project 52: a display of remarkable incompetence

This week Darcy over at my3boybarians requires a self portrait for p52. Hmmm.

I dutifully set the scene - a nice white wall and a white countertop - intending to pose resting my chin on my hands or something (and feeling deeply uncomfortable about every move - posing for a selfie - what a weird thing to do). I put a stack of plates on the edge of the counter so that I could set the focus and check the lighting, and then I moved the plates out of the way, all ready to get into position...

Except that I must have unwittingly pressed the timer button already because the first shot is of me moving the plates! I took a few more afterwards, but they were all very awkward, self-conscious and badly framed. That first one kind of sums up the ridiculousness of the whole situation. Taking a picture of myself, pfff, what a hopeless nerd. With broken fingernails.

samsung nx10, 30mm pancake lens, ISO400, f/2.5, 1/15

same old routine, this time in glorious technicolour

Another week, another cap-sleeved sweater (another two balls of Rowan purelife in pink granite!). It's all about pre-packing stash busting with the tried and tested patterns round these parts. But though the project is pretty much a repeat of a previous post, the photo is really exciting... can you tell this is an instagram using an iPhone!?

I KNOW!!! (Doesn't the instagram filter show up the texture beautifully by the way?) I've always been the person resolutely sticking with an ancient Nokia, you know the kind that texts and calls and does nothing else (and occasionally, not even those things). And I've always been more than happy with the bare essentials in my mobile life.

But my husband (feeling guilty about not having had a day off since December I think) surprised me and The Boss with customary hong bao (red packets) on Chinese New Year's morning. Hers had the traditional few dollars destined for the toy shop, and mine contained a new sim card for an iPhone 4S!

(Ok, admission time, I have no idea what the 4 or the S mean, but I assume it's significant so maybe you can help me out?)

So when I'm not scrolling through teeny screens in complete bewilderment (eek!) I'm reading The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht which my friend chose for our book club this month. I'm not very far in yet, but it is totally absorbing. However if I might be allowed to grumble about excessively long chapters again...

I am L-O-V-I-N-G  the colour coordinating buttons from Ginny over at Small things, aren't you! Also, I wanted to mention briefly how totally fantastic the Yarn Along community are - all the sincere encouragement, wonderful tips and sweet offers of help that came from my novice crochet post last week - truly, I was touched beyond belief. Thank you lovely people!

gong xi fa cai!

I don't know for sure, but I suspect that very few Singaporeans resolve to lose weight on January 1st - the Gregorian New Year. There would be so little point, given that only three or four weeks later, Chinese New Year arrives with all its feasting, fireworks and general merriment.

At my friend's house last week, our pot of tea was accompanied by a dozen pineapple tarts, a whole box of Nyonya love letters (sweet wafer rolls), and soft sweet brown jelly cakes (kueh) coated with grated fresh coconut. Sublime, and entirely homemade by various friends and relatives. She waved her infuriatingly slender, elegant arm in the air and said "don't even think about holding back, it's New Year, resistance is futile!" Well, I didn't need to be told twice.

To give you a bit of the CNY atmosphere, here are some of our recent photos (do not adjust your screen, unbelievably, these red photos are straight out of camera!) Imagine music blaring at full-throttle, acrid smoke from barrels of roasting chestnuts, the taste of your takeaway siew bao as you amble along, surrounded by traders selling every imaginable food; cartloads of melon seeds, durian pastries, fried chicken feet, bak kwa, frog porridge, rambutan tea, salted preserved ducks... and of course, a multitude of the all-important pineapple tarts.

in case you were wondering, it's the year of the dragon!

Christmas decorations are for amateurs, THIS is decoration!

On the evening we were out taking all these photos, we tried a dish called ah balling - rice balls in peanut soup. I believe that it's actually a traditional mid-autumn festival dish but you seem to be able to get it at this time of year too. In fact a quick wiki search reveals that the spherical balls in the round bowl symbolise family togetherness, so perhaps that's why the stall was doing a roaring trade this week (a big element of lunar New Year is family reunion).

