Crafts, leisure and happiness

During my recent trip to India I had the opportunity to travel to Chennai from Bangalore (in Brindavan Express) and I realized I'm a rookie train traveller in India. That's the lowest level of expertise in train travelling in India, then there is the regular traveller, the frequent traveller and the expert traveller. The rookie train traveller "tries" to buy tickets online, does not understand the various quotas (s)he can fit to buy tickets from, does not know what a waitlist means and that a waitlist for tickets bought online is different from a waitlist for tickets bought at a counter and that if (s)he is waitlisted even after chart preparation it means that (s)he is not on any list if the tickets were bought online and is considered to not have a ticket and has to restart the process or look for some other train or means of travel. That's what happened to me. Then the TT (that stands for Ticket ...er .... ummm... Checker?) told me to read the fine print from th...

I had earlier believed scrapbooks are made out of scrap - old, usually discarded fragments of waste in the house - ribbons, buttons, old calendars, posters, etc. In fact I'm sure that must be the origin of the term scrapbook. But have you seen the "scrap" available in craft stores. Whew! Anyhoo, I've decided that I'll have a scrapbook ready by the time my lil one turns one - I have barely 2 months to go.   I technically started the project a long long time ago in a world far far away when I still hadn't had my lil one. I bought a 12X12 scrapbooking album, and lots of supplies from wal-mart and michaels . Read up tonnes of resources on the internet and funnily after he was born I hardly had anytime for it. Now the lil fella is off at the day care (the poor thing) and I have a couple of days before I return to work, so all the supplies that were gathering dust in a dark corner of the store room are finally out and I'm beginning the first page of my scrapboo...

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards My review rating: 3 of 5 stars This was an interesting read. It was definitely a page-turner but I'm not sure if I really loved the book or if I just wanted to get it over with. After the first few pages I felt this was any old Hindi movie and wasn't sure I liked it. Then when Caroline Gill takes the baby with her I started to like it. The whole decision making scene seemed so un-contrived, it just seemed to flow in natural order. I could relate to the character and felt I would have done the same thing in her place. Then came all that crap about Norah Henry in mourning forever. And David guilty forever - well that part I can understand in a way. But the Norah Henry character just did not do it for me and also David believing or "understanding" that he caused everything that happened with Norah's life or that everything that happened was a repercussion of what he'd done with Phoebe. Norah's depression - ...

Ungoo Originally uploaded by vin E Amigurumi is a word derived from the japanese words Ami meaning knitted or crocheted and Nuigurumi stuffed doll. Worked entirely in spirals it was a fun and quick project to work on. I initially made it as a gift for one of my friends who recently had a baby and knowing babies it probably is not such a good idea letting them chew on acrylic yarn so decided against it. To make it interesting to a baby I converted it into a rattle by inserting a small tin box with tiny jingle bells in it and it sounds great. I got this pattern on the Lion brand website and intend to make a whole jungle. Let's see.

Sigh! Look at all this beautiful yarn! http://www.purlsoho.com/purl/products/yarndetail/410

Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney My review rating: 5 of 5 stars Un-put-down-able! This is the first comic novel that I have read and I have to say this is one helluva debut by Jeff Kinney. It is all about an average boy-next-door type of kid Greg and his average life in his average school and with his average family told in an uproarious way with cartoons. I was laughing out aloud through the entire book. It's hard to say what part I liked most. The Zoo-Wee-Mama cartoon strip was priceless. And I especially liked the whole winter play incident, Greg decides to become a tree in the play so he can throw apples at a girl from his class that he wants to get back at, Toto the dog brings his comic books to read on stage, the shrub plays video games despite his costume, and the expressions on the faces of his family after the ruined play. OK, too many spoilers. In all, an outrageously hilarious book. I want more! View all my reviews.

Cool huh? Took me forever to finish it though. Men's sweaters can be quite monotonous to knit. The sweater I knitted Originally uploaded by vin E Yarn: Paton's Merino Wool Pattern: Inspired (made quite a few modifications) by the pattern on the Berroco patterns site. Here's the link. Doesn't look quite so much like the one on the Berroco site. The sleeves of my sweater are shorter and the whole sweater should have had a closer fit. Nevertheless doesn't look too bad on the whole.