As 2012 is coming to the end, I'm doing a review of what the year was for me. My first target for the year as far as my crafts were concerned was to do 12 bazaars this year; an average of one bazaar per month. It was really easier said than done. Being a procrastinator extraordinaire, having my booth well stocked up is a real challenge.
My utmost gratitude to Azzah of SewFabby for letting me in this joyride with her. She's a proper bazaar hunter. She did more bazaars than I and a real working machine when it comes to stocking up her wares for the bazaar. I couldn't keep up with her. All in all, we're together in 5 of the 12 bazaars that I took part in this year. Thank you Azzah for being a good sport, a great bazaar partner and a real friend I can count on. I can never repay the kindness that you've shown to me. May you grow and prosper in the years to come, dear friend.
So what's in store for 2013... maybe less bazaar, one bazaar in 3 months, 4 bazaar for 2013. That would give me time to stock up and keep my online business in equilibrium. I must admit my online orders suffered as I have to decline taking orders so I can spend more time preparing my stock. I'll be focussing on my online shop.
Last Saturday, we're supposed to attend Danial and Arwen's aunt's engagement. The theme was turqoise. Unfortunately, both my kids were down with coughs and flu. Arwen was running a mild fever even. Therefore, only Azrai went to represent the rest of the family.
Staying cooped up at home doesn't stop my little diva to dress up. Any little girl loves dressing up. I took her to the nearby park for a quick photo shoot session. You can never tell that she is having a fever from the pictures can you?
We forgot to take the shrug along when we were at the park so I took some last minute pictures using our front door as the back drop. I made the shrug a few weeks earlier. A simple lace pattern that I took from one of the magazines. I used Knitpick's Worsted cotton yarn in Sky and used up 3 balls of yarn.
Arwen simply loves her dress. Makes her feel so grown up. There'll be more full length dress for Arwen in the near future...
Salam Maal Hijrah! It's a new year according to the Hijrah Calendar which fell yesterday, Thursday, 15 November 2012; which was also my birthday. Yeay! Happy birthday to me! It's my 39th birthday. What a big number. It was a public holiday yesterday, in honour of my birthday, heheheh... A quiet affair at home. We had the Big Breakfast at Equine Park's McDonald's and later to Maycraft in Taipan, USJ to get some crochet yarn. You see, I ordered the Sharp Crochet Hook from Ebay and it came in the mail on Wednesday. I wanted to make some crocheted edging baby receiving blankets with some flannel that I ordered from Fabric.com.
So, that was pretty much my activity on my birthday. It was a wet Thursday. It rained practically throughout the day. Or was it? I was pre-occupied with the blankets. So here they are, I've made 3 but ran out of yarn for the first one, thus it's not in the picture. These blankets will debut at IBU Bazaar this Sunday, 18 November 2012 at Publika. The introduction price is RM60.00 These are fully imported, high quality cotton flannel and the edging are made with high quality 100% cotton crochet thread. I made this simple shell edging with the variegated crochet thread and loving the effect.
Since it's pretty much what I did on my birthday, I'm going to give ONE crocheted edging receiving blanket as my birthday giveaway. Here's what you have to do to qualify for the giveaway:
and leave a COMMENT at the bottom of this blog post
You can do #1 or #2 or do both but you must do #3 to stand a chance to win an exclusive handmade Crocheted Edging Receiving Blanket. (edit: The comments will be my way of tracking you)You can also state your preference whether you wish for a 'GIRL' or a 'BOY' blanket.
This giveaway is open now and closes at 12.00 midnight, 30 November 2012.
Moving on to the next agenda, my next Bazaar appearance will be on Sunday, 18 November 2012 at Publika. It's IBU Charity Bazaar. Here are some line up of the things that I'll be bringing to the bazaar apart from the receiving blankets:
No Sew Tutu
Blanket+Pillow combination=Blankow
Travel Changing Mats
So come and say "HELLO" to me and perhaps bring home a handmade Made by Rozi Rahman :)
UPDATED on 3 Dec 2012: The giveaway is closed. The winner will be announced in the next post
It's been ages since I last post a tutorial. So I thought I'd do a simple one on how to attach ric-rac, in my case onto a kitchen towel. I've been married for 10 years now and I'm lucky to have everything in the house ready at my disposal. I practically moved into our home with just a luggage. I never did buy a single kitchen towel ever since we got married so after 10 years, you would imagine that any kitchen towel in my possession looks more like a rag cloth than anything else. So I decided to make some new ones using some face towels that I found at IKEA for RM1.50 a piece.
