ramblings.

2 things stand out for 2023,

The first is getting back in the groove of sketching with the joining of weekend sketchers in February. Getting used to sketching on-site, loving the intuitive and spontaneous feel that on-site sketching brings. But also drawing from photos more later in the year which leads to a more considered approach which is equally enjoyable. I realised I love my colours through working with both watercolours and rediscovering my watercolour pencils which were languishing in storage for a long long time. 

my first weekend sketchers’ outing:

oh yes, we travelled out to Eastern Taiwan after 3 years!

The second thing is gaining more confidence with cooking. As my mum was out of action for a while in the kitchen due to a foot fracture, I took up the task of cooking simple meals for us three. It felt good to be able to eat your own home-cooked meals even if they were mostly very simple fare. I kept up with cooking my own meals (1 meal a day on days not working at the bookstore) when my parents were away on retreat for 12 days. Not bad for someone who previously never cooked!

As my mum wrestles her way out of the supermarket check out, she tells me ‘it shouldn’t be this difficult to go green.’ and it is true.

At the supermarket, we take out our own produce bags for fruits but are promptly told off by the staff. We must use their plastic bags so they can identify the fruits being from the supermarket and we won’t walk off without paying for them. So the next grocery run, we go without our own bags, and place the fruits directly into the supermarket basket.

At the checkout it becomes a race. Card in hand, our own shopping bags in hand, my mum is going in overdrive. Quickly she tells the cashier she has her own bags before swift hands open new bags in autopilot. Then, she flashes her card to pay before fumbling to keep the card and transferring each fruit into her shopping bag so not to hold up the queue. It is a race against time. Sometimes the fruits ends up on the floor in all that haste.

At the food centre, it is another issue. We are one of those families who can’t stand using disposable plates and cutlery, especially for dining in. Sometimes, we consider bringing our own containers to buy food for dining in. But we mostly only go as far as to bring our own cutlery. Using our own containers while eating there is too out of the social norm, we feel paiseh (embarrassed) when we have to resort to that. Why is it us that feel embarrassed? Shouldn’t it be the other way around; shouldn’t one feel bad for using disposables instead? Most of the times we end up boycotting the stall instead. It is easier that way. But we miss out on the good food 😦

It really shouldn’t be this hard to go green.

12 windows, each housing a friend, 7 cities, 5 countries, but all at once everyone is in my dining room. It is noisy at the start with the excited greetings. For most of us, we have not met in person for >5 years. It feels crazy to see everyone again. I had thought I would have a lot to say, yet when we meet I am a bit loss for words. It feels good just to see everyone again. There is a thrill to be connecting with each other in real time despite the geographical distance. Everyone is now on different paths. But behind this exchange of individual news, there is a knowing we have once been in the same place at the same time. That this collective thread is faint but still trying us together.

2020 was the year that turned out very different from what we had hoped for. Initially meant to be a year of new beginnings with the turn of the decade, it quickly turned into the year we would like to forget; to write off. Is this really true?

For me, 2020 was to be a milestone year, as I turn 30. Being a January baby, we always try to plan an overseas trip to celebrate my birthday. And on hindsight, turning another year older earlier than my peers has its perks – travel wise. After the craft-laden trip to Laos in 2019, I wanted another craft experience trip. Which led us to Jogjakarta… where I managed a low-key birthday with my (shaking) hands writing in wax. I tried out batik tulis, the process of drawing with wax with the canting tool, the wax being a resist before dyeing. My piece shows the hand of a complete beginner with the uneven thickness of lines and blobs form by the unintentional drips of wax. Despite that, I really love the organic results! Many thanks to the patient artists, Arwin Hidayat and Yuvita Raharti of Katuna Studio for guiding me. We also got to visit to Borobudur (a tick off our bucket-lists) and enjoyed the week away 🙂

Continuing on my year of learning, I decided to do some skills upgrading in my embroidery work. With one of my favourite embroidery artist, Adriana Torres, I picked up raised embroidery on her Domestika course. It was so nice to explore a new stitch language! It also brought some quiet comfort in the days spent at home during the circuit breaker, when movement was restricted in Singapore to curb the virus spread. With that, my repertoire of embroidery has expanded and I am excited to incorporate the stitches into my new work.

