things

i'm loving...

1. piles of pretty fabric. clean, laundered, ironed, folded, piled. but any, really. fabric stores are like candy shops

2. sweet baby knitting books such as these (to die for) 

3. cookbooks with happy family stories (you know, like a tale behind each recipe) eg molly wizenberg's a homemade life, which i am devouring right now. 

i read tremendously faster than i cook, so only made chapter one's potato salad so far (yummy pic below*), but have read past the 4th chapter's creme a la coeur already...scratch that, i have now read past the pain au chocolat chapter

* i added grape tomatoes and cucumber to the recipe and deleted the ranch dressing because for some reason, i don't like ranch dressing

i also really love this book by ellen leong blonder. 

it has beautiful water-color pictures of almost all the recipes, and is a must have for anyone who likes dim sum. a lot of things i've had at dim sum restaurants were such a mystery to me until i read this book. she did such a lot of research and recipe testing to write this book! i just want to give her a huge hug for demystifying a lot of recipes for some favourite dim sum. 

(hmm...maybe i ought to get an associate account for amazon since i seem to promoting their books anyway. and sorry for all the annoying look inside images. i'm too lazy to take out my camera to take actual photos)

4. pretty works in progress like this kimono for isla, 

or just some new bias binding i made (from this fabric)

5. the fact that i have very little done for the holidays, VERY little, yet the panic has not set in yet. 

i decided long ago that this season will be handmade/homemade, vintage, books, or made by artisans (local, if possible) gifts only. i'm trying to reduce the amount of plastic toys and other stuff that we usually buy around this time of year. it's also high time i thought about how much waste we put into this holiday, so i'm going to try very hard to only make or buy handmade gifts from here on. or recycle/upcycle old things into new gifts. except for books, of course, because i can't stop buying books. those are like bits of wonderful knowledge we pass on. 

but what i really like is how each handmade gift requires so much thought to be put into it. you always end up really thinking about the person you make the gift for, and i love that about making gifts. the end result, no matter how paltry and unprofessional, is always something sweet. of course, i should have started work on such lovely gifts back in july, so as to be sure every gift is a thoughtfully made and on-time one. lol

if i do run out of time, there may be some "cookie dough in a jar" types of gifts. which i would love, btw, if anyone needs a hint. or maybe caramel corn . anyway, just tooting my own horn !!!