So, back to my tutorial, the items that you need for a kitchen towel is:
1. 1 IKEA face towel (size: 30cm by 50cm or 12inches by 19 inches)
2. Cotton strip. I made mine 13inches by 4.5inches
3. Jumbo ric-rac. I use the 5/8inch wide
On the right side of the cotton strip, pin the ric-rac along the long side; matching the bottom of the curve along with the bottom of the fabric.
Stitch over the ric-rac; I use my foot as a guide which is about 1/4inch from the edge and just about right in the centre of the ric-rac. Do it on both the long edge of the fabric.
Once you've attach the ric-rac as mentioned above, just turn the ric-rac over along the stitch line and TADAAA!!! there you have it, a perfectly even ric-rac edging. Just finger press it so it stays in place of if you really have to, run a low heat iron over the fabric. The ric-rac is made of polyester so it doesn't withstand high heat as cotton does.
This is how it looks like on the other side.
Place the cotton strip on the towel, perhaps 1to 2 inches from the edge, make sure you have cut your fabric to include the seam allowance on both ends. I made mine an extra 1" long so i can fold in 1/2in seam. Pin it in place like so.
Stitch as close as you can at the edge of the fabric all round.
TADAA!!! there you have it. A pretty kitchen towel to brighten up any kitchen.
Don't just make one, make a bunch of it. A great way to use up all the scraps. A perfect house-warming gift and you can make some for Christmas sock filler.
Yesterday, we visited my sister inlaw who just gave birth to a pair of twin boys; Dylan Ahmad and Aydan Omar at Pantai Medical Centre. Only Aydan was in the room with the new mommy as Dylan was taken to NICU for observation. Here's Aydan on day 2. Isn't he precious?
Aydan Omar
I made a nursing pillow earlier on when I received the news of the births. Below is my in-house model with the pillow and I gave a matching nursing cover along with it.
Nursing pillow with slipcover
Last night, while I was browsing the internet on the ipad for ideas of a newborn baby gifts and I came across a tutorial on sunshine plushie here. And if you search for images you'd find similar plushies with different faces. I saw one that I like and it looked more like a lion's head, than a sunshine so I couldn't decide to go with which one. I made mine with white flannel and monogrammed the twins initials on the back of the plushies and simply love it. I drew the face freehand and blanket stitched an oval shaped brown felt for the nose and buttons for the eyes.
It seems like a whole life time ago since I last opened a booth at a bazaar. That's me exaggerating. My last bazaar was before fasting month in July. I took a break throughout fasting month as my mother in-law was staying with us while the maid went back for a month break. Having a guest around didn't quite allow me to sew to my heart's content and my sewing room was reduced to a store room where the kids' toys and what have you were chucked there to make room for my MIL. She took the kids' room so the kids bunked with us.
Alhamdulillah, the maid came back as promised to resume her tour of duty on Merdeka day. That day brings a special meaning of 'Merdeka' to me. Don't get me wrong. It wasn't hard to take care of my MIL. But it was tough emotionally for all of us especially when her memory is failing her. I'm just glad to put that episode behind me.
I was quiet the whole of August too where I couldn't face clearing the tsunami-hit sewing room. I resorted to knitting, rag-rugging with the jumbo hooks and other stuff that doesn't require me to go and clear the room. I even lugged out the sewing machine and parked it on my dining table to sew baju raya for my kids and myself and even made a bigger mess.
I am so good at side-tracking aren't I? This is supposed to be about the upcoming Little Red Market.
I finally bucked up and cleared my room. Let me show you the before picture:
You can't even see the surface of my working table nor the surface of the floor! This is no exaggeration.
After a whole morning at it, things looked up and the room looks more workable:
I had to use the safety gate to keep Arwen out of the room or I'll never get anything done. The writing on the whiteboard were the list of things to make for Little Red Market last May!!!!
This is going to be my 3rd appearance at Little Red Market. My association with Little Red Market started in February this year where I joined them for the first time for their 2nd LRM in a residence in Jalan Beka, Bukit Damansara. I went there without any expectation as I was curious on how are they going to pull crowd in to a private residence. But the reception completely blew my mind. I was busy from the word 'GO'.