The wonderful e-class got me signing up for another punch needle class with the lovely Laura Ameba, whose work I also love. I have enjoyed using this new tool and have already used the new techniques in my work for Pameran Poskad.

Yes, during the circuit breaker, I signed up for another round of Pameran Poskad (my 4th time participating). After much toggle back and forth with ideas, and many deadline extensions later, I finally presented a mis-mash of pieces surrounding the theme of nature. It was during the time that we were told to stay at home as much as possible, that made me relish the daily routine of being out in nature. I always chose the route with tree-lined paths and made it a point to cut through the neighborhood park during the quick grocery run or errands to buy takeaway. It was on these trips I often spotted unexpected new toadstools, or birds flitting across the trees! It was lovely to see that life went on, in the time when all seemed so bleak.

What a pleasant surprise that I had my first sell-out at the exhibition. I am so thankful for the warm response to the pieces and glad that with the sell-out I got to donate more to Beautiful People. I had decided earlier to donate 50% of the sales to the exhibition’s designated charity.

The circuit breaker also made for many new ‘firsts’, becoming a reset button. I found myself often saying “this the first time I have ____ since circuit breaker” My First bus-ride, my First day (back) at work, conducting my First in-person workshop, First yoga class, First dine-in meal (outside the house), First swim of the year, First lunch out with friends (outside of the same household), First Zoom call, First nature walk beyond the neighbourhood park… it made every old experience feel new again. And it made me appreciate the simple things with new senses.

And indeed there were new routines being created too this year. My mum and I discovered YouTube yoga and started more yoga sessions at home. We started to ‘Walk at home’ and realised that actually our home is quite big! With less bus rides, we also had more neighbourhood explorations, especially for food! And uncovered new things like more effective ways to wash the dishes (soak first with hot, soapy water).

To reward myself for the hard work in the year, I also treated myself to a ticket to Soul Craft Festival, which went online this year hence becoming accessible to me. The talks I got to enjoy so far has been enriching as we work through the busy festive rush while listening to the wonderful conversations around crafting.

Looking back at my 30th year, it was a milestone year I am unlikely to forget in this lifetime.

A sharing of my little business and what we did during the pandemic time, especially the circuit breaker period when we stayed at home more. Just for for the sake of posterity, so I remember what it was like running a business in this climate.

The obvious change would be the cancellation of events… workshops and markets were postponed and pushed back to the never ending future. First a few months later and then later into next year…

You think we won’t be much affected by the situation after all we have been working from home all these while but with international borders tightening and airlines grounded, air-freight capacity became a trickle and uncertainties meant we had to stop overseas sales for a while. Tracking my packages already sent – panicking over how best to deal with it and celebrating every time tracking status changed, these were my pre-occupations for a while.

Then when we cut back on those sales to focus on domestic (thank goodness for local support!!), We started to run out of supplies (both for packing to mail and later supplies for creating our products itself) which became the next mental exercise. It stretched our creativity! With packaging, it made us think of how to reuse and make use of what we could gather. Boxes and cardboard gathered from our own household consumption became important to keep… Think pizza boxes/boxes for noodles for packages! And waxes paper to replace the bubblewraps I used to collect from the bookstore to reuse. I got good at folding them in a kind of origami so we used less tape. Also old envelopes to be reused for mailing a second time.

patchwork mini slings – one of a kind and using scraps to create

new bunny pins made from fabric off-cuts

With products, we started with more patchwork to use scraps which we already have. patchwork is slow, but meditative and best thing is we didn’t need to rely on new supplies which we didn’t have much access to now. I also found time to create more one of kind pieces as production slowed. It has been quite restful and custom orders could be picked up instead as I choose to slow down my rate of production to create more one-off pieces that usually took more time to conceptualise.

