MoMo - Sewing School

Dongtan is a city with tons of surprises. Small stores. Small coffee places. Interesting restaurants. Happy-looking families. Happy couples. 

And there is a place called 모모의 다락방 (momo eui darag bang).

That place is a 10x10 foot big room. 

It has a great display window that replaces one of the 4 walls in it entirety. 

The three other walls are white.

But we don't really notice any of that.

Because Momo is a little paradise filled with little girls dreams. 

With expectations.

With imagination.

With hard work.

With simplicity.

It is filled with dolls.

It is, however, not really a place to buy dolls per say.

It is a place where they teach you how to MAKE them. The system is quite simple. You pay the equivalent of $50CAD/month or $100/3 months. The store is open from Monday to Friday 10-7h30 and the 2nd and 4th Saturdays of the month from 10 to 3. And you just go anytime you want. Now the more you go the more you get your money's worth. After the monthly fee, you just choose what you want to do. Anything you want to do. They don't look for qualification. If it's a hard doll you choose they let you do it, you do it at your own pace. The doll prices range from $10 to $100, depending on the fabric used. 

My favourite dolls there are what they call the SimDolls. They look like porcelain dolls, but are all made of cotton for the most part.

I knew about that store since last spring. I went in and asked for information and let it sink in. I wanted to make a doll. But I needed to find a reason. It's always like that. While I am a pretty impulsive person, when I put money and time into something. Or start a big project like this one, I feel like I need a push, a legitimate reason, separate from my own greed. That was the case for stuff like buying myself a super expensive wallet: I had to first buy an expensive wallet for someone else than me before, and make them happy. 

Then I also need to feel like investing time into something this big. That happens every fall season. 

They say it's because of the daylight lessening in the fall.

That we feel useless and a bit depressed. 

Maybe that's right. 

In any case, it's like that for me. Every time fall gets here, I feel a need to accomplish something, where the result will pile up. Be tangible. Real. Unlike all that goes through my head. On my first university year, I made curtains for my apartment (I got the inspiration from a nice apron I saw in Taiwan in my first trip, with pretty patchwork). My mother helped me all the while and they turned out really pretty!

The following year, I learned to knit. I made mittens, hats and key holders for my friends. 

Two years ago I learned how to make socks.

Last year, I was into bead crafts, and I also took the remnants of the mittens I'd knit for my ex boyfriend (they were at my place when he dumped me, so I shredded them. They couldn't fit anyone else cuz he has weird hands and they'd been made just for him. He has super long and thin fingers but his thumbs were super short) to make strawberry flowers on a knitted blanket.

P.S. I had to go through my old blog to find the links and pictures.... and god. It's almost hard to look at. It's filled with my exes. Oh well. I don't agree with most of people throwing away all the remnant of relationships when they have been long ones. Why would you need to erase your life? The best way to move on is to remember...

This year, I became a godmother for the second time. My brother will have another baby. When my sis told me that, I knew that the new baby would have my first doll. A guardian angel to protect and love the new baby. 

It was my first doll. But it still is my favourite. Probably because I poured a lot of love into it. It took me over 2 weeks to make it. I love making dolls. It's soothing all the pain. Giving me peace of mind. And they are really lovely.

Everything was sewed by hand. The doll. The clothes. The hair. The hair is raw wool that was dyed.

the second doll I made was Alice in Wonderland. She was supposed to have blond hair. But I changed it for green. She's in wonderland after all. Like me.

My teacher's doll

Everything is sewn onto the doll directly. They are not dresses that can be taken off. For practical reasons, it would be very hard to remove tight sleeves, for example, as the body is stuffed til it gets really hard.

The shoes are not shoes. They are just painted on the doll. Then we add accessories to make them look like shoes.

So is the face. 

Drawn and painted.

The third doll I made is called "Happy Lulu". The name my teacher gave to the doll in any case.

Unlike the first doll I made, that I mostly made at the store, with her help, I made the body and most of the dress at home. I only made the shoes, head and hair at Momo's.

I finished my fourth one just in time for Xmas. I made this one to give my mother. If you can recognize her, it's Anne of Green Gables. A Canadian feel in all this Asianness.

I practically made all the doll at home. I used the pictures I took. I made the painting of the shoes at Momo's and the hat and face. There are a couple of things that are different form the original for that reason, both because I was lazy and worked mainly by memory, not looking at the pictures. I am really proud of this one. It's full of the love for my mommy. 

 Now I realize I haven't taken a picture of the finish product, with the hat and all. My bad... I'll upload it later...

