There are Wild Things on the Garden

For a city girl like me, living in a little cottage in the wood is a very novel thing. I'm not used to not having rows of street lamps leading me home, or not having a gate, a fence or a buzz code that separates my little world from the the rest of the world outside. Or indeed, to have to burn wood for heat instead of just turning the thermostat knob for an instant gas fire to pop to into life. But the thing that really bowls me over, every minute, is the nearness of nature. Just next to the house, not 10m away is the woods.
There's a walking trail that is so overgrown I wouldn't have recognised it if my neighbour & landlady, Penny, hadn't pointed it out. Everywhere I look are trees. The straight & upfight Fir, the over green & over abundant Pine and the picturesquely scarggly Arbutus.
And then there's the quiet. Quiet enough to hear the wind caressing trees, the bees buzzing and the somewhat oddly regular crunching of leaves?

A curious sound that I just had to investigate.

Looking into the trees
I saw the most wonderful sight.

A couple of deer had wandered into
the garden below our deck
and without so much as a by your leave,
were grazing on the grass & shrubs.

I snuck across the deck to its edge to have a closer look, taking the greatest care to make as little noise as possible so as not to scare them. It was the closest I've come to a creature of the wild (unless you count Minke the demon cat, who is, by the way, getting more feral, if that were possible). It was magic! Then, I heard the loud Putt Putt puttering of a car coming down the road and was afraid the deer would run away and hide and my magic moment would come to an end. But no. Those deer continued with their veggie & daffodil buffet unperturbed (so much for the Ford Escape Hybrid commercials).
What's more they, made themsleves at quite home and plonked their ample tushes down under the dappled shade of a large Fir tree then proceeded with their after lunch nap.







I guess this city girl still has a lot to learn about the country kampung life.

Moving to Salt Spring Island

When I was a little girl, moving houses was always looked forward to. It was something rare & exciting. It was a welcomed change in routine, exploring new rooms and a new neighourhood. It was looking out new windows and seeing the world in a whole new light.
I guess moving houses then you're an adult isn't that much different. Except for the mountains of stuff you have to pack, ship & then unpack. You tend to amass stuff as you go down the road of life. I do at least. These days, I am learning to buy less and reuse more these. Not so much because I'm trying to be green (which I do try, and now living on Salt Spring has forced me to) but more so that I'll have less to lug around when the next move comes along.

So, in early April, we did the BIG move to from Burnaby, in the Metro Vancouver area, to Salt Spring Island. For those scratching their heads trying to figure out just where this Pulau Air Asin is, let me enlighten. It's part of the Southern Gulf Island group which is sandwiched between Vancouver Island & mainland North America. And because the move involved catching two ferries and travelling over 150km (slightly further than Mersing is from Singapore), we had to do it over two days.
Day one was to pack the huge 5 tonne Budget truck, which our friend Milan heroically drove. After we crammed our possessions into the truck, I could see that we were in serious trouble. We had more stuff than we had space. Which simply meant that all that couldn't be stuffed in the cars had to be left behind or thrown away.That's when I resolved to learn to live with less because of the nail-pullingly painful decisions on what we had to leave behind.

The next day started bleary-eyed at 4am to travel from the skypad we has sold to catch the first ferry on the first leg of our move. Horseshoe Bay in West vancouver to Nanaimo on Vancouver island. Then the hour drive to Crofton to catch the local ferry to Vesuvius Bay on Salt Spring. Everything went without a hitch. Even Minke, the demon cat behaved. Not a single peep, or sound or crumpling of the steel door of her transport box.
We were lucky, as we have been since coming to the island. The sun was out and nothing got wet. Only a few bumps & scrapes on the furniture.
Evening saw many familiar boxes & furniture jumbled about in an unfamiliar wooden house. Our new home is a cottage in the woods in a place called Trincomali heights. And we are settled. At least for this year.

Skypad SOLD

It's done! The skypad sold in under a week.
















After four years of living 18 floors above the Burnaby skyline, with truly spectacular views of the winding Fraser River, Vancouver Island,
the North Shore mountains, the city and Mt Baker, I'm trading it all for island living.
But that's for a later story.


