pinku

In My Life

What a great weekend - summer is FINALLY here and we enjoyed a perfect day yesterday here in Kichijoji. I FINALLY got around to documenting a day in my life for Leslie's In My Life flickr group. Actually I kept forgetting to take photos all day, but we did manage to capture most of the fun.

Morning with our piggies

Noon at the kiddy pool/fountain

Afternoon with my good friend Bree

Evening eating the best summer dessert ever - kakigori (shaved ice with condensed milk)

You can see the rest of our photos from yesterday HERE!!! Hope you all had a good one!

Summer excitement

We are not going anywhere this summer like most of our friends!! Well we may go on a mini-vacay to Kyoto and Osaka, but we'll see. What's been going on around here - I'm still eating those black sesame seed puddings (yum!), we still have no television (that doesn't stop us from watching tv though), Martine's turtle, Gertrude is staying with us for the summer and our piggies are cuter than ever.

Edited to include this cute picture of Loretta lying over a cooling pack thing - we place it in their habitat to keep them cool. Sugar is lying close to it too!! Our piggies are so smart!

I also finally managed to pull out the sewing machine that I bought off Yahoo Auctions (which is Japan's equivalent of Ebay) for 1000 yen. It's kind of rubbish or maybe I just didn't set it up right. I dunno. But I did manage to complete a project from Generation T that I've been meaning to do for ages.

It was pretty easy to complete. My sewing sucked, but I blame it on the machine :)

It was late at night so I didn't bother to take fashion shots - might try to do that soon. It turned out ok - kinda cute.

Someone who knows how to sew WAY better than me is Stephanie from anti-factory. I received my new AntiFactory top on Sunday and have already worn it to work twice (actually I'm wearing it right now!!). It's so cute and it makes me feel happy at work. In a related story, the other week I got to meet Stephanie's family when they were in town. It's a totally small world because Steph's mum had contacted me via my blog, unawares that I owned more than one Anti-Factory item. Anyway both Daz and I had SUCH a fun time (a lunch turned into seven hours of shopping, chatting, cafe-going and more chatting and more shopping)....shame we forgot our camera. This is why blogs rule - you get to meet the most interesting people.

So to finish up this rambling post, I have to confess my undying love for....ENTOURAGE. I can't believe we haven't watched it up until now, but the good thing about that is that we had 29 episodes to watch in the last couple of weeks. We watched the first two episodes a couple of weeks ago (EDITED to ADD: at the urging of BBE1 and BBE2 - in case you didn't know BBE stands for Best Brother Ever, unfortunately my equivalent is BSE = mad cow??) and it did nothing for me, but then we got hooked. It's funny, witty, clever and officially my favourite show at the moment. I love ALL of the characters - esp. Kevin Dillon as Johnny 'Drama' Chase. I knew I loved Mark Wahlberg for some reason other than his hot body (click you won't regret it). Something I wish I had never watched was CNTM - that is officially the WORST ntational series of top model. I cannot believe they chose that 'completely under-nourished, hiding bags and bags of lollies in my suitcase' teen.

My new obsession

It's Friday and it's hot. Yes I think today is the hottest it's been in Tokes this year and personally I love it! Of course I say this from the comfort of my air conditioned office but I mean it (except when commuting and some hot sweaty guy's sweaty skin is rubbing against your arm). Martine and I have talked about this before but have any of your Tokyo dwellers out there noticed JUST how hot Shibuya station is (particularly on the 1st floor from the Ginza sen exit down to around where you walk over to the Inokashira-sen. Sometimes I think that if for some reason I couldn't get out of there, I'd die from the heat. Yes die.