Now I am working on a school girl. :)

January Shopping

The other day I had an awesome dessert <3 My aunty made some hm.... how would I call this. It's like a pickled apple recipe, save that it's a bit like apple jelly... but with whole baby apples. Basically it's got nothing to do with pickles. Save the fact they're put in similar pots. Oh well. 

We had those with Coaticook's maple ice cream - a delightful ice cream, one of the only brand of ice cream we can buy that is actually made with 'milk' and 'cream' instead of powdered milk and water (IMO, we are stupid to make ice cream with the transformed product of the milk we sell to the US, and that they sell it back to us in powder, for cheaper: I mean, where's the logic in that? I don't blame the US for this, especially if Canadian companies are too stupid to take advantage of our rich milk production right here in our own country... really, some tings really don't make sense).

The mix of sweetened apples with the maple ice cream was quite too sweet, so we ate it with a delicious old cheddar. Really, people should all know about the bliss of mixing sweet and salty things. Not trying it is, IMO, missing out on an important blissful pleasure of the senses.

My boss is, with two other people, starting to build a food catering (?) - I'll need some feed-back on this term, I do not know if this one is accurate. It is basically what we call "Traiteur d'alimentation" in French, meaning we provide prepared meals to events and special occasions. We had a very busy Christmas time at Bistro Jezz, so the preparation took long enough to put itself together, but now the restaurant has its own food catering cart, with images of the awesomeness of our food on it. It's all shiny and really well made - refrigerated compartments, drawers and very easy to use to transport the various plates 

 I love how much energy my boss has, putting in place all sorts of projects. She is full of ideas and I respect her straightforwardness - is that a word? Anyways. I am happy of all the things she brings to my hometown, we really had a need for this kind of business. Plus, the food she makes is pure bliss. Do I use this word too much?

My mother and I are still waiting for the missing material we need to make frills, so while waiting for a call from the store we put together a piece of cork to practice basic points and get aquainted with the concept of working with those small bobbins. It's interesting how you pin up the thread all along the work. I still cannot picture how to use these to make flowers, fruits, and detailes frills, but I feel like I am on the right way teh he...

Talking about warm drinks I'll talk about coffee. Coffee is a monster. Coffee will, in time rule the world, I am sure. Coffee is probably worse than most drugs and addictions, for it is a recognized 'necessary good', and people don't see it as what it really is: a monster. 

Try not to take coffee for a day when you are used to drinking it everyday. You know what I mean. You know, that stupid headache you don't know where it's from? Yeah, exactly. Get my drift? 

Coffee is evil. 

Now that we are clear on this point... I went to have a cappuccino with my mommy this afternoon at a bakery close to my place. In the cold weather, the bakery was a good compromise between the really close Abstracto - where I think there is not enough light to go during the day - and the Chocolaterie le Gisement - much farther away, and full of too sweet stuff for the line :P. So we went to have a coffee, bringing a book, but in the end we just talked and the reading period that was planned did not happen. There will be other times.

La Pâtisserie Saint-Honoré has been open here for quite some time now, and it has awesome fresh breads and cute small cake, plus a variety of sweet delicacies and home-made jams. The owner of the bakery, a French guy from Alsace, earned the title of 'Sir' from the French Embassy last fall, for the extent of his work here and what he brought from his country to Quebec.

I love the colors of the Bakery/restaurant - here is a little screenshot of the place, sadly enough,
they did not have many cakes in the display today, as they don't make too many of them in advance

I went to do some shopping today, to look for small gifts to send to some friends living away from here - like, everyone I know, basically - but whose birthday are close, or who I'd told I'd send them gifts for Xmas and the like. I stopped at a kid toy shop I love particularly, owned my a friend of my brother. I am a big baby basically. But there is this one brand of dolls that I love, that has scented dolls, with different ethnicities - they even have read-heads :3... I think they did not need to... ha ha, but that must be why they got so many prices: they show love where other people show hatred :). I love the middle one <3 so cuuuuute the baby asian :)

So here is my accomplishment of the day! I put all the things together and will go post them tomorrow. I still have to Xmas cards to answer as well. But my mom has some as well so I'll write them when she does, so we can have tea together at the same time. Me loves spending time with mommy. Right now she is putting up wallpaper upstairs in the room beside my bedroom with my daddy. I'll take some pictures when we finish it and put the decoration altogether.

Immaculée-Conception

My mom and I recently found a frill and lace book and we decided that we'd try to make some nice stuff with it as soon as we get our hands on a good pattern to follow. When she was my age, my mother had bought a nice kit fo make frills and laces, but never ended up using it and so, the kit is still intact. I can't wait to try to make some stuff. I think it's going to be a lot of work and time, but don't we all love laces? 