It took a month's hard graft to get the flat into shape.

There was the painting of rooms, skirting and doors; fixing all the little bits that needed fixing and changing the gawd awful brass fitting the previous owners had installed in the bathrooms & replacing them with nifty, less fussy brushed nickel ones.




And cleaning like I've never cleaned before.
Who knew there were special cleaners for every surface imaginable?
The wood surfaces needed lemon oil, the kitchen counters had to have a strong but fresh orange smelling cleaner, the stove top need a ceramic cleaner, the windors & mirrors had Windex and the floors required some evil smelling anti-bacterial glunk.

Thank goodness the spring flowers were already in the garden centres!
The cheapskate in me reasoned that daffodils, primroses & pansies would last longer than cut flowers when we had our open house. so we just had to have them.
Especially if we had to have several open houses over the next couple of weeks with the property market being so depressed and all.



The colourful spring flowers really do add cheer and life to both the winter battered balconies.

But, it looked like we didn't need the daffodils to last that long after all. In fact, they only needed to last a few days. Because Jeff Harrison, our super realtor worked a miracle.








It chuffes me to say that we got multiple offers the next day after the open house.
And less than a week later, today as it happens, there was confirmation that the apartment has been sold. At the asking price.
In a word...
YIPPPEEEEEE !!!!!




Looks like my years of hard slog as a journalist and stylist at Home & Decor Magazine wasn't wasted.
All in all, I'd say that it paid off. In spades!

Have a look and tell me what you think.

Journey to the East

Ok.
So most Canadians wouldn't consider Ontario & Quebec the East of Canada since the Atlantic provinces of Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia & Prince Edward Island are more eastern.
But for a girl who's lived over four years in Vancouver (in a very western province) anything beyond the Rockies seems kinda east to me.
Anyhow, this year we start the Canadian education of the Kampung Girl. Which is why a trip was taken. Toronto, Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa, Kingston & the very touristy Niagara Falls.




And I must say, that if you plan to visit these cities, the autumn is undoubtedly the very best time to go.
Never seen so many variations of golds, reds, yellows & browns.
Never seen trees so dressed in their best.

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves...









The cities were kinda fun too.














Toronto had hard-to-keep-a-straight-face
art in the most unexpected places.

And their ROM (no, not the Registry of marriages, rather their Royal Ontario Museum) looks like a jagged spaceship of steel & glass landed onto a centuries old cathedral. And no, the people in front of it are not running away from an imminent alien invasion. I believe it was a charity run thru the city.


Ottawa was pretty impressive with it's oldy worldy parlimentary buildings perched on a high river bank.
What's amazing is the countless rivers, riverlets, canals and lakes that are found within that area. Apparently in the winter, Ottawa's canals freeze over and it's citizens go skating on it. How marvellous!
And another bit of fascinating trivia, did you know that Canada has more lakes than all the lakes in the world put together?
As we travelled through this land of lakes & locks, rivers & canals, I can't say that I'm surprised.


We went to a place called Peterborough and saw an amazing lift lock. It's kinda like a lift for boats to get from one level of a river to a higher or lower level. It uses huge pumps to raise & lower the water-filled lift.







Quebec City was quaint and the most like Europe. With its sensibilities too. Like, the painted bicycles fastooned onto building walls and huge brightly painted flower pots remind me more of quirky colourful Amsterdam.
























But the native Inushuk in front of the Provincial parliment house and the railway type architecture of the Hotel Frontanec feels very Canadian to me.


























We ended the trip to the touristy Niagara falls. What to do?
We were so close to it and it seemed a shame not to visit this place that's I've know from American TV shows since I was little. B got us a room facing the falls and boy was it worth it! The view was gob- smackingly gorgeous.










Here's to
four good years
of the married life!

Bags of Fun

I can't stop! It's like the gears in a perpetual motion machine always working,whirring and engaging. Always searching for a new way to attach a pocket or a handle. Sketching out in my mind, kinda like a butcher, how best to cut a coat. Which pieces to become what part. For instance, could the lapel really be the edge of the cover flap of a bag? Wouldn't it be too asymmetrical? Too rad? Apparently not. Little Emma, The Recycled Suits Tall Messenger bag was snapped up hours after it was listed on Etsy. Don't you just love it when a plan comes together?