finding more time for sketching

and for one-off pieces like our Imaginary Landscapes (armchair travels) pot-holders

We also found more time for mending. Never something high on our to-do list suddenly it became something to keep our fingers busy with. A slow kind of way to work and extend the life of our favourite pieces we use daily. It started with my blanket then the projects grew bigger as we mended the sofa spread that had worn thin from being used to cover our couch.

mending favourite blankets to keep warm

the back of our big mending project: ikat sofa spread

Now that we are slowly opening up and workshops are restarting, I am planning for mending workshops. Such is a inspiration that came from unexpected circumstances. Good, bad, who knows!

first workshop after circuit breaker; smaller class size, safe distancing and masks wearing

While doing the dishes today, I washed the spoons and forks and realised something, their design were simple, smooth forms without unnecessary details and that made for easy washing. Just a few weeks ago we were using our fancy sliver cutlery, because we thought why keep them in the cupboard? Best to use them instead and feel like royalty having a silver spoon in our mouths (pardon the pun, just had to say it!) But after repeated washing up, now more often then usual as we stay at home, we started to see how their intricate fancy details made them more difficult to clean! We swapped them back to our good old plain cutlery sets. Ahh… A simple change to add ease to something we do daily. I learnt from this the importance of simple design.

Simple design makes the object something you want to handle and use every day.

In fact, when I was a graphic design student, it was something that lecturers used to tell us too. Good design should be like a clear vessel – It should look so natural that you no longer see the design but the message only.

I am drawn to nature and this appears a lot in my work too, be it in subject matter (botanical, floral and fauna), style (organic forms) or even type of material (cotton, linens in my work with textiles) . Maybe it is because I also see the idea of ‘Simple’ in nature. How a leaf is shaped to be effective in its work. Nature finds the most straightforward way of getting things done, that is the definition of simple.

This is a good reminder for me when thinking of designs, don’t overwork it and learn to let go once it is enough. Simple is beautiful too.

When time slows, we get the chance to enjoy the simple everyday life, and the subtle changes in nature.

Today’s little achievement for me is recreating TOTTO-CHAN in threads again for a customer.

Taking the book off my bookshelf as my guide to follow as I stitch, I recall the wonderful book. Why do some books resonate with you enough to want to re-read it again; to count it as one of your favourite books?

During this period of staying at home more, I try to minimise my usual trips to the library and now with the circuit-breaker month, even libraries are closed! So what I have been doing is revisiting books on my bookshelf. Some which I once thought to be too ‘sayang’ to give up, I find I can now let go. Some of these are just books that I used to think looks good on my shelf and make me seem well-read, haha!

Others I re-read and fell in love with once again. “Yes, it definitely a keeper and a favourite.” I realise there are children books (Howl’s Moving Castle, Paddington Bear among these…), comics, picture books on my shelf. And I remember a project I saw once about bookshelves of different people and what does your bookshelf say about you. I wonder what does my bookshelf say… it is interesting!

It has been three months since I announced our production break, which is also my own personal deadline for officially going back to work as before.

“So what have you been busy with?”
That’s the question everyone has been asking. Which is to be expected, as it is something I keep asking myself too!

I find myself trying to justify my ‘pause’: “oh I have been quite busy actually… Doing more workshops, prototyping new products, and actually for quite a bit of those 3 months, I was still busy finishing up back orders!”
All true, which does sound like I have been very busy. But in truth, I found myself a bit aimless at times without the need to actively churn out products since nothing really was barking at my heels.

It was both unsettling and liberating.

I gave in to doing some things on a whim/ for the sake of doing it. Why not? I tried hard to push aside thinking about making profits. Sometimes I was successful.

One morning, I woke up thinking about starting a new art brand, which I did that same day. While the artworks listed are not new, (they have all been previously exhibited), the thought of starting a brand to market them separate from Momshoo is. If you have not seen it, check out my new baby, Marks by Shu. It was exhilarating starting the new Etsy shop and being back to a ‘newbie’ seller 🙂

I also took more walks in the parks, stopping to stare more. And this led to my mini art pieces inspired by our local birds… Which eventually became a workshop too. It proved to myself how having fun led to new ideas too!

