to go ice skating, swimming and on day trips with children, how cool was that.
Greenwich University (Trinity College of Music) Greenwich Park in the background.

Jax and I use to go on dates around Greenwich and we take our Rascal with us now (she loves cycling there). For some reason we like to go through the under river footpath.

Greenwich is also a lovely place to knit for all seasons. In the summer, I like to knit in the park and in the winter I like to knit in one of the cafes (drinking a soy decaf latte).

Not forgetting the lovely Greenwich market that sell lovely handmade goodies. Hee Hee Hee, I sound like a tour guide (I did get an A* in Travel and Tourism GCSE). I haven't forgotten to blog about what we bought at the craft fair, I just need to take some photos in day light. :) Have a lovely week everyone.

Wemake Craft Fair and I made a Purse

Most of the Jubilee Line was working this weekend and it made our trip to the Wemake Craft Fair, at Chelsea Town Hall, so much easier. Gracie and I decided not to sell any cakes this year, due to personal reasons, so I took my Rascal there to do some shopping instead. The hall is so grand, people must have thought we were a bit strange; I couldn't help taking a photos of the ceiling and my daughter decided to take photos of people's shoes (yes, she did the same thing last year).


We stopped by at Jo, Helen and Florence's stand first and they kindly let us put our bulky coats behind the stand. We also met Lisa there too. Before going to the fair, I've been chatting non-stop to my daughter about them. How they all make lovely accessories for children and the home. So she was a little shy when she met them.


The Make Lounge had a Christmas Decoration workshop on the stage, so my daughter (with some help from moi) made a star out of felt and buttons.

We had such a good day and we bought a few things there this time. My daughter has taken her goodies to show my Inlaws so I will blog about this later with some photos (one of them I will need to make). I was so inspired by what I saw, that I felt a bit bad for taking so long to make the purse that I was working on for a good few weeks now. But, I had some sewing time this afternoon and finished it off and here it is:

Pattern: Kyoko's Cotton and Cloud Round Cosmetic Purse

A Cowl

Hello, I'm back in Blogland. I've been very busy lately. I've finished knitting two Christmas presents, yay! I still need to make one more and then complement them with other gifts. I've also met up with a childhood friend from Australia, could you believe that we have not seen each other in person for 23 years. So there was a lot to catch up on.

As the weather has turned colder, I bought out the scarflette that I made when I started to knit again, which is just under two years ago. The button was getting a bit fiddley, so I turned it into a cowl the other day. It is so much easier to put on now, I just throw it over my head and it is still nice and warm.

Here is how I wear it:

Worn wrap around twice

Worn over the shoulders.

Wrapped around

Just thrown around the head.

I've only got 2 more weeks to the end of my ballroom class and it has been great. There will be an improver's class next year in January for 12 weeks. I'm not sure whether I should attend. What do you think?

London Bridge and the Paso Doble

Did everyone have a fun Halloween? Have a look here to see what we got up to.

Anyway, a few weeks ago my husband twisted his foot and damaging some ligaments while getting out of bed. The poor guy was in a lot of pain, but I couldn't help laughing. I'm such a bad wife. Hee Hee Hee.....I did make it up by driving him to hospital and pushing him around in a wheelchair. He was on crutches for a week and half, but he can walk (very slowly) now.

Last week hubs wanted to rest and some peace and quiet so I took our Rascal on a bus trip to London Bridge. It may appear to be place for business people and tourist, but there are many things for children to do there. We went to the the Fashion and Textile Museum first which is the bright pink and orange building along Bermondsey Street. There we saw the Foael and Tuffin made in England exhibition.

Don't you love the swinging 60s. I recognised a few clothes that were similar to what my Mum use to wear. We also so some cool fabrics, knitting accessories and sketch books:

They also have knitting workshops there too, but they are quite expensive.

We then popped over to More London, Hayes Galleria (see photo below) and the Unicorn Theatre, which is a theatre specifically for children. The model of the unicorn by the entrance is amazing. We didn't buy any tickets to see a show, but will definitely do so one day as it is so close to where we live.

A short update from my ballroom dance class: we learnt the basic steps of the Paso Doble. It is such and dramatic dance and a bit embarrassing to do.....Hee Hee Hee......but I think my dance partner and I made a good first attempt.

and no, he didn't drag me across the floor like John Sergent......so funny....photo from Strictly Come Dancing

I don't believe that we have covered the basic steps of the five ballroom dances; Slow Waltz, Foxtrot, Quick Step Viennese Waltz, Tango and the five Latin dances; Cha Cha Cha, Rumba, Samba, Jive and Paso Doble. We have a break from dancing next week and then we will be adding more footwork/steps to the dances.....I can't wait!