Ok... I'm getting ahead of myself. Last weekend after the frenzied making of suited iPod cozies, I had some time to start cutting lovely coat I got at the Sally Ann. It took some intimate getting-to-know, during this process to find out how the coat was made in the first place before I could deconstruct it. And it was fun! It was like learning to read in another language. Someone else had written her design and her work in this coat and the story was spelt out in the stitching.

Well, it looked like these 2 designs won out when it came to making my bags.

The first was Emily, a messenger bag and then came Emma, her sister and a vertical messenger.

Both their outer pockets were reworked from the coat's pockets and their straps were made from the coat's front button holes. This was so that I could make both bags adjustable for different body sizes and purposes.

The buttons also came from the old coat and I felt it gave a sense of integrity to the bags. As did reusing the inner dusky rose lining.

Since I have no talent for painting pictures, I guess making bags will just have to do.

It Suites Me Just Fine.

Have you noticed how really well made men's suits are? Good suits have the best fabric and the stitching is sturdy & for the most part hidden. Ergo, this new line of cozies & bags I've affectionately dubbed
The Recycled Suits.










In the total other extreme of my pendulum swing from femminine, lush, shiny & silky taffetas, I've fallen for rough, muted, understated and stiff woolens & linens with the drama of a avalanche falling into a still lake.



What I love about this range is that it reinvents & reuses 2nd hand but thoroughly cleaned jackets that might have otherwise have gone to a landfill where it'll take up space to degrade over tens of years.
So not only will they be well made, but the bags & cozies will also be eco-friendly.
The thought of which always warms the cockles of my heart.





And, for my first offering - cool & dapper iPod cozies. The first three have just been listed on Etsy and have names befitting the type of jacket they were made from. There's urbane Mortimer, outdoorsy Fitzwillie and hunky Ken. The guys started out life as part of dishy double breasted suits. The left cuff of which morphed into the snug little cozies. In the spirit of reusing, I try to keep their original buttons and lining. They've been made tight and will snuggle most generations of iPods and many mobile phones, but was made specifically for the classic video iPod.

There are so many ideas fighting for attention in my brain right now for bag designs, I cannot begin to tell you. All are exciting and I cannot wait to get them out of my mind and into my hands...... Stay tuned to see which ones win.

What's a Girl to Do?

Shopping is a woman's prerogative. Shopping and shoes. And hats too. And these days, interestingly enough also cars, the fuel cell or electric cars, especially the new and utterly delicious Tesla Roadster.....Have I left anything out? My point, perhaps. But I can get so easily distracted nowadays.

Okay, back to shopping. In these western cities, an amazing and indubitably exhilarating ritual exists. The day after Christmas, most of the stock in stores goes on sale. The wonderous and exciting event called the Boxing Day Sale. And they are real sales, not like the ones we have in Singapore, where items usually go for 50% -75% off the retail price. A concept that warms the cockles of my value-for-money Asian heart.

Anyway, I took time off and wandered the fabric stores to hunt for fabric, beads and tassels for the new 2008 range. $800 plus later, I have the pleasure to showing off the treasures plucked from the hands of other boxing day warriors.

There's the gorgeous tassel beads in a dozen dazzling colours.

Also found some brilliantly tactile flocked fabrics. The thinner ones are gonna be great for summer scarves and the nice thick ones for the flap covers of the new bags that'll be probably starting next week.

Then there's the sturdy, earthy upholstery grade fabrics, which are destined for lumbar pillows and the inside of bags that I can't wait to make.

And of course interspersed with all the goodies are the beautifully smooth and shimmery taffetas. The mainstay of Rumah Kampung's range of scarves. In soothing blue, cool titanium and juicy black plum.

Fab as these fabrics are, I'm sure that I'll not be able to restrain myself as I see other designs in the shops throughout the year. So I guess this cannot be said to be the all encompassing variety for this enterprising year of the Earth Rat. Which is the first sign of the Chinese zodiac and is said to be an industrious bringer of prosperity, luck and new beginnings.