Notre Dame Cushion

This past Boxing Day (December 26th, 2014) was my sister’s birthday. It was her first birthday as a college student. I decided to make a special gift for her — a crocheted cushion with her school logo and her name.

The front of the cushion with the University of Notre Dame logo.

The back of the cushion with my sister’s name, Grace Chow. No one should be able to steal it! 🙂

Close up

I had worked on different crochet projects before, such as amigurumi (i.e. stuffed animals/dolls), hats, scarfs, blankets, afghans, etc. However, this was the first time I had ever incorporated tapestry crochet in my work. It took me a while to figure out how to do the reverse rows without using my left hand and I did miscalculate the dimension when I carried the extra yarn and had to make some adjustments. Although the result was not perfect (i.e. notice that the ND logo was taller than the original), I was satisfied with my creation, my learning experience, and the most important of all, my sister’s reaction. She was happy to add another ND item to her collection (yap! go Irish!). She planned to bring it with her to her dorm after winter break and joked that no one will be able to steal her cushion without getting caught (well, unless there is another Notre Dame student with the same name).  🙂

DIY Minion Costume

Ever since I posted my Halloween photos on Facebook, a lot of my friends had asked me where I got the idea of making the Minion costume. Well, to be honest, I didn’t plan to be a Minion until two days before Halloween.

My original plan (if this is what you call a plan) was to get whatever I could fit in from a store and claim it my Halloween Costume of 2014. A drive to Walmart and Target gave me a witch costume and a witch hat. All I needed was a witch broom and I would be all set for my first ever Halloween party at work. It never occurred to me that it could be such a pain to find a broom! A visit to another Walmart didn’t solve my problem and how Party City carried a variety of witch costumes but not a single broom (or not having enough brooms in stock?) was beyond me. My mother suggested to buy a real broom but the selections I found in the retail stores looked too modern to me (and by the way who would want to carry a real broom to work?!). Apparently it wasn’t as easy as I thought to complete a costume of an ordinary, classic witch these days.

While I kept searching for a broom (or pondering whether I should make my own), I started to look at the alternatives. My younger sister is a fan of DIY costumes but she was far away in college, probably busy making her own. I like to be creative but when it comes to costume, I just lack the talent. So the search dragged on until I came across a Halloween throwback photo from my high school classmate on Facebook two days before the big day.

I immediately fell in love with the idea of being a Minion on Halloween!!

A quick Google search further reinforced my determination to be this cute character. I was grateful that there was a rich resource of DIY Minion costume readily available on the Internet. Of course, I was well aware of the fact that the first Despicable Me had already been out for four years but I was confident that none of my coworkers had ever worn a Minion costume at work in the past Halloweens–at least I didn’t see anyone wore one in the photos they took in the last four years when I hadn’t joined the organization.

As a token of my appreciation to the people who shared their DIY Minion costumes on the Internet (BIG thanks to you guys for inspirations) and my friends who LIKE and/or inquired about my creation, I will demonstrate how my Minion costume was made in one evening.

Materials: Overall (I bought mine in the men’s section at Walmart because I couldn’t fit into any of the junior sizes and the women’s section didn’t offer overall), a yellow long sleeve shirt, staples, book strap, two Ball Mason jar lids, tape, a stripe of aluminum foil, a pair of yellow socks, cure pipe, black shoes, black gloves

Instructions:

Instead of cutting and sewing black felt onto the front pocket to make the Minion logo or ironing on a premade one, I opted for a simple paper version fixed with tapes. First, I Google searched “jeans close up” and found a blue background that matched the color and pattern (as closely as possible) of my overall.  Then, I searched for the Minion logo, enlarged it and printed it (the black part as shown in the following images). I darkened the logo with a black marker to increase the contrast. I then cut out the logo and glued it to the blue background.

Tape the logo onto a blue paper/printout

Minion logo

Tape the logo to the front pocket

Staple the corners of the logo

It took me a while to figure out how to make the head accessory. My original thought was to buy a beanie. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a yellow beanie in any of the stores (Walmart, Target, Dollar Tree, Dollar General, K-mart, Sears, etc.). I also didn’t have any luck in finding a yellow headband. During my trip to Dollar Tree, I saw that they were selling winter socks and there were a few yellow pairs that seemed to fit my need. Since I only had one evening to make the costume, the pair of yellow socks was my best option. All I had to do was sew the ends of the socks together to form a headband and then poked some cure pipes through the socks to make the hair.

