2013 and crochet baby hat

2013 Already ..... I was out of town vacationing when the year changed and I was hoping to come back with a great big , picture heavy post of my holidays etc....Well, that didn't happen. The silly usb with all the pics is still avoiding me . Waited all this time...no more. Time to move on. A lot happened , mostly good , and we had a great time all in all. Couple of weddings , social events, medical issues and a short trip to Ooty, my birthday , the new year etc.... Anyways ,it's good to be back home and settled into to the usual routine. I have a few projects I'm working on currently, almost done. Some are done but haven't yet reached my friends so cannot post pictures yet. So I leave you with a picture...... This is a picture of a baby hat I had finished just before I left. It has removable flowers to match with different outfits. Now I'm toying with the idea fo designing a little outfit to go with it and booties too.

Spring is here !
There are signs everywhere......Beautiful red roses in my balcony ...yay! This is the reason I'm going to spend most of the day in the balcony crocheting away and enjoying the beautiful breeze and lovely plants.

School Project
Last week was full of things happening and this week seems to be nothing easier. Wonder how the end of the year can get busier by the day? This post is for my son ...he insisted that I show off his project for creative festival ,last monday. So here goes...My son ( the little one on the left ) and his classmate holding up their class project ' The Atlantis , Dubai' . It's just a gate but you can imagine the eight year olds ...to them it's the whole island!!
They were so helpful and managed to carry it to and back from school without breaking it . That I say is a huge achievement!!!

Stir- fry Squids
On a cooking spree these days besides the bag fever. This is a recipe I whipped up after having a stir fry sqid dish at a restaurant recently. It was well received and praised to no end but I think it will not be a regular dish ....too much of coconut and butter !!! And I have to watch my weight , health , nutrition ....etc.

Squid marinated in {salt, soy sauce, ginger-garlic paste, vinegar, red chilly powder} and stir-fried in butter / olive oil - your choice. Keep aside.



The grated coconut and finely diced onion being well roasted with a little butter, green chilly and curry leaves in a kadhai.



Then added the squids into the above mixture and stirred around for a while( abt 10 mins) ....no water to be added. Garnish with chopped coriander leaves.




And Voila ! Here you go ...easy-peasy yummy treat all ready !



It's a quick and easy recipe ...as you can see I'm no good at writing recipes. I just whipped up this one and had to share.

Winds of change
There has been a significant change in the temps around here and it feels like Summer is Officially begun. It's getting hotter by the day. Ofcourse it also means a shift in the crafting medium. It's more of threads and cottons rather than other yarns.
The evenings are a bit cooler and it's nice for walks in the park and kids have a great time playing outdoors. Sadly this might last only for a couple of weeks and then it gets too hot to even step outside.
On the knitting front , things have been sort of adventurous. I had started out the February lady sweater as a KAL along with my online UAE knitting group and made a huge mess of it. The lace part was totally ruined in my hands and had to put it away. But then I decided to do the baby version of it - hoping it will help. So I'm already working at it. It's an Elizabeth Zimmermann pattern called 'Baby sweater on two needles' from Knitters
Almanac. I'm still at the yolk part and scared of the sleeve separation row. But I've had some really good advice and support from my online friends and hopefully I can tackle this one.
No pictures yet......just busy knitting and frogging !

Life Will Find A Way
It's strange how things turn out totally different from what we expect, what we plan and what really follows. Life teaches you so many lessons by just pushing circumstances on you and catching you so unaware that it takes a while to simply recover from the shock and actually feel the impact of our experiences. Anyways, its a good thing that God has given us a nature to bounce back and catch up with our lives and our usual activities. I do not want to be too specific ..... ( I still am not upto talking about it ) but there has been a turn of events .I'm in Bangalore right now on an emergency leave until probably the end of the month.
All I can say is that I'm doing a lot of growing up and learning ...and I think 'growing up' was sure over rated when we were kids lol !!! All the gramour of the freedom of adults was what made sense ...the responsibilty factor was hiding far behind in the shadows. Ok...I know I'm going on and on ...sorry about that ..just letting off some steam, venting ..etc.

It's not about food!
We had a dinner party at my place last thursday. It was a one day notice and I went almost crazy getting stuff done. We had Beetroot Raita, Russian salad, Ceasers chicken salad, Sewian (vermacelli ) biryani, fried Quail, Bhagare baigan ( egg plant ) , Khumb Akbari ( Mushrooms) and masala papads. And for desert - Ras malai and Trifle. Needless to say It was a long weekend!
This is the Beetroot raita. I just loved the colour! And this makes a good dip too. The kid had it just for the colour.

I loved the way this looked. You know - the colour looked just too good to eat and it tasted nice too. Now photographing food is a complicated business. Safe to say that everything looked just delicious but the pictures tell it differently so those other pictures are canned.
Anyhoo, we also had a last minute cancellation and three people couldn't make it. I was not too upset - lazy 'ol me was happy to have enough leftover for the next day which meant that I could get some much needed rest and peace! Hey, I was being positive, not lazy !!
This weekend I went to the Magrudy's Book shop in Dubai Festival City. Nice place and a good collection of books. Even the reading area was very cozy. I was pleasantly surprised to see a craft section there. They had quite a nice collection of crafts books too - although a very few crochet books. There was some nice yarn and thread too different types ( mostly sirdar and UK yarns), really pretty but not much of a colour range - even finding such types of yarn available out here is such a treat. Even if it is just eye candy! I found the prices way too high- all the yarn and the books too. But it is worth visiting.

New Blogs
Well new to me anyways ! I just came across a couple of new Indian bloggers who also crochet besides doing other crafts. These blogs were very interesting and have some really lovely projects done. This is Ummeyusuf - lovely projects done and she is generous with the patterns too..... very talented and beautiful work done .
Another blog I came across is Nimatitus. It's very interesting and has a feel about life in UAE as well as some very pretty projects. Check these out.
And when I'm not busy blog reading and browsing I actually am doing some crocheting and catching up with more knitting stitches. I've tried many different stitches and now have officially started on cable stitches!!!

It's mid-November already ???? Where did all the time go? Another year coming to a close. And so much more to do before that happens. Is it just me who is in a rush or are there others who feel the same ? I think I"m begining to panic!!!!!
Here are some kitchen Pretties to make the cooking area charming. Simple and quick projects really. These were for kitchen themed exchange. And glad to know that my partner loved it.






It's mid-November already ???? Where did all the time go? Another year coming to a close. And so much more to do before that happens. Is it just me who is in a rush or are there others who feel the same ? I think I"m begining to panic!!!!!
Here are some kitchen Pretties to make the cooking area charming. Simple and quick projects really. These were for kitchen themed exchange. And glad to know that my partner loved it.