And the winner is...

My ultra-high-tech randomizer picked Looloolooweez as the winner of my 101 posts giveaway! Lest you accuse me of falsifying the results, I assure you that I used a trusted third party system (ie: Professor Lefty).

Thanks to everyone who entered! It's always good to hear from ya'll, so don't be strangers, now, y'hear? I promise, some crafty goodness is on the horizon. Most projects got put on hiatus for the summer, but now that my suitcases are back in the closet, my fingers are itchin' for some stitchin'. And typing. Lots of typing.

Sights of Thailand: Nutshell Edition

"And this is Selma dropping off our vacation film to be developed.
Thus concludes our Mexican Odyssey."

So, to keep this from turning into an, endless, Patty-and-Selma like slideshow of vacation photos, I've done the seemingly impossible and picked a handful of my favorite sightseeing pictures from the trip. These are what summed up our time in Thailand, and they may not always be what you expect.

101 Posts Giveaway!

Photo by Shirley Booth

This is post 101 on my blog!

It's been a little over 3 years in the coming, but that doesn't make this any less special. In these three years, I've started and lost jobs, made and pimped my first short film, and traveled to new corners of the world. I've also watched my embroidery skills grow, my knitting skills kinda flounder, and my repertoire of recipes expand. 

More importantly, I've met all sorts of wonderful new folks with this blog. To my fellow crafters, writers, and geeks, I just want to say "thank you" for reading, whether you started reading at post one or post one hundred.

I think this calls for a celebration, don't you?

In honor of my 101 posts, I'm doing my first ever giveaway! I've created a little mini-prize package that I think reflects the nature of this blog:

• A DVD copy of my film, Everything I Needed to Know About Zombies I Learned from the Movies
• A Sublime Stitching pattern pack, Molly Crabapple
• A set of recipe cards from BoyGirlParty
• A pack of pretty, handmade flower beads straight from the Sampeng market in Bangkok
• A felt heart pincushion with some "wooden stake" quilting pins, each made by me

Leave a comment below by midnight PST on Tuesday, August 9, letting me know why you read this blog (is it the embroidery? The sporadic cross stitch patterns?) and I'll pick one winner at random.  

It's the least I can do to say "thank you!"

Sawasdee Ka Krung Thep (Hello, Bangkok)

Krung Thep means City of Angels, but we are happy to call it Bangkok if it helps to separate a farang from his money. –John Burdett, Bangkok 8

When we arrived in Bangkok, it was after 14+ hours in the air. So, everything had a sort of dreamlike quality for the first day or so as our bodies adjusted their biorhythms from Pacific Standard to Indochina Time.

I’ll always remember when we entered Bangkok proper for the first time. As our taxi swept down from the expressway into midday Bangkok traffic, a strange sense of familiarity flooded me. It wasn’t just the billboards for Western movies and products, or even the landscape of high rises jutting into the milky sky.

It was the near-claustrophobic crush of humanity right at street level: brightly painted taxis, spindly tuk tuks, and hordes of weaving motor-scooters. Vendors would casually navigate between the packed lanes, selling snacks and flower garlands. The BTS Skytrain glided above all the commotion like a sleek, pale eel as we neared Sukhumvit Road (essentially Main Street, Bangkok), marking our destination.

It took me a minute to pinpoint where the nostalgia was coming from. Then it hit me: the urban soup of Bangkok was not too unlike that of the Third World metropolis of my childhood, Mexico DF. Half a globe away from my continent, and suddenly I knew I was going to be alright. I could navigate this, even with a huge language barrier.

Our basecamp was a condo right in downtown, which was being rented for the summer by a good friend of ours and his wonderful family. They graciously put us up for the two weeks of our stay, and were the best guides we could have hoped for as we not only navigated the ins-and-outs of the City of Angels, but the way of living in Southeast Asia.

Next up in the series: The sights of Thailand.