Little Purl of the Orient

Fab* and the city

Featuring Ab Fab at Queen's Road Central, Hong Kong.

Fab* is for Colinette and is also for fabulous colleagues, The Shrek and Princess Fiona, who played with me and took these pictures for me in Central today during lunch.

Completely exhausted, both physically and mentally. Frustrated as well, as we were informed that Ji Yuan did not get accepted for the primary school we brought her for the interview yesterday because she refused to speak up or respond to the teachers. Of course she will not speak to strangers in a strange setting, isn't that what we've been teaching her all the time. It's so ironical when she has an excellent school report but is being penalized because of her quiet nature. It makes me love her even more. We'll have start to look for another option. Here's mama and Ji Yuan viewing the Renoir painting on loan from Musee D'orsay at the Hong Kong Museum of Art yesterday after the interview.

French vanilla revisited

Thanks to Kerstin, now we know that "French vanilla is made with a custard base. The egg yolks make the ice cream a creamy yellow." And here's more information on vanilla. It's not as plain as you might have imagined.

I'm loving the French Vanilla Ab Fab stole. One more repeat to go.

French Vanilla and Pineapples

My mother-in-law was very happy to receive the flower basket shawl yesterday. She kept telling her daughters that 'Ah Soh', that's what she calls me which means daughter-in-law, made her a shawl, shaped like a bat (a bat?), which according to her, will bring good luck. I would rather she thinks that it looks like a butterfly but whatever. It's still CNY so everything you say has to be very auspicious.

Today, I went back to work and am I glad. To tell you the truth, the festivities stressed me out quite a bit. My sisters-in-law and their families came to my house everyday starting from the day before the New Year, that is 6 days in a row. To me, that's a tad too much but being the daughter-in-law, I'm not suppose to express any opinion in the household.

Instead of trying to take a better picture of the FBS (I'll do it this weekend in good light), I worked on the Ab Fab yesterday afternoon. 72 stitches for 4 repeats of the scallop pattern plus 2 garter stitch both sides. Here's one colour repeat. I was a bit apprehensive about the colour sequence, notice the darker colours 'pooling' at both ends? Then I thought, what the heck, que sera sera, whatever will be, will be. I'm going to stop worrying this every minute and knit on. And just what is French Vanilla suppose to taste like?

I forgot to mention earlier that my cousin brought with them goodies from my mum, yummy homemade pineapple tarts! There are many dialects in Chinese and hence there are different rhymes and different auspicious food. Pineapple tarts are what's lucky for us back in Singapore. Pineapple sounds like 'Prosperity Comes'.

This is the only thing I can make other than rock buns that I learned from Home Economics in secondary school. Click here for the recipe: