mouthbreathing in aircon

When I started this blog about six weeks ago, I was in a happy place, and I wanted to connect with other positive, cheerful people. I made a personal editorial policy that this would, under no circumstances, become a place to vent frustrations or get angry. Everyone has quite enough on their own plates without me clambering up onto my high horse. But I'm afraid I need to break that rule. Thankfully the editor-in-chief can't sack me.

Boy, have I had a bugger of a week. My husband had to work some 24 hour shifts over a weekend, and I started to get sick. The streaming snots and sneezes. Mouthbreathing in aircon is misery, and mouthbreathing outdoors when it hovers around 30C and 80% humidity is not much better. Then there was a major safety issue in our apartment. To say that we are waging a mini "Erin Brockovich" style campaign from our coffee table kind of explains the situation. How this will end I don't know. Perhaps we'll go back to the UK over it (perhaps we'll get sent back!). Perhaps someone will grow a moral conscience and do the right thing. Whatever happens, it's exhausting. Someone taking liberties with my family's safety and then telling me that it is not their problem makes me feel helpless, like we don't matter. Like my child doesn't matter. It feels like a personal insult. I'm finding it very hard to keep any sense of perspective. I was feeling pretty homesick anyway, and now I'm just broken.

And then I heard Christmas music in a shopping mall this morning. I suspect you can imagine how much this pi$$ed me off. No ol' blue eyes, NOT THIS MORNING.

Amidst my phlegm and frustration, I've been trying desperately to throw myself into things I enjoy. But this may have backfired. In just one week I've nearly finished my Veera scarf. But I think I've ruined it in an invisible way. You know in Like Water for Chocolate how Tita infuses the food she cooks with her own emotions? Well, my scarf has been created out of rapid boiling maternal anger. The stitches are perfect and the colours just as beautiful as they were on the ball, but I think the piece as a whole is fuming with pent-up frustration.

On a more positive note, I've been trying to entertain The Boss with a very old copy of Little Old Mrs Pepperpot, a book that I absolutely adored when I was small. My mother-in-law dug this copy out of a long-forgotten bookshelf the last time we were in London. The binding has gone and we're having to handle it like a precious relic. Each time we open the browned pages, my girl takes a long deep sniff of the stale old paper, which she says smells like honey. And she proudly presented her favourite red ribbon for use as the bookmark. I'm trying to treasure the simplicity of a little girl having a favourite ribbon. But it's not easy this week.

When she asked why the book said 3'- on the cover, we started explaining about old money, and how Granny had bought this book a long time ago. With a look of amazement on her face she whispered in disbelief "does that mean that Granny was in the olden days?!". I can only imagine her visions of Granny buying three shilling books from all the pirates and pharaohs and dinosaurs that we've talked about in the context of the "olden days". Crikey, I bet she thinks that Granny's met the baby Jesus.

Linking along with the lovely Small things Yarn Along. I hope you, and they, can indulge and forgive me my rant. Will try not to do it again.

jamie's 30 minute meals: the secret to success

Despite the fact that Jamie Oliver's 30 Minute Meals was never on the telly here, the craze for the book seemed to be global last Christmas. Nearly everyone I know in Singapore has a copy (though I've yet to meet anyone who's tried it, and my neighbour's is still in cellophane).

I set myself a little New Year challenge to work my way through it, and like most New Year challenges, it waned pretty quickly. But I'm proud to say that I've done about a dozen of them, and I've really enjoyed the (slightly frenzied) process. They all took more like an hour, but that's OK, I'm not in any particular hurry, and if I do each one a few times I'll get much quicker. In fact I'll defend any of the criticisms levelled at this book on the Amazon rant feedback pages because (a) they taste so damn fine that (b) my child eats it all.

Now I said that I had never managed one of the meals within 30 minutes before... until last night. The secret to my success? Enlist the help of a child. Seriously! There was nothing about the dessert in this meal that my four year old could not handle. Once I had weighed out the ingredients, she mixed them, then she spooned them into pastry cases alternating jam and frangipane mixture, and I put them in the oven. I'd actually say we managed the preparation for this meal comfortably within 30 minutes. And it was d-e-l-i-c-i-o-u-s.

