March 2026

Dear friends and strangers,

Nowadays I count myself lucky if I can get through a month without any health issues. I went for my 6 monthly health tests and the results were disappointing. I knew it wouldn't be good because I've been indulging myself a lot not really watching my diet giving myself the excuse of YOLO or why live so long, etc. 1 year ago, my doctor had asked me to modify my diet to lower my cholesterol. He had high hopes I could get off the medication. So I went on a lower dosage of the meds. 6 months later, he said my cholesterol had gone up on account of the lower dosage of meds and me not watching my diet. Last month I had a checkup and again my cholesterol went up, this time even higher so my doctor lost complete faith in me and said I have to go back on the full dosage of the medication. Of course I'm disappointed in myself but what's more worrying this round is for the first time, my report card flagged 2 items - 1. high salt 2. low potassium. The high salt is a surprise because I'm usually careful with salt which means I'm probably consuming way more salt than I'm aware. The low potassium is new but I figure it's due to my low fodmap diet. I have been lazy with portion control of high fodmap food and did a food avoidance instead which is wrong. This is how I ended up with low potassium. To fix this problem, I'm now eating half a banana twice a week. I tried eating one banana and ended up very sick and another time I ate a very ripe half banana and got sick as well. So yes, the stupid banana has to be not too ripe. 

My MPS (myofascial pain syndrome) reared its ugly head a few times in March. My doctor gave me medication to take for the pain but the bastard only gave me 21 tablets. I asked for more but he said the medication wasn't good for me so I have to ration the tablets. I only take it when I feel ready to jump in front of a train. The medication works really well. The first time I took it, I slept for 12 hours. When I woke up, I felt reborn. The second time I took it, I felt I needn't have taken it because I wasn't desperate enough. I didn't sleep for 12 hours though. Now I have 19 tablets to last me for 5 months till my next health check up when I'll ask for another 21 tablets. 

Hubs has his health checkup this month and I'm pretty sure his results will be terrible but somehow his doctor (also my doctor) is less hard on him. 

My daughter too had a health scare and I was really worried about her. We've seen a specialist and she recommended a change in diet. Hopefully it will improve her condition. She too has led a YOLO life.

Making

March was such a long month and it gave me opportunity to complete a lot of stuff. 

I bought a tatting pattern from a blogger I follow. She has this gorgeous tatted necklace and despite my very amateurish tatting skills, I decided it was doable. Lol, I could follow her pattern but clearly my tatting skills are lacking. I made so many errors but of course I just kept going. I'll definitely want to make 2 or 3 more of these necklaces.

I completed this patchwork table runner/topper a while back and finally uploaded the video to youtube. I used a fusible web technique to glue all the fabric together. If you're interested, you can watch the video here.

What do you think of this embroidery project I completed? I've uploaded the video to youtube. You can watch it here. It was inspired by a painting I did. Originally I wanted to use dark blue fabric but amazingly I don't have any dark blue fabric.

This was the inspiration. It's the last gouache painting I did. I didn't see myself improving in gouache so I decided to take a break.

I also did a digital version in Procreate. 

This was the only watercolour painting I did. I seemed to have regressed in my painting. 

Oh, I finally got off my butt and did something about my vague dream of becoming a cartoonist. Not a professional one, just a hobby cartoonist. I have a Skillshare subscription and I watched 3 classes on making comics by Drewscape. I don't know who this teacher is and I got him just by searching comics on Skillshare. But I got so lucky because his lessons are pretty good and I managed to complete all 3 of his classes and below are my projects. I've drawn the comics in pencil which is so hard and my human drawing skills are seriously lacking.

The brief for the first comic: 1. Encounter 2. Interaction 3. Result

*chope - to reserve a seat using personal items, esp tissue paper

The brief for the 2nd comic: 1st level: Problem + want, 2nd level: Try & fail, 3rd level: Solution or none

The brief for the 3rd comic: 2 types of speech bubble, a mundane convo

What I've learnt after I completed these 3 projects is that making comics is harder than hard. 

By the way, if you would like a free month of Skillshare, you can use my link here. You can cancel before the trial ends to avoid being charged. If you pay for subscription, I'll get a free month. Honestly I don't need the free month because Skillshare is pretty cheap already. But if anyone wants to "look see, look see" the classes at Skillshare, you can try it out.

I finally finished my beanie/toque. It has weird mistakes here and there but it's wearable. I used a super long cabled needle to knit it and I really struggled. I tried using magic loop but it's not for me. In the end, I just knitted as if I have the proper length of cable and pull the extra cable out of the way. For the final few rounds at the top, I switched to dpn. Recently my daughter bought a set of interchangeable knitting needles/cables using the money the govt gave the citizens last year. I might try another beanie/toque using her needles.

Currently I have 2 knitting WIP - both are shawls. I've already frogged 2 other shawls as I lost interest so now I'm wondering once again if I should give up on my WIPs. I also tried to pick up fair isle knitting recently. It looks so hard. I don't know if I have enough fingers to do it. I know I tried it before long ago and my project looked like crap.

Lastly, are you guys into gel ink pens? I love Zebra's Sarasa 0.5 gel ink rollerball pens and recently I bought the vintage colours. Aren't the colours gorgeous? I particularly love the last two - orange and grey.

See you in May.