Of course there were periods of self-doubt and times when I started to feel a bit ‘hungry’ (aka poor) In one such period, I gave in to my financial needs and took on a commission work on… a wedding dress! And in the process experimented with sewing on see-through mesh material (a whole different experience!)

Did I managed to do everything I wanted to do? No I didn’t. But I did things outside of my plan and more importantly, I enjoyed my pause. Now it is back to work, till the next pause!

The other day my parents attended a wedding and came back with an espresso cup and coaster, which led me to this post. The cup had the usual ‘mr and mrs.’ wordings and an illustration of a bride and groom… It also had a fancy handle curved into a heart which at a glance looks cute but on closer scrutiny will annoy the person who will have to wash it. We are very practical people that way! In other words, the cup will go unused (and the coaster too for that matter) and will be sent down instead to our local thrift shop. We are in the habit of giving up whatever we do not use to the thrift shop, thank goodness for that!
In fact last time we visited the thrift shop, we found many of such wedding favors waiting to be adopted. Do they eventually find homes? Especially if the favors have names of the happy couple imprinted on them.

But this incident made me think… What happened to the days of giving a piece of fruit cake to wedding guests? Ok, I am not a big fan of fruit cake, but cookies, brownies, chocolate, honey (basically anything that can be eaten) are welcomed! 😉 it is nice to get something that can be enjoyed and then not add clutter to my home.

I think we all get very excited about the idea of “free”. Think about those free event pens that run out of ink after a few sentences, or post-it pads emblazoned with the organisation’s logo but are not sticky enough once peeled out from the booklet. A lot of times we end up with a load of freebies that go unused even though they looked so attractive at the moment they were handed out. ( I am looking at you, multiple Nam Nam bottled water, sitting in our kitchen cupboard) maybe it is time to think a bit more deeply about whether we would use something the next time we accept a freebie, be it at weddings or other events.

I felt this most keenly when I had to swap out my handmade pouch in my bag to a mass-produced pouch. I had squashed a sweet in my pouch and it was all sticky so while waiting for it to be washed, I had to find an alternative. I didn’t enjoy using the mass-produced alternative, even if it was for a few days. I missed the lovely softness, look and mostly feel of the handmade one I have been using every day for years, one I got from fellow crafter, Projects by Jane.

That’s when I realised the value of handmade. That’s when I realised the appeal of handmade items over mass-produced ones and why people didn’t mind paying so much more for a Momshoo pouch when they could get a similar-sized pouch at a fraction of the cost. Even as the maker, I always wondered about that. And it is so nice to feel the difference now that I have experienced it myself.

Handmade feels different. It feels like thought has gone into it. Someone had thought about the little details, they are designed for a reason. Someone’s hands made it with care. And as my customer has recently reviewed about our cutlery pouch: “超喜歡💕就是喜歡這種有溫度的手作” (which roughly translates)- she loves it because it is hand-made that brings warmth.

It is so lovely to read how people feel about my work and especially when they manage to put it in words better than I can. But yes, that is the reason why I make my products. I hope you will feel good using a Momshoo product every day. I hope it will bring a smile to your face!

It may be overly dramatic, but it is about building an emotional relationship to everyday items we interact with daily. It feels better when these are made by hand. And even better when you have met the maker in person! You will end up treasuring it for longer and consume less in the process 🙂

It could be something simple like my pouch that sits in my bag for most of the day. It could be that hand-thrown ceramic cup you use every morning.

I was reading Jenny Lin’s post on The Tiny Torch Instagram and I love how she puts it in words:
“A few years ago, I decided that I would seek handmade alternatives to objects that I interact with on a daily basis. I’ve ended up with a rich collection of objects made by wonderful humans, and my existence is better for it. ”

I want to continue to make handmade objects like that. 🙂