easter tea and dress patterns

My daughter and I managed to squeeze in one more day out before her new school semester started again this week. We went back to TCC for tea.

We had the tea set. There were 2 types of scones, golden raisins and choclate chips. Because it was easter, chocolate eggs were also included in the set. They looked too good to eat, but of course we ate them. The coffee was good. After all, they are The Coffee Connoisseur :)

After that we walked around and bought cardigans  at New Look. Mine's oatmeal-coloured and hers is sort of deep salmon? I wouldn't have wandered into that shop if I hadn't been with my daughter. It's nice to have my very own cute girlfriend to go shopping with. Someone to look at girl stuff together, and ooh and aah over cute stationery, nail polish and hairbows. You know, having kids gives me a chance to re-live my younger days :)

I was busy last week, so I hardly got any kntting done. Now I'm hoping to catch up with my knitting and do some sewing as well. Here are some sewing patterns that I have recently added to my collection. I should stop collecting sewing patterns until I've sewed up a storm.

This pic above shows 3 dresses sewn from the same pattern and styled in different ways. I like how it can be dressed up or down with a change of shoes and accessories.

I like these dresses above, they look appropriate for work. Plus, they are slip on dresses, no zippers involved. I am also drawn to that huge bow tunic, although I'm not bold enough to wear such a big bow.

The 2 dresses in the top row of the pic above are also work appropriate and seem easy to sew. I do however, have a slight reservation about the gathers on the dress on the left. The 2 dresses below look very comfortable and wearable. In the right fabric, I think they might look work appropriate too.

bento

My daughter made bento for dinner tonight. This is her bento. The colourful teeny tiny boxes are from Daiso.

1 strawberries, mesclun salad with grapes

2 yakitori chicken balls, mashed egg and carrot mayo-mustard salad

3 rice with plum flakes

4 chicken with garlic-ginger dip, more salad with strawberries

This is her brother's bento. She ran out of colourful boxes so she used a white plastic food box. It is less photogenic than its colourful counterparts.

To keep the food separate, she used aluminiun liners and thick cupcake liners from Daiso. We like the kitchen, baking and crockery section at Daiso.

 

I made the garlic-ginger dip for the chicken, by modifying this recipe with ingredients that I had, and blending them with my Bamix. I am noting down my ingredients here for future reference.
2 pieces of old ginger, chopped (each about 3 inches long)
1/2 garlic bulb
50 ml sesame oil
2 Tbsp canola oil
2 Tbsp mirin
1 tsp salt
This was enough to make a generous serving, for 8 people. So we have a bowl of this dip leftover in the fridge for dinner some other time. It tasted as good as the ginger dip for the Samsui chicken at Soup Restaurant. Yum!

Every Day Dress No 14

I finally completed the last item on this list of things I wanted to do. 

Pattern: Dress no.14 from the Every Day book. This is the 3rd pattern I've sewed from this book. This is how I wore it when I went for late night dessert at Liang Seah Street.

As you can see from the photo below, I left out the zipper so it's a pull on dress. The part of the dress I like best is the hand-sewing I did on the inside. I hand-sewed the bias tape at the armhole on the inside of the dress, hand-tacked down the facing and hemmed the skirt by hand as well.

projects roundup

Thought it's time for a round-up of my wips. Started sewing my dress. This will take some time as I am having a busy week. So I am sewing this one little seam at a time, in between doing everything else.

Abyssal is done. Undecided whether to block it. Maybe just block the edging? I don't want to lose the springy-ness of the garter stitches :)

Back of Capri is done. Knitting the left front now. This is also going slowly. Capri is the project I knit in between blog reading.

Library books. Luxury bedtime browsing. There's a cute cardi pattern in Louisa Harding's, Knitting Little Luxuries.

I have another wip in my office. I have one sleeve left of that sweater to knit. That one is also taking forever :) There's another new scarf that I just started but I will probably unravel it because it is a self striping yarn and it is pooling weirdly at both ends of the scarf. I am short of a project to knit on my daily train ride home. That was Abyssal because it was small and hence, portable and really mindless knitting too. Hmm ... looks like it's time to start another project, right?

girls afternoon out that ended in fabric

My daughter and I spent an afternoon exploring Arab Street and Haji Lane. Pictured below is Arab Street. Haji Lane is much more quaint as the road is incredibly narrow but I forgot to take a photo.

We started with a bite at Fika, a Swedish restaurant.

Love the all-white decor (note the scallopy shelf edges) above, and the light fixtures and blackboard, below.

Not sure why, but we had dessert first, in the form of a slice of cheesecake, which we shared.

Followed by mushroom and tomato cream soup.

Finished off with grilled chicken.

Haji Lane is full of small shops, mostly clothes and cute, crafty knick knacks. Things were on the pricey side though, but we managed to find this pastel belt at a good price.

Arab Street, as usual, was a treasure trove of pretty fabrics, trims and beads. We were very restrained and brought home only 2 fabrics from Rania Silk House. The blue floral print is from the 30's Collection by Atsuko Matsuyama and looks sort of Cath Kidston-ish. It is likely to become a pair of shorts. The cat fabric is from Sevenberry, also made in Japan, and is earmarked for some kind of cropped top. Both are for my daughter.