How was your week? I hope it was good. This week, I did find the time to tackle that pile of clothes that needed fixing. Among other things, I altered this tank dress for my daughter. The armholes were too big, the neckline was too wide and the skirt was too long.
I took in the shoulder seams and side seams of the top and shortened the skirt by 7cm. To salvage the too wide neckline, I sewed an inverted pleat like the one I did for my Sorbetto tank. There's something strange about this tank dress. Only the front neckline was too wide. After I folded 6 cm of fabric in the pleat, the front neckline is now the same width as the back. Apologies for the photo below, I'm not sure why it turned out so grainy. Isn't her mustard-coloured belt so cute with the heart-shaped buckle and holes?
This week, we installed a new cooker hood and hobb. My old hood and hobb retired after 21 years. My new hobb has 3 gas rings instead of 2, which would help me to multi-task when cooking.
The cooker hood and hobb is in what we call our "wet kitchen", which is at the back of the house, outside the house actually. We have a "dry kitchen" inside the house. The dry kitchen is where we have our refrigerator, oven and kitchen cupboards. I am very fortunate to have enough space at home for a separate wet kitchen for cooking. You see, Asian cooking involves a great deal of frying, which gives off a lot of oil vapour and smell and if you cook in the kitchen, in time all the kitchen cupboards, fridge, oven, everything will become oily and sticky. My wet kitchen is outdoors, so the oil and smell does not permeate the rest of the house. The piece of aluminium foil that we have stuck onto the wall behind the hobb is also to minimise having to soap the wall each time after cooking.
Another good thing this week was having steamboat for dinner mid-week, which I like because it is healthy and easy (meaning that I do not have to cook). Essentially what we do is to prepare a pot of stock, add whatever we want, wait for everything to cook, then eat. Seriously, it couldn't be easier. We don't even add any seasoning, except for a few drops of sesame oil to the soup. We eat steamboat with chilli sauce, ginger garlic or soya sauce dip. We added fishballs, chickenballs, assorted pieces of yong taufu (different types of tofu stuffed with fish paste), minced chicken and vegetables dumplings, siow pai chye (a green leafy vegetable) and some Korean instant udon. I didn't have to prepare anything. Everything was bought ready-made from the nearby wet market.
And today I indulged in a fresh doughnut from Carrefour for tea. I dusted my doughnut with extra icing sugar :) It tasted great with a cup of Milo. This is the life! Hope you and I will have another good week ahead!
Great job on the dress, and the belt is lovely. Also your hob looks wonderful - how nice to have a new one. I have used an overlocker foot on my machine as you advised and it worked out very well. Thanks so much!
ReplyDeleteThe dress looks great - nice work! My daughter & I have been discovering this, too - how it fits is so important.
ReplyDeleteI love hearing about your outdoor kitchen, it's so different than life here. :)
That was great, now I know what a steamboat is and it looks so very very good. I don´t care so much about healthy food, if it is so, then it´s a bonus, but I love delicious tasty food and a steamboat must be the best of all with it´s healthy and delicous side.
ReplyDeleteAnd what a brilliant idea with the 2 kitchens, wish we would have them here, too. Bavarian food or German food is also often made with lots of oil and smells and all this things. Having had certain meals make our kitchen often still smell for several days. If only our weather would be warm enough I would instantly urge my husband to build an outdoor-kitchen, too. But unfortunately the fact is, the more it´s getting cold outside, the more we are eating 'smelling' food. Happy, happy You!