SuperEggplant

bag lady redux

Posted on July 21, 2005 by mariko

I have a thing for resealable plastic bags. I mean, what’s not to love? Of course, I also like things with designs splattered all over them, so whenever I see seasonal sandwich bags with pumpkins or snowflakes on them, I cannot resist. Imagine my glee, then, when Dixie told me about the patterned sandwich bags offered by Mobi. I had to have some!

It took a while to get here, so Mobi graciously compensated me with an extra box of baggies. Woohoo!
Okay, on an unrelated note, a friend of mine is going to Vancouver, BC, for a family vacation. She would like to know about any delicious Chinese restaurants, nothing too fancy, either in Chinatown or in the downtown area. Any suggestions out there?

Posted in General | 14 Comments

help, please

Posted on July 19, 2005 by mariko

The colors are pretty washed out in the photo. This is the beginning of the striped short-sleeve sweater from Sarah Dallas’s Vintage Knits, also known as the Special Kay sweater, since Kay kindly gave me the yarn! In the book, the sweater is knit in four pieces: front, back, sleeve, sleeve. I knew all those ends would send me over the edge, so I decided to knit it in the round from the bottom up. Trouble is, I haven’t done any calculating yet. So, I am seeking some suggestions in order to avoid the math (my brain has a limited capacity, and I use a large percentage of it to decide what kind of candy to eat). Should I do a raglan sleeve? How about a saddle shoulder? Too complicated? Know any patterns I can refer to?
And I’ll end here with a gratuitous shot of Deedle trying to sniff a neighbor’s dog:

Posted in knitting | 16 Comments

shrinky dink goodness

Posted on July 18, 2005 by mariko

I have to share these great shrinky dink tags that Jennifer surprised me with:

Cute, huh? They are very fun. I forgot to attach one to Que’s tote, but the tag does say “handknit,” doesn’t it.

Posted in other crafting | 14 Comments

bean bag

Posted on July 17, 2005 by mariko

I wanted to make a little something to thank Que (also known as Bean) for showing Thuy and me around Los Angeles, so I made, you guessed it, a little tote!

I used the Hasi Hester vintage fabric I scored a while back. Que runs a wedding flower business, so I thought the pussywillows were appropriate.

Posted in sewing | 19 Comments

ready for the party

Posted on July 15, 2005 by mariko

The 12 cartons of ice cream for the Dreyer’s neighborhood block party I won arrived this week! It doesn’t look like that much ice cream, does it? It’s supposed to serve 100 people, but clearly Dreyer’s has never seen me eat ice cream.
I still need to make invitations and take them around the neighborhood. We are planning on having the party on the 24th, so I really need to get things rolling! I have sampled the coffee flavor, and Peter has sampled several. He has decided it’s perfectly okay to nibble and taste all the flavors. What are the neighbors going to think when they open the cartons and find little bites taken out?

Posted in candy/chocolate | 4 Comments

splatgirl mail

Posted on July 14, 2005 by mariko

I got a fun package the other day from Lara. It was completely unexpected, which made it even more fun. Look at the lovely packaging:

And the lovely contents:

CHOCOLATE from B. T. McElrath, a chocolatier that has been on my list of “chocolates to try” for some time. The colorful things on the left are silicone cupcake liners! Peter was so taken with them that he put them on display (and don’t worry, he rearranged them later so they were in Roy G. Biv formation):

Thanks to everyone for the rental car suggestions. After checking tons of web sites and calling AAA, I settled on hotwire. They had the cheapest deal, though it still wasn’t that cheap. I tried Priceline, and, well, they kind of mocked me. I got some message that said, yeah, we would all love to be able to rent a car for $10 a day, but get your head out of your eggplant, you IDIOT. Okay, it was nicer than that, but that was the gist of it.

Posted in candy/chocolate | 9 Comments

matcha fraps for all!

Posted on July 13, 2005 by mariko

Did you all go sample the matcha frappuccino today? I was so excited to learn that TODAY was the day. Megan called me this morning to inform me that she had just had a sample, and then after I got online I learned so much more, including the important fact that they were available in my little country village (thanks, Nancy!).

Peter picked one up for me on the way home from the pool. Apparently his server was a high school kid who still hasn’t figured out the correct spelling of his name (Peter’s a high school teacher). I still got a kick out of it, though. Next time I go I’m going to ask them to write my name in huge letters, too. So, I could do with a slightly stronger matcha flavor, but I thought it was delightful and refreshing, and I will definitely get it again!
Oh, tangent: Does anyone know any good resources or tips for getting cheap rental cars?

Posted in candy/chocolate | 22 Comments

cupcake delight

Posted on July 12, 2005 by mariko

Megan told me that Hostess came out with purple and orange cupcakes, so of course I was immediately on the lookout for them. I happened upon some at a gas station in Ventura!

Isn’t it beautiful? Known as the Wonka Cake, it is part of a promotion for the upcoming release of Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. The cream filling is also purple! It basically tasted like a Hostess Cupcake, but I was a tad disappointed with the frosting on top. I love the chocolatey fudgy plasticky taste of the classic Hostess cupcake topping and thus was a bit taken aback with the purple frosting. I swear it had a tinge of grape flavor, but maybe I was just imagining it. At any rate, it tasted nothing like chocolate.
On another note, I saw an ad in a magazine today for the Starbucks green tea frappuccino. I had one of these in Japan several years ago and never thought I’d see it in the US! I checked the Starbucks web site, but there was no mention of the elusive green tea frappuccino. Does anyone out there have any inside info on this?

Posted in candy/chocolate | 33 Comments

Kinokuniya

Posted on July 11, 2005 by mariko

No trip to a city with a Kinokuniya is complete without, well, a trip to Kinokuniya, so of course we went during our day in LA. I actually exercised some self control and purchased just a couple books, neither of them about knitting or sewing.
The first book I got is a Japanese book about Fire King! We collect Fire King glassware, so I had to get it to add to our collection. The photos are gorgeous, of course:

The ISBN, in case any of you are interested, is 4-7770-0288-8
The second book I got is about pompoms, specifically about making little creatures out of pompoms! How crazy is that?

Here are a couple sample pages:

I’m guessing that is some fancy hedgehog on the left. The things on the right are various fruits. Guess it’s time for me to whip out that fancy Japanese pompom maker now! The ISBN is 4-8347-6248-3. It’s part of the Petite Boutique series.

Posted in other crafting | 15 Comments

I have returned

Posted on July 10, 2005 by mariko

I got back from my weekend excursion, and boy am I going to sleep well tonight! I went to Santa Barbara and LA. In LA we toured around the fabric district (yes, Silvia, you were right about that), Little Tokyo, the Korean part of town, etc. I only took a couple of photos, for some reason, and here they are:

That’s a small corner of Michael Levine, an amazing fabric store in the fabric district of LA. It was so overwhelming that I only managed to buy a couple zippers and some webbing! The fabric and garment districts are very lively and energetic, so it was quite fun to wander around and soak it all in.

There’s Thuy and Que in some random store that had tons of ribbon and webbing and such. I would like a room just like that.

Dinner at Soon Tofu (I think that’s what it was called). The tofu dish (the small pot in the upper left-hand corner) comes out bubbling and boiling like some crazy lava flow! I’m not that familiar with Korean food, but this was really tasty. The big bowl is bibimbap.

Posted in General | 16 Comments

bag lady redux

help, please

shrinky dink goodness

bean bag

ready for the party

splatgirl mail

matcha fraps for all!

cupcake delight

Kinokuniya

I have returned

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