Monday 15 June 2015

Gifted Gorgeousness SAL June Update and Lovely WWKIP Day


I was so excited to write this post that I prepared a draft on Saturday evening hoping to post first thing on Sunday, only to realize that it isn't 15 on Sunday ...

This time for the GG SAL, I have two finishes to show

I finally put last stitch on the Sunflower bouquet on Friday evening and it turned out more beautiful than I expected. This is a retirement gift for a very generous colleague.


After the initial hick ups of bad chart quality and not having required floss, the second innings went smooth. I  skipped backstitching the flowers (You all know my fear of backstitching, don't you !) .This may be my best attempt at backstitching ...lol
Here is a close up of the stitches.




Notice how in the second pic , stitches are in all directions. This is my first project where I tried having all my \\\\ and //// in same direction. It took me 36 days to finish this piece. Other details can be found here

The second partial finish is the EMS April flower of the month, except the inner borders. I have decided that I will stitch the borders during my crafty meet ups as it requires less counting. The fabric was a gift from a friend ,hence I can include this in GG SAL.

13th June was World Wide Knit in Public day and I decide to take the initiative for organizing it here in Kuwait. This was first time for Kuwait and we had an attendance of 8 wonderful ladies.

Image courtesy :Tammy


The café where we met was situated by the Sea
We had such a gala time chatting and crafting that I'm sure everyone made new friends.
I even tried my hands at crochet and failed terribly. Tammy was patient enough to teach me the basics. Look what wonderful gifts Tammy gave me :


My knitty friend L from ravelry group will be leaving Kuwait soon and this is what she gifted me.


                                           

Thank you Ladies for such a great time and gifts.

I will now have more stitching time from Thursday because of lesser working hours in the month of Ramadan. I hope to finish my pending projects and start a new one.

I'm off to see what other stitchers have to show in their GG posts.







Wednesday 10 June 2015

New recipes and An Upcoming Meetup

The cooking fairy is here (that's my equivalent of stitching bug) and I have been trying a lot of new recipes in the past few days.

DH & Me are again in that mode where we refuse to eat the common daily food and everyday we want to have "something new" for dinner.

I'm going to add a new feature to my blogging about cooking. I'm now going to  rate the recipes I try for ease of cooking, time required for cooking,ease of availability of ingredients and DH's rating for taste.
I'm not a big chef or food connoisseur that my ratings or review will matter much . However , there are reasons why a person would decide to try a new recipe. Ingredients and time required to cook are the main factors which let me decide whether I will cook that recipe or not. With my work schedule. I'm prefer less time consuming recipes.

1. Oven roasted Zucchini


Zucchini in one of the new ingredients I have added to my food plate now. Zucchini is not native to India and is only available in special stores there. Since I have moved to Kuwait, I wanted to use it in my cooking so I bought a big box of Zucchini last week.
DH loves roasted food and this what I cooked ...
Recipe source:http://www.cookingclassy.com/2014/05/garlic-lemon-parmesan-oven-roasted-zucchini/
Ease of cooking : 9/10 if you have a oven at home(Higher rating -easier to cook)
Time required : 30 mins , Rating 8/10 (Higher rating -less time to cook)
Availability of ingredients :8/10
DH's rating : 8.2
Changes made to recipe: I used a table spoon of cheese spread instead of parmesan cheese .

2. Zucchini With Corn and Cilantro

Of course one more zucchini recipe.. remember I bought a box. Sorry no picture

Recipe source:http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20509747_8,00.html
Ease of cooking : 10/10
Time required : 15 mins , Rating 9/10
Availability of ingredients :8/10
DH's rating : 6.6
Changes made to recipe: I used coriander instead of cilantro .

3. Spinach with Eggs (Yumurtalı Ispanak)
Recipe source:http://almostturkish.blogspot.com/2009/04/spinach-with-eggs-yumurtal-ispanak.html
Ease of cooking : 9/10
Time required : 30 mins , Rating 8/10
Availability of ingredients :10/10
DH's rating : 6.2

Spinach is not one of my favourite greens and DH absolutely loves it. Turkish cuisine has many spinach recipes and I chose Yumurtalı Ispanak this time.
Please do not hesitate to try this recipe as the DH rating is based on the bitter taste of spinach. Turns out that he had bought a local green leaves(don't know the name) thinking that it was spinach.
I'm sure if cooked with spinach the rating will go up to 8 :)

4. 3 B Stir fry
Recipe source:http://www.tarladalal.com/3-B-Stir-fry-(-Healthy-Diabetic-Recipe-)-33690r
Ease of cooking : 9/10
Time required : 30 mins , Rating 8/10
Availability of ingredients :7/10, May have to buy bean sprouts from a super market
DH's rating : 8.75
Changes made to recipe(not intentional): I read baby corn as sweet corn ;)

The recipe turned out to be delicious...I wasn't expecting that.
Next time I'm thinking of serving it with plain rice.

That's all on cooking front, let me know if you try any of these recipes.

Remember how I told you that I'm desperate to meet crafters locally. I think my prayers may have been answered...I read about World Wide Knit in Public day somewhere on the internet, and thought why not. I'm a part of knitters group and I know the basics.
So I'm now hosting World Wide Knit in Public day in Kuwait (I'm teeny meeny proud of this).
More prayers answered--I found Tammy through one of fellow bloggers post.
Tammy is an active blogger, crocheter, crafter and a lady with most infectious positive attitude. I haven't met her yet ,all this is what I gather from her blog and few email interactions. So I contacted Tammy and told her about my idea WWKIP in Kuwait. She encouraged me and have been actively spreading the word about the event. Thank you Tammy.

Well when I say I'm hosting the event, there is not much I need to do apart from some internet posts and registering the event.
I know I shouldn't expect a big turn around for the event but I'm sure I will meet new knitters/stitchers/crocheters there.

Inspired by Tammy's blog I will now try to include one picture of my life in Kuwait.
This is a picture of the first flower which bloomed at my house in Kuwait.
We just loved it and couldn't help clicking a picture ...



On stitching front ,I have finished stitching the Sunflower bouqet with only the dreaded back stitching left to do. There are 5 shades of back stitching and the chart is in black and white . So I will use my imagination ....

See you soon for the GG post.


 

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