Winter socks

Sew the ends together to form a headband

Cut a cure pipe into four pieces

Stick the cure pipes through the socks/headband

In my opinion, the goggles were the most interesting part. I took two Ball Mason jar lids (the center part could be separated) and taped them together. I then used a thin strip of aluminum foil to cover the tape. Then I tied a book strap to the goggles. The good thing about the book strap I bought from Walmart was that it had velcro so I could adjust the length.

 

 

Tape the lids together

Wrap a piece of aluminum foil to cover the tape

Book straps from Walmart.

 

Tie a book strap to the lid

Finished goggles

Velcro allows length adjustment

The last step, of course, was to try on my DIY Minion costume and wear it to work on Halloween!

I had a good time at work on Halloween. It was my very first time going in to work dressed in Halloween costume. Of course I didn’t wear the headband and the goggles when I drove to work…in case I got pulled over…LOL.

TweeCraft

Ladies and Gentlemen!

Check out TweeCraft (http://www.etsy.com/shop/TweeCraft)!!!

My sister recently opened a shop on Etsy to share her passion for craft. As of today, she has four polymer clay charms/keychains/necklace/earrings in the shop.

There are still more to come! Stay tune and we would greatly appreciate your support!

 

 

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 7,400 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Amigurumi – Graduate

I know it has well passed the time of graduation for most students. However, it is never too late to share the gift I made for my brother, Eric, to celebrate his graduating from high school several months ago.

Eric was the Valedictorian of his class. Needless to say, our family was extremely excited about his graduation. Every one of us had spent months to deliberate over the graduation gifts. I wanted to make something special—something that shows my excitement and appreciation for his achievements. I decided to crochet a doll for Eric—a doll that represents him. It was the first time I had ever handmade a gift for him. (It’s also the first time I had ever handmade a gift for a boy. Ha ha!)

In the eye of the beholder (me!), the doll is chubby and cute. In my brother’s opinion, my creation became the following…

His first reaction upon receiving the doll: “My hair looks like this!?”

A moment later, he continued, “Dude, my head is a ball of rice!”

@_@

Well, there is nothing I can do about the “rice ball” head!

Side view

The back

Side view

Today, this prominent “rice-ball head” graduate stood on my brother’s bookshelf. I guess my gift is not that bad after all.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

At the age of 24, unmarried, and without child, it never occurred to me that I would read a parenting book. Yet, when a tremendous amount of media attention was paid to Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, a parenting book by Amy Chau, my curiosity started to itch. My mother, who was desperate to show my siblings and me her (what she thought) less-restricted-than-other-Chinese-parents parenting, nagged me to read the book. I picked it up at the local library and spent the following days on and off on the “story of how Chinese parents are better at raising kids than Western ones.”

Frankly, I was totally turned off by the way Chau was raised and how she raised her two daughters. I admitted that Chau and her daughters, who seemed to have achieved success in almost every aspect of life, enjoyed way more applauses and compliments than most of their peers. However, I could not agree with such pressure-cooker parenting and, in many situations, Chau’s humiliating her children in public was not appropriate. She emphasized in her book that her parents were even tougher on kids when she was a child. It struck me that Chau’s parenting method was likely a reflection of her unhappiness in her childhood. She had unconsciously unleashed that go-through-what-I-went-through feeling on her own children.

Inarguably, Chau was successful in making her daughters one of the most competitive students/musicians among their peers. Yet, I was concerned about their emotional health, especially the emotion of her younger daughter, that seemed faltering as Chau described toward the end of her story.

When it comes to parenting, there probably isn’t a right or wrong method. What is most important is that parenting has to be adjusted and adapted for individual—every child is different and thus a cookie-cutter parenting method is unlikely to work for everyone. Chau apparently overlooked this important point in her quest for becoming the “tiger mother.”

I am not in the position to criticize how Chau raised her daughters. I just hope Chau’s daughters will not do the same to their own children.