In May, they moved to White Box, Publika and I followed them. Bigger venue, more vendors, bigger crowd. Loving it more.
This time around, I need to put on my thinking cap and start making new things for the bazaar. I came out with my chalk mats and banners which was a runaway success, baby bibs and binkie clips sold well too.
So for the 4th Little Red Market and the last for the year (according to the banner), I made new items: Wet bags with PUL lining, Tunisian Crochet Ipad cosy, and my very own Blankow, a Blanket and pillow combination.
There's more... want to see what else I have? Follow me on my fanpage on Facebook and make a date with me at the Little Red Market on Sunday, 14 October 2012 at WhiteBox, Publika.
In Facebook, I belong to a group of crafters and just before fasting month, we got together in the virtual world and decided to run a charity program. We did one before this late last year, towards the beginning of this year's school session where we made and donated pencil cases to orphans.
This time around, we are doing a pillowcase project for Hospital Kuala Lumpur Paediatric Ward in conjunction with Children's Day this coming November. It is similar to the Conkerr Cancer Pillowcase Program in the United States where people donate cute pillowcases to cancer patients. You can read about it here.
I supposed this project took a back seat to many of us what with the festive season and the rush to make and sew clothes for raya and what have you. However, there were some that have already made and send the pillowcases to our collection centres or members. I've made four pillowcases for this project:
Along with that, there's also a request for chemo-caps for the cancer patients. I made a request to my knitter group and pledged 20 knitted/crocheted chemo-caps. Here's one modelled by Arwen:
The generous members of my knitting club came forward and chemo-caps of beautiful colours and sizes were sent to me through out the fasting month. At the point of typing this post, I have 17 chemo-caps, I'm sure there's more to come.
We have a page on Facebook: Kusarungkan Kasih. Please support our cause by liking the page. We have pictures of the pillowcases by other members of the group, chemo-caps, links to tutorials on how to construct pillowcases and information on how to contribute or participate in the project. We accept all kind of contribution, be it in cash or in kind. Please contact the admin at the Fan Page.
I'll be filling in more on this project from time to time.
I was going through my blog thinking of what to write in my next post and realised that I've not made any entry on works being published in the magazines. I did make a few (subjective really) shout outs of my magazine clips on my facebook wall and Made by Rozi Rahman fanpage.
I'm honoured and grateful that my work has been chosen to grace the pages of 2 digital camera magazines and 1 women magazine. Hang on a minute! So, what has photography got to do with my needlework? Well, my needlework has led me to blogging and blogging has led me to wanting to take better pictures for my posts and that has led me to take up photography. Not so much of turning into a professional photographer (duh! it ain't easy you know!) but just being able to take nice pictures.
Anyway, back to the topic, my first appearance was the May 2012 issue of Digital Camera magazine. My hot air balloons trio came out in the HotSHOTS column, at #10. It was my maiden attempt to submit my photography work to a publication. The shot was taken in March during Putrajaya Hot Air Balloon festival. I first submitted it to pixoto.com and it got the #10 best of the day award (10 seems to be the lucky number here), top 10% of the week award and subsequently top 10% of the month award (for the month of March 2012).
Oh! I recalled my entry about my excitement getting my first pixoto award here.
May was the month that I received an email from Malaysian Women's Weekly magazine asking for HiRes picture of my chalk banner. I was in Hong Kong when I received the email. The deadline given was a day before I was due back to homeground. I thought I missed out on a good exposure stunt. I came back home and forgot about it only to get a reminder the following week repeating the request. Opportunities do knock twice! So, I jumped on it and the did a short write up on my blog and products in May 2012 issue. Thank you, thank you, thank you Malaysian Women's Weekly for singling me out of hundreds if not thousands of local craft blogs out there.
I did my chicken dance, and felt on top of the world! My heart swelled with pride to see my name in bold prints along with the names of other websites that I used to browse in my early years of blogging. How cool is that? The feeling is just indescribable.
My third magazine appearance was in August 2012 issue of Aperture; another digital camera magazine. WooHoo!!!!! Another chicken dance moment.