I mean, don't I? 

I think the time and pain is worth trying anyways. Plus, if I succeed in making nice stuff, I'll be able to make frills exactly the way I want and decorate stuff I like around me <3 

Today I had my first class of the semester at the university of Quebec. the university recently bought old buildings to make new classrooms, as the programs were all expending quite a lot. Among the new acquisition, they bought my old elementary school, that had closed for lack of kids - we used to have tons of children in my hometown, and we had tons of elementary schools, but lately, as they all grew up and people my age did not have many kids, some of those schools, like mine, closed their doors.

What was not my surprise to actually figure out that I was going to have a class in my old school! So here I was, getting back in my memories, listening to a boring university lecture introduction in a local that used to be my 6th grade classroom. I loved the idea.

Immaculée-Conception, the building that used to be my elementary school. I was such a monster at this time too....

Before my class started, I went around the school to look at how much it had changed. I remembered this school to be such a big one that I found it really hard to believe that  it was so small. I mean, I had been really small when I went there I guess. But it is always weird to find oneself face to face with one's childhood memories, and discover that they were all a matter of a kid's perception. you following? Anyways, I found out that the basement, where there used to be a gymnasium, is now hosting the material for some random forestry class - i suppose, since there are all sorts of wooden models in one part of it. 

The rest of the gymnasium is still not completed and it made me feel sad to see it in such a dirty state. I mean, I remember our strict P.E. teacher, that was a bit of an OCD: he was probably one of the only teacher in the region who'd actually scold us if we did not change from the classroom indoor shoes to the gymnasium indoor shoes. He really hated having pebbles all over the ground, and insisted that we keep it clean at all times. Now that I look at what this cherished floor looks like, I feel like he'd go crazy... ha ha

I went to work tonight as a helper at the restaurant with my brother and we finished quite late, though it did not end up being such a busy evening. the last two tables ended up staying until 11h30pm so we had to wait until they were done. They left up almost half a bottle of expensive wine however, that we split with the kid who washes dishes. Oh sweet sweet wine. It was not such a bad evening afterall.

 

Fall almost over...

Lately I have been neglecting my blog. I apologize, since it's not even because I was really busy. I have not actually done much in the last days, but going to school, working and giving Japanese Classes. I've been using Instagram a lot and thus uploading pretty much what I was doing, taking away the need to blog. It takes more time too, and I'd rather watch movies than write blogs when I am online most of the time. I don't really like to be on the computer much, except when I watch movies eh eh eh.

Lately I am following three dramas that are quite different from one another, which makes it nice to go from on to the other. 

Man of Honor - 24 episodes

 This Drama looks like a romantic comedy to me, with the usual love-triangle one can find in the cliché dramas, whether old american soaps or any new Korean drama. It's not really original and not that awesome. However, I like how they just added random 'magic' effect and coincidental events that makes it unrealistic. When they try to make it realistic, when we all see how fake all those complicated relationships are, it gets boring to watch. However, by keeping it clearly out of the 'real', you can swallow up the stupid story better. I think the main girl character is really cute too.

Flower Boy Ramyeon Shop - 16 episodes

 This drama is a happy coming back of the 'flower boy' concept, while actually making fun of it in a healthy way. I had missed the flower boy stories with childish rich kids doing what they want like Boy over flower. In this drama however, what is funny is that the rich kid just miserably fails to get any point across. While being selfish and demanding, he fails at all the things he tries: making fun of stupid rich clueless kids.

The male lead was in 49 days, and I like him <3 plus the female lead is really pretty. Always help to have good looking characters...

Vampire Prosecutor - 12 episodes

This drama is literally the weirdest mix of random shit ever. It seems like a normal crime scene investigation TV show, with all the american clichés of the interrogation methods and sexy doctors looking up for answers in dead ppl, but in the midst of that, you find the main character being a vampire. That just is really weird. Vampire themes are just too popular lately, and not for the best. Plus, the guy actually can chill in the sun, and does not really seem to be impaired in any ways by being a vampire. It's just weird. However, it's catchy. I like crime investigations. In this drama, what is my biggest critique, is that it's only one episode a week, and thus, you find yourself waiting really long for not too much new information.

I have been knitting random stuff as well, to try to figure out how to mix up different stitch points and ended up making a white/beige winter hat, so I can use it with my aqua scarf and mittens, which I really had a hard time matching with anything.

I ordered something online from Hong Kong and received it today. It's a weird two piece deer room wear consisting of a verry large hoody with ears and shorts with a furry tail at the back.