Table Runners Turned Seat Covers

Does this look like a seat cover to you?  It doesn't to me, but that's what my sister uses it for in her car.  The monkey fabric is actually that waterproof stuff that you can find at craft stores.  It's a bit difficult to work with, and I found that I needed to put the regular material on the bottom while stitching with the sewing machine.  I machine quilted this time, instead of hand-quilting.  It's easy-peasy, so why did I take for-ev-er?

Um...yeah...no excuse for the tardiness.  Sorry Min.  Hope your Rav and you like the new "seat covers."

Missing My Friend

One year has gone by, and I am still without words. I do know that I always miss you, Leo. Best of all, I remember your inquisitive self, how impressed I was when you wrote your name on a notepad (which I still have), and I loved watching you think when we peppered you with questions. Thank you for being one of my best memories of the Bay Area.

What 2011 Taught Me

At the end of every year there are always a multitude of best and worst lists. This is not one of those. Instead, this is a list of what I learned in 2011 because Life decided this should be a year of lessons.

• If given nine days, I can pack up my life in cardboard boxes and move out. An amazing feat if you have ever been witness to how much stuff I have in my possession.
  
• I had to eat almost the whole plate of humble pie, but I can ask my friends and family for help in a sticky situation. Even better to know? I did not really have to ask because they all offered their assistance immediately.
  
• For some reason (which I don't quite get) my friends are willing to let me come and stay with them for weeks/months at a time. They are so flipping awesome I always wonder how I got to be so lucky to have these people in my life.
  
• Sometimes you just want to be numb.
  
• It is possible to fake it 'till you make it.
  
• Letting go of control was so, so hard to do, but it was pretty amazing to see the chips fall where they may.
  
• I finally get the owning-a-pet-thing. It is nice to know that there is a dog out there who loves you so much that he leaves you surprise piles of poop just to show you how mad he is that you are leaving for China.
  

Happy Birthday Dad!

Happy birthday to my Dad! Hope you get to eat that yummy, yummy lemon crunch cake from Diamond Head Market & Grill.

This Tree Grows in Redwood City

I am struggling to find any sort of words to say, but I am stuck. All I can process is that after Saturday, ginkgo trees have special meaning for me. Particularly, a young ginkgo tree recently planted in Redwood City. You see, it was planted for and dedicated to the little guy I wrote about in January.

Thank you to all the wonderful people who got together to make sure the tree was planted so that we could all gather together for the dedication.

Happy Birthday Kristie

On this day, 20-some-odd-years-ago, the youngest of us sisters was born. Happy birthday to Kristie!

Happy Birthday M-O-M

It's my mom's birthday today. Happy birthday to her!

In Thanks

So I've been sitting on this blog topic for a little bit, and every time I think I want to write about it, I change my mind. Between the earthquake in Japan and the resulting tsunami activity of the past 24-ish hours, I changed my mind again.

It's time I say how thankful I am for my friends and family. I never say it enough to my family, but I do appreciate them—more than they could ever imagine. But really, I want to "talk" about my friends today.

My friends freaking rock. I pretty much have always known that, but lately...well, lately they have really gone the extra 5,280 feet for me. The most tangible example I can give you is that I need more than two hands to count the number of friends who have opened their home to me. And I don't mean for a short visit.

And that's really all I can say on this right now.

That, and thank you, thank you, thank you.

Happy Birthday to My Grandma

Today is my Grandma's birthday. She rocks. Some tidbits about her:

• She taught me how to sew and iron.
  
• She also used to pick my sisters and me up everyday from school.
  
• When she picked us up from school, my grandma always had some sort of ice cold drink for us. Mostly I remember that it was Tang.
  
• She can't sit still!
  
• She made dinner every night, packed it up, and sent it home with us when my mom picked us up on the way home.

Happy birthday, Grandma! You are the best person I know in this world, and I hope I can some day be as patient and kind as you.

By the way, the picture above is slightly old (circa 2006 I think), but I love this picture of my grandma and her girls.

Happy Birthday

Can't say that I remember when this happened, but my sister, Mindy, was born on this day, 30-something years ago.

Happy birthday, Min! Did you have your spaghetti dinner?