This shot was shared on my wall by a fellow picture taker in a photography group I belong to. I didn't realized about this until he mentioned it to me. Even then, I thought he was pulling my leg; hence, the need for proof. (Don't mind the picture quality)
The next day, I made a quick dash to my local bookshop after sending Arwen to her playgroup session and get me a copy of the magazine.
Typo on the shutter speed
The prize
This will mark the first time I've ever won anything from my photography hobby. While my sewing and crafting hobby is now a self financing and income generating hobby, (They even pay for my camera and lens and what have you) I still have a long way to go with photography. Yet, it's not really the monetary rewards that I'm after. Money, after all is not an end itself but serve as a means to an end. These recognitions serve as pleasant highlights in my journey in the world of sewing, crafting and photography. With that, I'm signing off and wishing you a great weekend ahead.
I sent Danial to his Da Vinci Art class yesterday morning and was reminded by him of my promise to make him an apron. It's already his 8th class. After sending him to his class, I wondered at IOI Mall and made my way to Daiso. I was so tempted to get him the ready-made kid's apron as it's only RM5.00 and with my lost mojo, I don't know when I'll get around to make him one. At the rate I'm going, there's a big possiblity that we'll be buying our baju raya this year. I picked it up, and put it back. I just couldn't bring myself to buy what I can easily make. What more, now is the time my kids want to wear stuff that I make for them. There will come a day when they no longer want to.
So yesterday afternoon, I made these two aprons. I made Danial's first and I know Arwen would be asking for hers and to save her breath nagging me to make her one, I made another. I used some leftover IKEA laminated fabric and finish the edges with bias tape that I made earlier (Thank goodness for that, otherwise, I'd ditch this project too). The kids love it. Arwen wore it the entire evening even when we went out to McDonald's. That is just priceless don't you think, when your little ones simply adore the things you make for them.
Whoa! this would be the longest time for me to not post any entry on my blog. The last post was 6 July 2012. Almost a whole month of silence. What happened?! I was ill a few weeks back, suffered from viral fever. In fact, the whole household was infected. After that, I just seem to lost my mojo. After Supplies Surprise Bazaar, I've not cleared my room at all. It's extra messy as I just pushed everything on the table down onto the floor and took the table to the bazaar. If it hadn't been for Azrai putting it back in the room, it would still be lying infront of the door.
A friend who is also a doctor said it's probably a post viral fever recovery symptoms. I hope so but it's stretching a bit long even to my liking. I'm just avoiding the sewing room. One BIG reason is the loathing of clearing up. If I can't clear up, I can't sew. Fortunately, I've posted on my facebook page that I'm taking a break from accepting orders.
OK moving on... While gathering courage to tackle my sewing room, I've started something new. I ordered a pair of jumbo hooks over the internet and started using them with some tarn (t'shirt yarn I have lying around). Picture below was taken with my iphone and the small basket is the first project with these hooks.
My 2nd project was a rag rug. I followed this video on preparing some old bedsheets and turning them into yarn for my rag rugs.
And this video on making a simple oval shaped ragrug. Some good tips on how to add yarn when you reached the end of your working yarn, what to do if there's too much or too little stitches. I just love her rugs. They are so rustic 'ala Little House On The Prairie' like.
This is my first rag rug:
The one on top now is laid nicely outside the bathroom downstairs. I quickly made a second one which goes to Danial's room, just outside the adjoining bathroom.
These projects are super fast! I can make a small bath rug with one single fitted sheet in a couple of hours. I'm really hooked on this and got Azrai to ask for some old bedsheets from my mom inlaw and I asked my mom when I went to break fast at her house last Sunday.
Here's one rug made with MIL's old bedsheets:
And I made this from my mom's retro bedsheets. I used to see them since forever. They're probably and most likely older than I am. I love the retro batik prints and decided to combine 2 colours. Love how they turned out, don't you?
I caught the interest of some of my craft buddies and they asked me to organize a group buy. So, here's my poster for the group buy. If you're interested to jump on to the bandwagon, drop me an email at rozirahman@gmail.com.
While typing this post, I found out that I've maxed out my Picasa pictures storage for the blog. The whole 1GB of it. Now my pictures are stored in Flickr (Thank God for Pro Account).
Having said that, I think it's not too late to wish all Muslims wherever you are a blessed Ramadhan.
Signing off for now. Time to pick Danial up from school.