The reason it caught my eye is that, back in November, Dom from Belleau Kitchen challenged all his Random Recipe disciples to share a vegetarian soup recipe. I was convinced that someone in that clever bunch would come up with a sweet soup, but alas, it was not to be. Well, ah balling is a genuine and authentic sweet soup and really easy to make. So after eating it at the nightmarket, I did my usual: search for at least half a dozen recipes on line, and then combine all the most sensible elements to make my own version.

 ah balling
makes enough for about 6-8 people

a big packet of peanuts (NOT salted) about 200g but no need for accuracy
2tsp bicarbonate of soda
250ml soy milk
100g caster sugar
frozen tang yuan or mochi (glutinous rice balls, we like the ones filled with peanut best)

• soak the peanuts in a bowl of water with the bicarb (apparently this helps to soften them) for at least two or three hours
• wash the peanuts a few times in a sieve, chop very roughly (you still want big bits) and put them in a pan of boiling water - about a litre
• simmer for a couple more hours with the lid at a tilt, the peanuts need to be soft and the soup will be cloudy
• stir in the sugar and soy milk and bring back to the boil
• drop your frozen mochi into the soup, when they rise to the surface after a couple of minutes, they're ready (we find two or three per person to be enough - the five per bowl at the night market beached us!) Sprinkle in some crushed peanuts for a bit of crunch.

It's sweet and hot and peanuty, but honestly, I don't think this will become a regular family staple. You never know though, perhaps next CNY in a frosty city far, far away, I'll feel like hanging up my red decorations and hosting a nostalgic Singaporean supper. This would make an authentic and unique dessert and, if served one rice ball per person in tiny porcelain bowls with Chinese spoons, I think it could actually be quite elegant... providing I don't unwittingly buy fluorescent pink rice balls next time!!!

GONG XI FA CAI lovely readers!

project 52: i dreamed a dream

I think I share a dream with quite a lot of other people. That's the only plausible explanation for the success of the BBC's Dragons' Den. It's the fantasy of that lightbulb moment, where a normobod like you or me has flash of divine inspiration to create something so fantastic that the human race won't know how they ever managed without it.

It's always the simplest ideas that strike me as real genius. Taking the purest of concepts and combining it with a brainwave to create a product that makes life just that little bit easier, that little bit more accessible, that little bit more affordable. So for Project 52 this week, I looked around my apartment to see if I could find an example of that.

I chose my weights because I think they are genius with a capital G. A set of bog-standard handweights can be quite pricey, and I'm not a dedicated enough gym bunny to justify buying them. So imagine my delight on finding this brilliant product in the $2 shop!

Samsung NX10, ISO 800, f/7.1, 1/10s, against the light of a bright window.
Photoshopping limited to removing some tiny bobbles from the blanket using the healing tool.

A litre of water weighs 1 kg, as all good secondary school students will know. So, you take that gem of knowledge and use it to make 1 litre water bottles in the shape of handweights. G E N I U S!

Okay, okay, so I acknowledge that the inventors of this particular piece of artistry may not exactly change the world, but the clarity of the idea makes me smile every time. I'd just love to think up something as cool as this one day. And they're photogenic too, with a dreamy sort of quality, don't you think?!

the hooked end of the learning curve

I long for one of these blankets. Isn't it the most beautiful thing you ever saw? Presumably it's okay to long, no, make that lust for something if you plan to make it yourself? Minor hitch though. I can't crochet. So I'm pretty far from obtaining said blanket.

But one quiet evening last week, I dug out the tail end of a ball of wool and decided it was time to crack open one of my Christmas books. Kirstie's Homemade Home contains two pages of diagrams showing you how to do something mysterious called "double crochet", which Kirstie assures the reader is the easiest and most durable type. It seemed like as good a starting place as any.

Four hours later, having cast on for about the billionth time, I managed to make a swatch of fabric that vaguely approximated crochet and that, crucially, wasn't triangular (I couldn't seem to turn rows without decreasing at each end... sometimes more). But I have no idea if this is what double crochet is supposed to actually look like!

Don't worry, I haven't squandered next month's rent on my own bodyweight in grey Madeline Tosh yarn just yet, as I think it's safe to say that a Granny-stripe blanket is still a fairly remote fantasy!

Linking up with the lovely Yarn Alongers.

Doesn't Ginny's new button in the teal shade just match my crochet perfectly?!