Dollar store diving and diamonds.

Welcome to my second installment of ‘this and that”, lets see what I got up to.

So it was my birthday on Sunday and my brothers on Monday, exactly 10 years and a few hours apart. For my baby brothers (he is 19 but will remain my baby brother till the day I kick the bucket) birthday I decided to crochet him something special. Prior to his birthday I had mentioned that I had crocheted a poke ball and this really intrigued him so it set my mind working. I scanned the internet looking for a pattern of his favorite pokemon, Pikachu. I finally found a decent one on a very awesome site, wolfdreamer.com (link available at the bottom of the page).

It did not take me long before I came up with a very cute replica of wolfdreamers Pikachu which I tweaked a bit, actually it only took an hour or two. I was very pleased with myself and I know I have done a good job when I have made something that I am reluctant to give away. I put together a birthday box and place the pokemon and ball on the bottom and covered it with a pair of jeans and a snazzy shirt that I had got him for his birthday. Needless to say he freaked when he saw it and my brownie point rating went through the roof, Scott Pilgrim style! The look on his face was worth the heart wrenching act of giving it away. Needless to say I made my teenage brother very happy which is a feat in itself.

To further on the topic of my ‘lil bro’s birthday, my mother treated D.J and myself to a day at the waterfront, a popular shopping centre located at…the water front. It was a great day and we had tons of fun. I never laugh as hard as when I am with my family. D.J and I have this intuition where we can see the joke in almost anything and we usually burst out laughing at something others might find quite normal and we don’t even have to say anything to each other except a nod of our heads in recognition on a blatantly obvious (well to us anyway) joke. So, moving on, the day ended with the scratch patch. This is a cave sort of thing at the end of the waterfront and it has cave golf and a room filled with polished gemstones. Now, if I did not mention that I love sparkly and colourful thing, then now is the time to say that I do. I was in total paradise  rolling around in the stones. For R50 we bought a cup and filled it with stones that we sat picking out for ages. I remember that I had been there as a child as part of an outing when my mother worked at the school day care and during the school holidays the kids used to stay at school and the day mothers would look after us. Anyhow, for one outing we went to the scratch patch and I must say that the feeling I had when I was kid seeing the scratch patch for the first time had not changed in anyway .The gems where still as sparkly and the feeling still as euphoric. I still remember as a kid, all of us tots searching for one elusive diamond amongst the gems and hoping to strike it rich.

gemstones

D.J and mom

Moving along to the dollar store bit of my babbling. Now to put things in context, in South Africa we have two kinds of dollar stores. The first is the “crazy store” which used to be the five rand store but nowadays you cannot even buy a soft drink with a five rand. This store usually has a few nice finds but the quality is a bit poor and I suppose the charm wears off the crazy store after a while since they hardly ever change their stock and all the crazy stores stock the same stuff. To get off subject for a bit, my local haberdashery (I love that word) has a great array of needlepoint canvases which I have been dying to try but as most craft lovers know, crafting gets to be a very expensive hobby so you can really just choose 1 or 2 to focus on. I have been eyeing the designs  and the sales ladies have been telling for ages just how much fun it is and how addictive it is too. So getting back to the point, I found a small cross stitch pattern for only R14 and decided to use it for practice and if I liked it then I would buy a larger one. I took the kit to the haberdashery and the sales ladies almost flipped, they could not belive that I had paid only R14 for the kit and told me that if was a great bargain, needless to say I shall go back and buy many more kits. So I gave it a go and lo and behold… I am hooked. It is such fun and I recommend it to any avid crafter to give it a go.

 The second type of ‘dollar store’ is the Chinese shops. I  am sure that I do not have to go into much detail as most places have these store. I found a ‘gem’ in one such store. It is a balsa wood kit for making teeny tiny furniture. It is so cute that I could not resist. I bought the dining room suite for R10 and can’t wait to get started. I want to paint and varnish it too and am hoping to turn it into a miniature diorama of a fairy house, lets see how far I get shall we because I have not even opened the packaging yet. Stay tuned to see how that turns out.

Okay so I have pretty much said all that needs to be said about my dollar store diving and diamonds adventures. Join me again to see what I get up to on my next crafting excursion. So till next time… Chow !