Bentos ~ The modern lunchbox

Lately, I've been making my own lunches ... trying to cook at home rather than buying food for a combination of health and financial reasons.

I discovered bento boxes, a Japanese method of packing lunches that are fun to view as well as eat.  Traditional boxes are packed with rice, protein, and vegetables .. in that order.  I've adapted them a bit more to my style, but since I enjoy asian food, it's easy to do fairly traditional boxes .. but I like more vegetables than is traditional.  It does mean that I usually need to pack a snack box as well or I get hungry in the afternoon.

I'm also trying to lose weight, yet again, so the smaller box sizes help to limit portions as well. 

If you pack lunches, for yourself or others ... consider giving bento boxes a try.

Sites for Bento Ideas:

• Just Bento
• Bento TV (video tutorials)
• Just Hungry (recipes)
• J-Box Bento supplies (online supplier)
• Lunch in a Box - Bento Store locator

 

Crafty Fun for my niece

Since I'm fairly sure that my young niece doesn't watch my blog, I can post this here.  My Mum found a cute little bag, and I made this one after the pattern. 

The pattern is very simple, crocheted with Vanna's Choice and Vanna's Choice Baby acrylic yarn and a size H hook.

A very cool new initiative - The 3/50 Project

I first found out about the 3/50 Project on Craftsters.org.  The idea is to help save our local stores.

The idea behind the 3/50 project is that spending money at our local independant stores returns 68% of what we spend back to the community ... for large chain stores, that number is as low as 48%, and for online stores it can be as low as 0%!

So shop smart, but where you can. Shop local.

Check out the350project.net for more information and to join in the cause.

I can Knit and Weave!!

I actually knit this up a little while ago, but it looks like I can finally knit!  It takes a lot longer than crochet for me, but then there's the whole bit about practice.

This simple dishcloth is the Woven Seed Dishcloth from Ravelry and it took about four tries to get the stitching right.  I started it, then went to the 2nd session of my knitting class and learned that I had been doing the pearls all wrong!  No wonder it looked wrong .. but it got fixed.

Weaving!

I got a loom at Stitches West!  a few months ago and finally pulled it out and wove.  It was easier, and harder, than I thought it would be.  Warping is easy on the Ashford Knitting Loom (I have the 20" one) and the weaving itself is simple to do, but hard to master.  The warp is Wool Ease in 2 colors, and the weft is a blue handspun that I received in a swap. It's more warp faced than I planned, but I was pulling in the weft more than I should without really understanding what I was doing.

A close-knit community

This is very, very cool.   They did this to raise money for the village hall, and managed to immortalize the village in the process.

A close-knit community: Meet the ladies who've spent years stitching their entire Kent village | Mail Online: 

"There's a beautiful Norman church, two pubs, a shop, a school, a village hall, a huge Georgian manor house with landscaped gardens, teenagers slouched around the bus shelter and dozens of red-brick cottages with gardens in full bloom and vegetable patches bursting with cabbages, cauliflowers and sweet peas."

Stitches West and more!

So even with the insanity that was work and the wedding, I managed to find some time to spin and even learned to knit!!

I went to Stitches West and picked up loads of goodies: alpaca locks, cashmere yarn, bamboo/merino fiber, hemp/cotton yarn ... and lots of little things including a spinning gauge and some lovely wooden crochet hooks.

And I even learned to knit!!

Since then I've done a littl bit more knitting and tried continental ... it makes a bit more sense now that I've gotten the hang of it. I think I'm up for my first washcoth!

Ramie Fibers

  So I've recently gotten into exploring some of the less common fibers for spinning ... including Ramie.  It's very slick and supposedly gives a hard wearing yarn that can be used for all sorts of things.

From Wikipedia:

Ramie is used to make such products as industrial sewing thread, packing materials, fishing nets, and filter cloths. It is also made into fabrics for household furnishings (upholstery, canvas) and clothing, frequently in blends with other textile fibers (for instance when used in admixture with wool, shrinkage is reported to be greatly reduced when compared with pure wool.) Shorter fibres and waste are used in paper manufacture.