In my family, you get to pick your birthday dinner, and it's been many years since Mindy's had anything else but my mom's spaghetti. If I was at home, I would make her some cupcakes. Next time, next time. Hope you enjoy your annual subscription renewal to National Geographic Traveler, and a new addition to your photo props inventory (obviously, it's not a secret).

Eating With the Angry Korean Lady

Last week I went home for Christmas and New Year's, and enjoyed one of my most interesting dining experiences, thanks to my neighbor J, and the Angry Korean Lady.

J and I grew up next to one another, and he's like an older brother to me. Of course, now that we're grown and I live in the mainland, I rarely see either of the T-brothers, so I asked if we could meet up for drinks. For some reason we didn't think about food until a few hours before, and decided to get some Korean food instead.

Lucky me, J suggested Ah-Lang.

Located in the Imperial Plaza at 725 Kapiolani Boulevard, you will find a small Korean restaurant, operated by one woman. She calls herself "the Angry Korean Lady" and on the tables are notes that explain that she is "a one-woman show." Seriously. She does all the cooking, busing, etc. so she has no problem with you filling out your own order and bringing it in the back.

Feeling hungry? Becareful. If she feels like you ordered too much food, she'll come out and tell you that she's changing your order. Think you can handle a spicy rating of 10? You better be able to, because she will come out and tell you to scale it back. There's even more to the story, but I think you should experience it for yourself. One last thing...

Don't go here if you're in a rush. The service happens as its own pace; after all, there's just one person cooking. But, you can bring your own beverages (you gotta love Hawaii) and enjoy a leisurely meal.

In case you're wondering, we ordered kalbi and soon do bu. It was so yummy and affordable!

Great, now I'm hungry.

There's No Place Like Home

Akemashite Omedetoo Gozaimasu.

In case you're wondering about the photo above, that's how we celebrate the New Year in Hawaii. Culturally, we pop firecrackers to chase the bad spirits away; pop-culturally we do it for the fire and explosions.


If you have never spent a New Year's Eve in Hawaii, you are missing out. The food is great and there are firecrackers galore (until 2011 becomes 2012). I think I would feel totally discombobulated without all the noise and smoke.

Other New Year's traditions include cleaning the house (again, to get rid of all the bad spirits), pounding mochi, and eating ozoni and kuromame.


The mailbox has been through quite a lot over the years. This is how it looked in the first few minutes of 2011.

Sewing Questions Not Yet Answered

A little over a year ago, I blogged about the struggles I had with using using double fold bias tape to make a square neckline. Included were some tutorial-type photos because I could not find step-by-step instructions on the internet.

You have no idea how pleased I have been to see that it's been helpful for other sewers.

Sorry, I just had to say that because I appreciate all the comments people have left for me. Which leads me to today's post.

The following two comments were left for me in October:

I am a 13 yo. seamstress, and I like to sew jumpers. I made one, (with a square neckline), and it turned out fine. Then, I made another with the same pattern, (I made the pattern) , and I ended up with funny wrinkles at the corners. Where did I go wrong? The first time I used cotton/denim, and the next I used 100% cotton material... Any tips?? Thanks!
October 21, 2010 11:04 AM

How do you do corners without getting scrunchy? also- how do you thread and use a serger? Could you write a post about that? Thank you!!
October 21, 2010 8:23 PM

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to respond, but I've been a bit busy lately, and I also haven't really been able to come up with what I think is a suitable answer to either question.

In answer to the "funny wrinkles" and "corners without getting scrunchy" questions—I have another question. Do you have any photos of these wrinkles and scrunches? It would help me if you could send me photos (please reference the blog in your subject line). I don't think it was the material you were using since both are made out of cotton. My guess is that you somehow pinched the fabric under the bias tape, or that fabric was pinched at the "v" part.

And now we've arrived at how to thread a serger.

How did you know that it's been more than a decade since I've actually used a serger? We had a serger at my grandma's house, and I remember failing miserably at trying to re-thread it. The first place I learned to use a serger was in Mrs. Iki's sewing class, and we never changed the thread without just tying the two colors together and letting the machine stitch until the new color was threaded all the way through. The best I can do is share with you two Google finds:

• Diane Bossom's Serger Place Serging Guidelines—this one has a lot of tips and has an improvement on the method I used in Mrs. Iki's class
.

