pinku

New baby piggie..and unrelated comment about dresses

It looks like we'll be getting a brand new baby piggie next week - well she'll be about a month old when we get her. The cute baby piggies I posted last month all turned out to be boys, so we couldn't take one. We were heartbroken. But of course there is a lot of piggie love for everyone.

Say hello!

We'll quarantine the new baby for a couple of weeks (keep her separate from Sugar) and start introducing them slowly in a neutral location (anywhere but Sugar's habitat). I hope they get along. Also during Golden Week we managed to set up a new habitat for Sugar and we've continually been making improvements. We'll also extend the habitat and make it longer when Shoogie's new friend arrives. All materials for the habitat were found at Daiso (100 yen shop) in Tachikawa and it all cost less than 3000 yen. A bargain considering much smaller cages are about 8000 yen.

The skateboard has since been removed and replaced with a flat wooden board as we were a bit worried that it might hurt Sugar's feet. She can easily jump up on the skateboard and at night she does very fast laps around her house. It's quite hilarious. We might have to try and film her one of these days.

UNRELATED COMMENT ABOUT DRESSES

In a completely unrelated note, I have been thinking about creating a Flickr Group where people can share photos of their dresses - vintage, new, formal, etc. I love dresses and would love to see what dresses you have in your closet, why you like/hate them, the history behind the dress, etc. Maybe we could swap dresses or something fun like that. What do you think? If I have time on the weekend I'll set it up and take photos of my dresses.

Ms Marigold saga

I had a great time with my brother. I was pretty depressed on the day he left. I tried to cheer myself up by eating wedges for lunch. It helped. I'm fine now though and have even more of a reason to visit London. I have photos but haven't gone through them yet. You can check out Chris's blog for a brief description of what we did while he was here.

So a couple of weeks ago after seeing the Ms Marigold pattern from Zephyr Style on Kris's blog I decided to knit it up in some Rowan Calmer that I had lying around. I bought the Calmer around Christmas last year and planned on knitting Tempting II, but it never eventuated. I had made a similar top and knitting all that stockinette stitch in the round again would make me go nuts. I've never knit with Calmer and didn't take into account just how stretchy the yarn is and after knitting more than halfway I realized it was going to be WAY TOO BIG. I started knitting the L-SIZE (38 inches) , had four balls of Calmer and was using size US 10 needles.

OH NO! I thought I could save it by ripping it to the bottom of the V, changing needles and putting in some waist shaping, but the problem was the bagginess in the top part....SO

I think that was last Wednesday night and I knew I needed to cast on straight away if I was going to maintain momentum. So I switched to US 8 needles and cast on for the M-SIZE (36 inch bust). After four days of crazy knitting, I now have a finished Ms Mari-brown and am wearing it as I type this post. It's not perfect and I'm thinking that I could have even knit the S-SIZE, but I really like the style and I'm happy with the way it turned out.

Sorry the photo is so dark - it really is hard to take a photo of dark knits at night in your bathroom!!

Pattern: Ms Marigold from Zephyr Style    Yarn: 4 balls of Rowan Calmer  Needles: US 8 for body and US 6 for ribbing and can't remember what size crochet needle I used for the frills.

I also added waist shaping to the body too.

This is a cute pattern and it works well with Calmer. I would say choose a smaller size than you normally are - the tighter the better with this pattern if you are using a stretchy yarn like Calmer.

Big adventure far from home

My big adventure far from home started when I was 17. I couldn't wait to leave and begin my new life in Japan as an exchange student. Today my little brother, Chris left Australia on his big adventure. He'll be doing a road trip around Europe for six weeks with two of his buddies and then he will look for work in London. Best thing about all of this is that he's coming to visit me first and he's actually ON the plane right now. I'm so excited. There's something super duper extra special about family visiting when you live so far from home. His plane lands at Narita Airport in two and a half hours - I've been watching the real time flight information updates.

Here he is at Brisbane Airport with his best friend Ben - Chris is on the left.

Here's another two people that will miss Chris when he's gone - my niece and nephew - Mia and Jack. My sister told me that they want to know whether Uncle Chris'll be back by Grade 3....cute.

I miss those crazy kids like crazy

purasutikku

It is great to read this article about some convenience stores in Japan trying to cut back on the usage of plastic bags. For anyone that lives in Japan or has visited at some point will know that BAKERIES are the absolute worst offenders. I actually can't stand to watch their bread packing antics - it's completely absurd and regularly makes me angry. If you bought two croissants, a curry bread and a loaf of fresh bread straight out of the oven, the two croissants would more than likely be bagged in plastic together because they are the same and this plastic bag will be taped shut, then the curry bread will be put in another plastic bag and taped shut then the loaf of bread will be put in a paper bag because the bread is still hot but the bakery will provide you with a rolled up plastic bag and tie to put your bread in once it cools down and then all of these go into another plastic bag. I actually feel heat rising to my cheeks while typing this description. We also have a close friend that is a baker at a major Japanese bakery and she told us that she has seen bakers being hit and punched for messing up a loaf of bread. Can you believe it - bakery abuse....but that's a whole different story.

One local chain of stores in Kichijoji called VIC has recently started charging for plastic bags and it's such a great idea. It'll make everyone think about whether a bag is really necessary. And I know that a lot of supermarkets encourage shoppers to bring their own bag with a point card system or even charge for plastic bags as well.

That being said Daz and I were only discussing yesterday about how much recycling we do in Japan - the city we live in provides us with a recycling calendar to remind us what to put out on what day - it's very necessary as it's a pretty complicated process. We separate cans, bottles, PET bottles, scrap paper, magazines, cardboard boxes, milk cartons, burnable and non-burnable trash. At work the recycling is even more complicated and we have signs everywhere and everyone is in charge of separating the rubbish from their own bin.

Another positive point regarding rubbish in Japan - our local park has NO rubbish bins and it's a very popular park for eating and drinking. They encourage everyone to take home their rubbish. At first we found this really inconvenient but now we think it's normal and the park is really clean. I don't think I've ever seen anyone litter.

This is one of Japan's interesting contradictions.

Happy Birthday Daz!

You rule!

Yesterday was Darin's birthday. I bought him a new ipod, which he has already named Roger. We celebrated all weekend with our friends at a picnic, at a drunken izakaya party, and in the park on the bridge. Thanks to all who came!! You'd think that some time during those festivities that we would have taken a photo, but we didn't. Here's one of darin skating at Nogawa Park (care of Andrew - thanks!).