baked sushi

Remember when I found those sushi cupcakes on craftster? Well, I finally got around to making them! Here they are:

My mom - who's over from France for 3 weeks - and I made them today, since it was too cool outside to really do anything. They turned out really good, and there's even too many to decorate. We put together 3 boxes all together to give out as gifts, the rest are undecorated and waiting to be eaten.

flippin' sushi boxes

A couple weeks ago, I stumbled upon this fantastic craft on craftster, where someone made sushi roll cupcakes (which is unbelievably clever).

Since my mom's coming here for a few weeks in May/June, and she loves sushi, I thought that this may be a really fun craft for the two of us to do together one day. I've got pretty much everything, except for those bento boxes that the sushi's displayed in.

So, I scoured google, yahoo search, ebay, dollar stores, Costco, Sam's Club, everything - with no luck. Absolutely none.

I finally came across a place that sells them in the US - and better yet ships to Canada (few places do, I've no idea why) and for the last week we've been exchanging emails regarding different box sizes, payment methods (they took paypal! woo hoo!), shipping costs, minimal order, etc.

Finally got ready to order, and I get an email early this morning that they don't sell retail! Didn't they know this a week ago?!?!? What the hell!

So, a week was wasted, unfortunately. Since I'm on a bit of a time restraint, and I need to receive this boxes before my mom gets here, I was a bit ticked off that I was mislead. But, I have to admit that the woman who was emailing me was kind enough to direct me to a link to a place in California who sells the same size box that I was interested in. The cost for the items is a bit more (I have to order the box and lid seperately; the first company sold them together) plus, I find out when I'm checking out of this place, the two options to fillout my address is to fill out a US address or Europe. Considering that I live in neither, I'm having a hard time checking out my order.

Damn.

They're only open weekdays, so I sent them an email, explaining to them my time restraint and frustration of finding these boxes, so hopefully I'll be contacted Monday so I can place an order.

Phew. So, starting the weekend off on not a good foot. This always happens to me: I find a craft that I'm dying to make, and there's that one little peice that I struggle to find. Just one.

My other option, I think, and this is worst-comes-to-worst, is that between now and mid-May, we just consume a whole lot of sushi from the grocery store and wash those trays out really really well before filling them up with cupcakes. But, since my husband and brother aren't huge fans of sushi, this is a lot of sushi for me to eat in the meantime. I'd rather go with unused boxes, but we'll see what comes of the next week.

in a bit of a frump

I'm not entirely sure how to describe how I'm feeling this week, and I feel a bit presumptuous to vent too much, since there's hope still with two remaining days.

Firstly, I've been involved in quite a few knitting-themed swaps over the summer. Since I discovered that knitting and crochet themed swaps actually exist (many are hosted by blogger.com bloggers themselves) I've signed up for quite a few and swapped my heart out. (Naive of me to think that this would also be a great way to advertise a bit my ebay and etsy businesses, but I don't think that brought a whole lot of traffic, but that's neither here nor there.)

What has bothered me especially is twofold: one swap that I was invoved in, not to sound too selfish I hope, I felt that my swappee fairly much held back and I received not even the minimal requirements of that swap, and not only that, but I received items in it that are of no use to me. In this case, what I couldn't use, I gave to someone else whom I knew could use it, but I still felt a bit drafted by it.

Secondly, I'm still waiting on a swap package that I should've received back by the end of August. Again, not wanting to sound greedy (because I'm not) but I've never understood the logic behind voluntairally signing up for something and just not following through with it. If there's even a sneaking thought that there's a fiber of a chance that you can't get involved in something like a swap, then don't do it. But the good news from this one is that I've received an email saying that the package - despite being late (with apologies, thankyouverymuch) had been sent. Hopefully it'll get here tomorrow.

I suppose, after all that, I'm going into this sort of thing a bit more naively. I'll be holding off on the whole swap thing for a while, since I've been burned a teeny bit already, although it could be because I've been overwhelmed with other things that stuff like this may get under my skin a bit more than it needs to.

Phew. Venting's out. All that being said, I'm thinking of hosting a read-and-knit-along via a new blog in the new year, to save from hosting a swap. Kind of like a book-club-stitch-n-bitch-sort-of-thing, although I'm still processing the details of how I want to do it, and a book list to post as well.

Now, what would a thread be w/o me posting a few pictures? Below are:

a matt WIP with crochet sushi...

And something I call my 'grunge blanket' because it reminds me of grunge-music-era sweaters:
Despite my quantity of yarn, I realized about 3/4 of the way into it that I hadn't enough yarn to make the size throw I wanted, so it's in the process of being frogged and reknit into something else grunge-themed.