• eHow.com has a video, but I can't make any comments on how informative it is.

Thanks for asking the questions. I do wish I could give you better answers, but send me some photos and I'll see if any of my resources can provide more help. And you know, my photographer of a sister was actually the one who was better with a sewing machine. Yes, that's right before there was Mindy Metivier Photography, there was a seamstress who made a lot of clothes.

My Kind of Hallowe'en

For some reason that I don't quite get, people love Halloween. I have never really been into it, and don't really enjoy the dressing up part. It might be because it's always so cold and Halloween costumes for women tend to leave little to the imagination, but I think it's also because my costume ideas tend to just become a a big pile of FAIL.

This year I was sort of saved from Halloween because my mom was visiting. Even though she left on Halloween, and left me time for some fun, I am just too tired. Plus I didn't have time to even think about a costume.

So, for Halloween, I put on my The Graveyard Book t-shirt and I wrote a short review on Charlaine Harris' Club Dead. Lame? Yes. But it's better than nothing. After all, Neil Gaiman wrote The Graveyard Book, and he recently proposed that we should all give each other scary books for Halloween; and Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series is about vampires.

Oh, and thinking it would be scary, we watched Let the Right One In to start off the Halloween weekend. It was not scary at all, but it was a good foreign film, and a very interesting portrayal of a vampire.

Who am I kidding? My Halloween "celebration" was less than half-hearted. At any rate, Happy Halloween! There's still time to go out and find a scary book to give. I recommend Mr. Gaiman's Coraline. The Other Mother is spooky-ooky no matter how old you are.

On Overload

Lately, everything seems to be broken or a mess. From the car to the cell phone to ear phones...it never ends. It's got me a little discombobulated.

On top of that I haven't had much home-time recently, and I've got a project that I want to finish before my mom gets here. She gets here in about a week. The project is still in pieces. Some of them have been sewn together, but some of them have not. It still counts as being in pieces.

And then I want to clean the house before my mom gets here (it's really embarrassing for "guests" to see how we really live). This is something I would normally do over the weekend, but this weekend also happens to be one of the only weekends for us to go tailgating in SoCal. So, we're tailgating in SoCal. There will be no cleaning of the house this weekend.

On top of all this, I am still grasping onto my books. Yes, I must read. I need something to occupy my mental hamster. It's too bad I'm struggling with the book. So now I'm reading two.

This makes no sense. But, sometimes, this is how I roll through the mess. Burn the candle at both its proverbial ends.

My Grandma. In Her White Car.

Yesterday, my dear friend, author of the Footprints blog, shared a story about the car her dad drove. This immediately reminded me of my most embarrassing moment with my grandma, and this is something Mrs. S. wants me to share.

My story also involves an oh-so-shame car.

Let me start with this: my grandma is freaking awesome. She is one of the nicest, kindest, most generous people I have ever known. My grandma epitomizes the word, "grandma." From elementary through the early parts of high school, she picked us up from school everyday in her white 1960s Plymouth.

The embarrassing moment came on one of those days, in that car.

So the car was this huge, white, 1960s American behemoth. As a kid, it was embarrassing because it was so old. On top of that, my grandma drove extremely slow (she got her license late in life, after my grandpa's incapacitating stroke, and she never drove on the freeways). I always felt bad for the people behind us. Of course, my grandma was oblivious.

Then one day, someone did something that made her mad, and out the window she yelled, "DAAAMMNN YOU!!!" She may have shaken her fist out the window.

Are you sinking down a little in your chair for me? Maybe covering your eyes? I know I did. After all, she was driving so slow that you could see all the people on the sidewalks turn and look.

Can you even imagine my sweet grandma bellowing those words out the window of her car? Well, she did.

Mindy Metivier Photography

My sister has done something I am too much of a chicken to do. She started her own business, Mindy Metivier Photography. She has always loved being behind the camera, and she's finally taken a break from her job as a teacher and gone all-in!

Mainly she plans to focus on photo sessions for babies, kids and families, but she does have a fine art collection. I am totally biased, but I love her work, and a canvas print of the Golden Bridge photo hangs in my home.

Her website and blog will soon go live, but for now you can find her on Facebook or send her an email for her prices.

Congratulations Min! I'm proud and I'm jealous. Ganbatte!