Sister

An unexpected death of a 21-year-old art student who had given birth to a stillborn baby not long before her death; a series of open letters from her beloved sister who tried hard to identify the murderer when everyone else believed it was a suicide; and, a melodramatic twist in the end constructed Rosamund Lupton’s debut novel, Sister.

Everything began when Beatrice, the protagonist, received a phone call from her mother telling her that her sister, Tess, had been missing for four days. Beatrice, who had been maintaining a close relationship with Tess despite a five-year age difference, flew from New York to London without hesitation. Tess’ missing was especially worrisome to Beatrice who thought Tess’ pregnancy would be due in three weeks. Clinging to the hope that Tess would be back anytime, Beatrice decided to stay in London in Tess’ apartment. She later learned that Tess had already given birth, unfortunately, to a stillborn. It was yet more shattering when the police found Tess’ body in a deserted lavatory in a park.

Beatrice could not bear a life without Tess. She firmly believed that Tess was murdered although the postmortem report concluded that Tess committed suicide. Determined to identify the murderer, Beatrice refused to return to New York—a decision that eventually cost her a high paying job and her relationship with her fiancé, Todd. Through her reminiscence in her letters to Tess and her imaginary interactions with an invented lawyer, Beatrice connected her past and present and revealed her real self. She realized that it was her insecurity that pushed her away from her family. It was her need for safety that made her choose a job and a relationship that offered stability rather than excitement. Her newfound friendship with Tess’ friend, Kasia, led her to realize that she was actually the one who was being looked after by her younger sister, not the other way around. Living in Tess’ apartment, wearing Tess’ clothes, working Tess’ job, becoming friend with Tess’ friends, and eventually experiencing a death that resembled that of Tess, Beatrice reflected that, after all, her real self was not as different from Tess as she had thought.

As I finished reading the novel, I could not help but envied the close relationship between Beatrice and Tess. I have a sister eight years my junior. Similar to Beatrice and Tess, we share minutiae of our life with each other. Still, I wonder if I know my sister as well as Beatrice did Tess to the point that I can be certain whether she would have taken specific action when all evidences seem to be counting against it. I admire the love between Beatrice and Tess as much as I do Lupton’s ability to convey it through her writing. For a debut novel, I think Lupton did a good job capturing and keeping readers’ attention all along although her work might not suit people who like action-packed stories.

One lesson I learned from the novel is that we should not judge people based on their look. I know it sounds like a cliché but it is very true. Often times, we made mistakes because we misjudged people. In Sister, Beatrice didn’t take Kasia seriously in the beginning because Kasia looked like a prostitute with her cheap clothes and makeup. The police didn’t believe Tess was murdered because they stereotyped a young art student who had an illegitimate child to be a drug taker. Beatrice early on dismissed her suspect of Dr. Saunders, who turned out to be the murderer, because he was too charming and handsome to be a criminal. These misjudgments, along with numerous others in the novel, led Beatrice and even us readers to incorrect assumptions.

It was interesting to see how Beatrice’s suspicions went from one person or subject to the next and how the ending took her (and many readers) by surprise. The only complaint I have about the novel is that the ending seemed a little too abrupt and it left me a feeling that the author was trying to cramp most of Beatrice’s reflections and/or realizations in the last few pages. Nonetheless, it was a good book and I would like to thank Random House’s Read It Forward program for sending me this nice piece of work.

Amigurumi – Food

With my newfound addiction to making amigurumi, there was no doubt I didn’t pass the opportunity Father’s Day had to offer. I decided to make a collection of amigurumi with a unifying theme. I had considered a number of themes including farm animals, family, Chinese zodiac, playground, etc. and ended up dropping most of them except food mainly because I couldn’t find enough patterns to make a collection. Besides, I didn’t want to use any animal theme because I had already given an amigurumi elephant and hippo to my father on his birthday. I wanted something new.

Food, mainly desserts and pastries, came through for a couple reasons. First, there were tremendous amount of patterns on different kinds of food online. It not only made my job easier but also offered seemingly unlimited options. Second, my father loves food and he always says we live to eat. I don’t make enough to buy him a lot of fine cuisine and a denture for him to eat. Why not make a bunch of nice-looking foods, albeit fake, to make him happy?