But I digress. My new obsession is black sesame pudding. They just recently started selling these at my work cafeteria and it is the most delicious dessert I've had in a long time. It's cool, it's tasty, it melts in your mouth, it's not too sweet and you end up with the sweetest aftertaste of black sesame seeds in your mouth. They also cost a measley 60 yen (and yes I've been tempted to buy two) They look gross being a slate grey colour and I only have a crap phone pic for you, but here is my latest obsession:

I'm on the verge of a long weekend here in Japan and I'm excited. Monday is Marine Day in Japan and that means we are going to head to the ocean where the sand is black, but the beer and fun will be overflowing. Have a good one!!!

knitty's next top model?

On Saturday Jo, Jenn and I met up in Shibuya to do a photoshoot for the knitty 2007 calendar contest. We were lucky enough to get Martine to do the photoshoot. We all actually dreaded the shoot because it was 30 degrees that day and we had to don our snuggly warm 100% wool (Rowan Cork) Forecasts. There was a lot of sweating, but we had a great time. After two locations changes though we quickly retreated to the air conditioning of the American Apparel store.

It is a shame my midsection is exposed in this one  (you may have seen this intersection in Lost in Translation)

This is our best impression of Shibuya girls.....pretty funny!

here we tried to imitate the girly fun/chat seen in tampon/pad commercials

and here's one of us throwing balls of yarn in the air. I like this one coz Jo looks so graceful flying/jumping in the air!!

oh yeah and our tv died last night. Three years is not bad for a secondhand tv bought for 1000 yen ($10).

Loretta Bendall Mok

Say hi to Loretta - the newest additiion to our family. We have her living separately from Sugar for now, but it's been fun to watch them react to each other's squeaks since Loretta arrived yesterday. I think they are going to get along famously. She is SO tiny compared with Sugar and I want to cuddle her so badly, but we are holding off for a couple of days so she can get used to her new surroundings. I wish that was love in her eyes in the photo but to be honest it's pure fear. She is eating, drinking and pooing though, so they are all good signs that she is adjusting. Hopefully in a couple of days we'll be able to pick her up and start introducing her to Sugar. Sisters are the best!! Hey neen!

And since it is Friday here are some pink photos sent to me by my friend Shirl who lives in London. She visited Paris recently and went to the Grand Palais art exhibit - lucky her and lucky me that I can visit all of these awesome places vicariously through her.

Blingin'

I had a crochet project that has been languishing on the table in our bedroom for a while now. It was so close to being finished and it just wasn't getting done. So yesterday I took advantage of the dreary rainy weather in the morning (it brightened up after that) and finished it. It's a crocheted Louis Vuitton Monogram belt. I will scan the photo of the original that I found in the Deisgner Bag Catalog that I bought secondhand at Book Off (Japan loves their designer brands!!) and post it tomorrow or later this week some time.

As soon as Stephanie posted about the launching of her Counterfeit Crochet Project...I knew I wanted in. I did set myself a big task of offering to crochet a Louis Vuitton set. I wasn't sure how it would all work out so I decided to start off with the belt, a smaller project than a bag.

I'm really happy with the way it turned out and am psyched to start the bag....hopefully soon. I want to take some better shots with the belt on but I couldn't wait to show you so here's a couple that I took last night.

I'm so going to be wearing this belt and will hopefully get some kind of reaction for all the LV lovers here in Tokes. One Japanese lady who visited the SNB the other day was worried whether this project is legal or not. Ha!

Project specs: I used some brown wool that was lying around and crocheted the first layer. Next I crocheted the gold buckle using some great gold viscose yarn that I just happened upon in yuzawaya. The next step was trying out how to crochet the monogram symbol. The LV is of course embroidered, but the other symbol was crocheted and then each one was sewn on individually with brown wool. The back of the brown layer looked very messy and the wool was very curly so I crocheted another layer in beige cotton and then crocheted that to the back. At first I wanted to crochet the back part in leather but all of the leather yarn/string I found was just too tough to crochet and also very expensive. I even took my crochet hook into Yuzawaya where I sneakily did some test crochet with the leather. Here is a blurry photo of me crocheting the back layer onto the brown layer. It doesn't curl at all now and really feels like a real belt!!