I hope you don't mind my not writing out the recipes here - if you know the book, you'll know that it would mean a lot of typing. But if you do have a copy, and if you've been nervous about giving it a go (or put off by the global marketing hype and ensuing backlash), I urge you to give this a try: Pregnant Jools's pasta with crunchy chicory & watercress salad and little frangipane tarts. You can see the website for the book here.

Seriously, give it a try. If a four year old can do it...
 

mixing the frangipane

filling the (shop-bought) pastry cases

actually, I couldn't get pastry, so this is some mysterious thing called graham cracker crumb (?)

just a bag of mixed salad rather than the chicory & watercress which I can't get

meanwhile I was making the easiest pasta sauce in the world

et voila, The Boss' first puddies that she made (almost) all by herself!

churchill on knitting (...sort of)

Lesson learnt: don't make a man help you with something that he really doesn't want to do. Even if he is the most patient man on earth, and he once took an oath to do everything you say (that's what those vows were mostly about, right?) he can still find a way of turning into a grumpy teenager.

I will never ask my husband to hold hanks of yarn while I wind knitting balls again. Almost immediately his arms drooped and his fingers curled into claws that made it virtually impossible. For a painful three quarters of an hour, the only phrases uttered were:
[me] "can you hold it taut please"
[me] "no, not that tight, I do need to be able to get it off"
[him] "I'm only doing exactly what you said"
[me] "I can do this over the back of a chair you know, I just thought you might be more effective because you are an actual person and everything".

And yes, we're still talking about wool here.

I suspect the dialogue was similar 25 years ago when Mum used to hoodwink me into the same chore. Bottom line, winding wool is just not fun. But all the best stuff comes in hanks, so it's a necessary evil. I'm hopeless at it so if you have any hints, please, do tell.

Anyway, all that super fancy yarn is for another Different lines shawl. (Pattern by Veera Valimaki, you can find it on Ravelry. I LOVE this pattern. I may never make anything else.) I've finished the first effort, a practice run in cheap dk yarn (that I started in this post). It's turned out with the size, heft and drape of a small blanket rather than a scarf. But I have a lovely, shabby, grey tweed armchair back home in Scotland, and this will look great one day, artfully draped over the back of it (amateurishly modelled here by a nasty, beige, polyester rented armchair).

So now I'm on to the real deal scarf, in beautiful fingering weight yarn (as per the pattern) and it is going to be amazeballs. Viola superwash merino, hand dyed in Canada, in colours called raven (dark navy/grey) and radioactive (chartreuse/lime). I'm toying with the idea of picking out one of the stripes in hot pink (it clashes quite nicely in that top photo), perhaps the third largest stripe?

I found a quote in my current bedside-table book, Mimi and Toutou go forth, from Churchill on the monotony of a sea voyage. I think it could equally apply to the repetitive meditation that is knitting.

For a time we drop out of the larger world, with its interests and its obligations, and become the independent citizens of a tiny state... / ...Here during a period which is too long while it lasts, too short when it is over, we may placidly reflect on the busy world that lies behind and the tumult that is before us.

I bet Churchill would have been good at holding hanks for the missus.

Linking in with the lovely people at Small things' Yarn Along.

desperately seeking seasons

Every morning the weather forecast on the radio is the same: 28 to 32 degrees C with a chance of thundery showers. Every flippin' day. 365. We reckon they have it pre-recorded.

As another Singapore Summer (apparently) draws to a close, we're seriously hankering for Autumn. I'd love to spout all that blah about crisp, fresh outdoor pursuits and fabulous fashionable layering, but honestly those aren't my memories from our last real temperate-zone Autumn. Me and her staying in out of the rain, playing, eating and snoozing - now that's what I'm talkin' about. Idle bliss.

she turned out the lights, positioned the lanterns, and posed. very unusual behaviour for her.