Once I had decided on a theme, I started my quest for patterns. With a project this size, I didn’t wait until after Mother’s Day to begin. Indeed, I started the project in February to be sure I would have enough time to finish by early June. In addition, I spent around $30 on yarn to make sure it will be a colorful gift. In the same vein, I purposely include a variety of food, such as sushi, hamburger, pies, desserts, pastries, candies, and fruits.

Pie

Sushi

Fish

As I was busy crocheting, I thought about the presentation of my gift. Should I make a huge plate to hold everything? Or create a multi-layer lunch box and organize the foods by category? I consulted my younger sister and she suggested pastry boxes. I immediately liked the idea. Since none of the pastry boxes I found at my local retailers and grocery stores suited my need, I decided to make my own out of paper bags and clear plastic wrapping papers. With Elmer’s glue, a pencil, a ruler, and a pair of scissors, I constructed three pastry boxes. I also made a sushi box out of cardboard and construction papers. Nothing was impossible.

Paper Bags

Pastry Box Almost Completed

Finished

This is by far the largest gift by count I have ever given to my father. I was a little embarrassed when I presented it to my father. All he said was “Woah!” He used two cardboard boxes to store my gift.

Amigurumi – Giraffe

It has been months since I last blogged. Not that I hadn’t had time to crochet or work on interesting projects; in fact, quite the contrary, I was making a number of amigurumi in the last few months. It was just that I was too occupied (or, frankly, too lazy) to blog about the progress. The couple of months before Mother’s and Father’s Days have always been my busiest time of the year. My siblings and I have been keeping the tradition of hand making gifts for our parents on their important dates. I don’t know exactly when we started it but my guess is that I probably hand made my first Mother’s and Father’s Days’ gifts in kindergarten and carried on the “tradition” with my younger siblings ever since. Now that I am 24, I believe I will keep doing it as long as I have the time and ideas for handmade gifts.

Back to the topic, I spent a huge chunk of time on crocheting amigurumi during the last few months. This year is busier than usual with my Valedictorian brother graduating from high school and my decision to crochet a little doll for him. Nevertheless, I had a lot of fun searching for and creating patterns and making the dolls. I promise I will share what I have done in this and my next couple posts.

Without further adieu, here comes my gift for Mother’s Day—an amigurumi giraffe. Its neck might be too short to look like a giraffe to you. Nonetheless, it is cute and my mother liked it. A friend of mine said it would make a perfect baby gift.

I made this amigurumi giraffe based on an incomplete Japanese pattern. I slightly modified the pattern and translated it to English. I am sharing the pattern here and I hope you like it. Please don’t hesitate to contact me or comment on my blog with any questions and suggestions.

Here is the pattern in PDF: Amigurumi Giraffe Pattern (English)

Amigurumi – Bunny

I should have posted some pictures of the very first amigurumi I made a long time ago. For some reason, I talked about the bunny in my last two posts about amigurumi but never shared any image of the product. My BAD! Now I finally remember it and have the time to do it, I would like to share with you my first amigurumi.

I chose to make a bunny for a few reasons. One, there was a tutorial available on YouTube by “cutesycrochet” that was easy to follow for a beginner. The instructor of the tutorial even taught us how to make glue-gun eyes that rival the ones you can buy from a craft store. Two, I intended to make a bunny for my father’s birthday because it is the Year of Rabbit. Three, I was born in the Year of Rabbit. (Oops, I sort of disclosed my age!)

I also made two flowers of different sizes to be stacked under the bunny. Again, I found the tutorials on YouTube.

For those of you who are interested in making your own bunny and flowers, here are the links to the tutorials I used for my own:

Amigurumi Blob Bunny Tutorial [Part 1 of 3]
Amigurumi Blob Bunny Tutorial [Part 2 of 3]
Amigurumi Blob Bunny Tutorial [Part 3 of 3]

How To Crochet Small Flower – Patons Pattern
How To Crochet Large Flower – Patons Pattern

Here are some images and video of my bunny and flowers:

I made a mistake by putting the wrong side out for the body.

With flowers

Flowers

The back of flowers

Stacked together