Hello Malaysia

The move has been exhausting. We slept often and erratically last week. But we've enjoyed the company of family and delicious Malaysian food. This week everyone seems to be adjusting a little better.

We're in the middle preparing our house. This is the first time we would live in our own house. We're very excited!



the fans and lights newly installed



we had a little picnic on the newly scrubbed floor

more stories to follow soon insyaallah....

Leaving the nest

This blog has been really silent recently. I have been taking the time to think, to deal with this new change in our lives. We are leaving this beautiful place we called home for the past few years. It is not easy.

The past couple of days has been especially hard. Yesterday the movers came to pack our things into boxes and took them away to be shipped. I am thankful for them, because they do all the physical work, but emotionally I found it really difficult to watch our things being packed away and our home becoming empty. But it was hardest on Adam. We have been slowly trying to tell him that we're going back to Malaysia over the past couple of weeks, but i guess reality set in yesterday for all of us. He cried a lot yesterday, repeating over and over 'i don't want packing, i don't want packing. I want our house...' He tried to 'save' some of his toys, to guard them away from the movers. Mia observed all this, tried her best to console Adam. She tried to kiss him, hug him, but in his distress he kept pushing her away. She didn't take offence but was in fact more adamant to comfort him, in the end she jumped over him and just hugged him realy tight, until he laughed at how silly it was. After that he kept asking her for more hugs and she was happy to oblige. She pointed her finger accusingly at the movers as they were packing their toys and books, until the guy actually felt so guilty he stopped packing the toys for a while and went packing something else! She even tried opening some of the packed boxes of toys.

Last night adam developed a fever. Poor baby. He is really taking this hard. Tonight he still has a temperature. We have couple more days here, i hope he gets better before we leave.

My husband has a ton of work to complete before we leave and hasn't left the computer for days, working until 4-5 in the morning. I have been cleaning the house today, scrubbing everything and hope to return this house to the owner as lovely as it was when we moved in.

We fell in love with this house the moment we set eyes on it. Today the house is as empty as it was when we move in. In a way i am glad for the sadness and distress that we feel as we leave this nest. It means that we have made a good home here, a happy home. My children have been happy in this house. We have experience so much together as a family here. We have been blessed. And now as we leave, I know that with the four of us together, we will make another happy nest somewhere new. Insyaallah. Alhamdulillah, praise to Allah for the wonderful joy we have had here and the exciting adventure ahead of us.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Wispy Cardigan

My WIP is finally finished. Oh boy am I enjoying it in this hot weather. So light and airy and beautiful.

The construction of this cardigan (ravelry link) is actually very simple and yet very clever. While knitting this I felt consumed by the sudden desire to learn more about knitwear garment design. All of the things I've knitted were following other people's patterns and I didn't really know anything about the construction and fit until I knit it..and I didn't really bother much about making a tension gauge etc. As a result the final knitted items are usually hit and miss. Sometimes they fit great, many a bit too big or too small. Knitting was usually mainly about the soothing knitting process, rather than the end result. Now that I'm learning about knitwear design, it has opened up such an amazing wealth of information. I'll elaborate more, maybe when I've got something to show for it..

The yarn that I used for this cardigan is gorgeous. Possibly the most beautiful yarn I've ever worked with. It's called Fyberspates Scrumptious, and totally lived up to it name. It's a mixture of merino and silk.

The back of the cardigan I made too wide, although I was (blindly) following the pattern for the smallest size. This is one of the main reason I've decided I need to learn more about garment construction..

When I look at this picture, it suddenly struck me that I must be in a Red mood. Red is my favourite colour, but I rarely wear so much of it. Red cardigan, red Kindle cover, red tudung, red speckles on my handbag, dress and wool picnic blanket. And I was casting on yet another red knitting project...the other day we went shopping for Adam and Mia's clothes and we got home and I looked at the things we bought..I suddenly realised most of the clothes that I picked out for Mia were red..and I wasn't even aware of my colour choices...weird..

I think I've fallen in love..

...with these little babies..

I mean, sure, I love my two little babies...but the minute they fall asleep, I quickly took these little babies out to play with..

Isn't it gorgeous?

A lot of beautiful yarns are sold in the skein instead of a ball. When you buy a skein of yarn like this one, you cannot knit it from the skein. If you try, it will end up a muddled mess and then you either just chuck it in the bin or take about a million hours to untangle it. Go on, ask me how I know.

To knit this skein, you have to first wind it into a ball. Normally I stretch the skein over 2 backs of chairs and wind it. But, when you have a laceweight yarn like the above, one 100g skein contains over a kilometer length of yarn. It will take you over a couple hours of standing and winding. It's not fun. Oh yeah, ask me how I know.

That's why these little toys are making me sooo happy. They turn the skein into..

these scrumptious yarn cakes! oh yum..

Morning chat with Mia

I was chatting with Mia as I put on her nappy...

Me: Mia, after this let's go down to check if my package has arrived ok? I'm waiting for my knitting book...

Mia: oh...

Me: Are you interested in knitting?

Mia: No! *VERY quickly*

Mia: *got up and went over to her baby monitor* Sik! Sik!

Me: Music? *switch on music on her baby monitor*

Mia: Ha....wawawawa *start singing*

This girl sure knows what she likes....

Nest Sale

Helloooo!!! Nest is having a sale! Head over there now!

The sale started Saturday, but I believe it's still going now...As I blogged about before, Nest carries rather affordable yarns, and with the sale, even better prices!

ok this one wasn't so affordable, but...so gorgeous!

The kids kept busy at the garden outside..

Adam made some badges with our names on them..

No i'm not getting paid to promote them...I'm just a happy customer :) the owners - Amy, her husband and her mom are all really friendly and helpful...go on over there and see for yourself..

Lavender pillows

I have been looking for ways to protect my precious woolies from the dreaded urm, creature (wool m*th) especially now that it's summer and bugs are crawling out of nowhere..I'm certain that I don't want to use m*th balls, I mean come on, the smell of m*th balls on yarn is probably worse than actually having the creatures eating up my yarn. I came upon the wonderful fact that lavender is great for warding off m*ths with the smell.

So I got a kilo's worth of loose dried lavender from this shop. Pretty cheap, especially when it arrived about as big a bag as a basketball.

and then I sewed up a stack of little lavender pillows. Using just whatever little scraps of fabric in my scrap bag.

To make a lavender pillow is really simple. Just cut up 2 pieces of scraps into a shape - circle, rectangle, square, triangle, heart, whatever you fancy - and sew them up leaving a little hole. Here I've made it simpler by using a pair of pinking shears to cut the shape (just free-hand the shape, no one is going to check if your square leans to the right) and just top-stitch around, leaving a gap. Use the gap to fill with lavender, and when finished, sew up the gap. Takes less than half an hour to make a few pillows from cut to finish.

The smell is divine. Initially I just needed them for my wool stash, but because I have extra, I scattered them around the house - living room, under the pillows (lavender is great for relaxing and helps with sleeping too) - and now the whole house smells wonderful. I'm thinking they would be great in the closet, underwear/sock drawer, shoe rack too, don't you think?