Autumn will never come to Singapore in any meteorological sense but today it has drizzled all day. Me and The Boss have been stuck inside, and with the aircon on, you could almost believe it was really Autumn. So we set about making some lanterns to decorate the flat, because with mooncakes in the shops it must nearly be Chinese mid-autumn festival.

We used this tutorial from minieco because I assumed it would be something my daughter and I could do together (you know in that rose-tinted way that almost NEVER happens). By the time I'd actually read it though and started with the scalpel... and then the matches, it had to become rather a pre-schooler-free zone. But it was still a brilliant way to spend a rainy afternoon - me cutting zigzags and trying not to set the paper on fire, and her colouring in and blethering at the table beside me.

Once lit, she said the immortal words "wow! look at those bad boys!".

Couldn't have put it better myself.

NEWSFLASH! 4th Sept: the divine Chelsey from papermama just picked my top photo as coming 3rd in her "favourites from august" challenge. Hurrah! If you want to see all the others and join in next week (when the subject is "heart") click on the button.




NEWSFLASH 2! 10th Sept: April at the Gingerbread Blog featured this on her Sweet Saturday link-along. Hurrah x 2! To see all the other projects and to join in next time, click on the button.

tiger balm and a dirty knee

It's eight weeks until my birthday. In bingo terms it'll be my dirty knee.

My dearest friend is flying all the way to Singapore to help me celebrate, and to ease herself over a broken heart. So I decided to spend the time between now and then becoming a better me: me V2.0. If I achieve the five mini-goals that I set each week, I hope to be bursting with a joie de vivre that she'll be helpless to resist. Also I'll be able to enjoy her visit more, indulge quite a lot, and start the next year on a high note.

This week, one of my mini-challenges was to save lots of money by doing loads of free stuff. So, as well as making these strawberry muffins (so as not to waste a packet of fruit too sharp to eat) and downloading free colouring-in sheets for The Boss from Ottobre and Sarainklings, I set off on an adventure to Haw Par Villa.

If you're at all familiar with that curious panacea for all ills, Tiger Balm, then you already know how the Haw Par brothers made their fortune. With it, they created this villa and the surrounding "Tiger Balm Gardens" and filled it with more than 1000 gaudy, kitsch and sometimes grotesque statues depicting Chinese mythology and legend.

My husband has always refused to go. He's quite a curious and adventurous person, but this simply held no appeal for him. But I had a morning to spare, and other than the bus fare, it was free...

So far, so "whatever" right?

Well, then it all starts to get wild.

The thing that was most confusing was that, surrounded by vibrant colour, I found it almost impossible to see things I wanted to photograph. There are a few snaps that came out quite interesting - I particularly like the Buddha who overlooks the container port (below) - but mostly it was just overwhelming. Overwhelmingly odd.

I try to be rational, so I try not to say wishy-washy things like this but, it just had a really negative vibe. I can't be more specific than that. And what's most confusing for me is that, aesthetically the statues at Haw Par appear to use similar materials, techniques and colours to those on the south Indian Hindu temples here in Singapore. I imagine it must even be the same craftsmen who maintain them. But the temple statues, surrounded by garlands and smoke and voluptuous aunties in dazzling saris, are uplifting and joyful and surprising, where Haw Par is baffling, peculiar and a bit unsettling.

I can't figure out why. A religious aspect is present in both so it's not a lack of devotion. And some of the Hindu legends are equally gruesome, depicting similar beheadings and disembowelments. But in any of the Hindu temples I'm always itching to get my camera out and capture some of the magic (this photo of Sri Mariamman was taken on my crappy wee phone, while I hopped up and down in my bare feet on the burning paving stones, but doesn't it still manage to look fascinating?).

Sri Mariamman Temple, Pagoda Street, Singapore

I love solitary exploring, and I have a soft spot for Tiger Balm, that priceless bartering commodity from my school days. So I'm glad I went to Haw Par Villa. And it was free, so that's one of my mini-goals well and truly checked off. Shame about the gym aspect of this week's list... Here's to more dedication during week two of project me version two point zero.

Linking in with Sweet Shot Tuesday