The one with the completed sewing projects

Can you tell I’ve been watching a lot of Friends?

Hey all! We’re still in the backlog of what happened to Potassium for the past few months so I today we are talking about the few sewing projects I’ve managed to complete while being completely overwhelmed in school. Yay!

First up we have the rice whale. I got the idea for this guy back during winter break when I spent pretty much the entire time at my sis in law’s house curled up with a rice frog made from Harry Potter fabric. It was awesome. I just popped him in the microwave for a minute and voila! Warmthhhhhhh… So I decided to make myself a rice creature of sorts… I went shopping with my mom for the fabric when we were visiting my family for new years. Then I went back to lab and got swamped and didn’t think about rice creatures for a while. Fast forward to April, my sis in law found me a pattern for what could definitely become a rice whale and my excitement was reignited! The pattern was in Russian so I kind of just guestimated about sizing and such and I made one total fail rice whale and one okay but not amazing rice whale before the one pictured above but yay! Rice whale complete! And I think I’ve got the pattern mostly figured out now too which is awesome. I wish grad school would stop trying to drown me so I could make more for family and friends….

Second up we have the shark hoodie. So I originally bought this hoodie to be part of a Halloween bat costume last year. For those of you who don’t know, I have a similar hoodie (except it’s blue) that got turned into a super awesome raptor costume for my first year of grad school. It’s still all raptor-y and I love wearing it. Last year, as a grumpy 6th year, I just pinned wings to my bat hoodie and then after Halloween was over, it got converted back into a normal black hoodie. However, when Cobalt and I were romping around NYC last month, I noticed that one of the pockets was starting to detach from the hoodie. Thus the shark idea was born. I should fix the pocket, yes, but how much more awesome would it be if I embroidered a shark over the pocket instead of just using normal black thread to fix the problem?! Wahahaha… I am proud to say that I used three different stitches here for the shark – chain stitch for his gills, the split stitch for his outline, and the satin stitch for his eyes. I found sewing this shark amazingly relaxing and healing after all the craziness in lab. AND now my hoodie looks way more awesome! :)

Now I need more art projects. Ideas? I found some crochet patterns for tiny sushi… Might be fun…. ;)

Potassium and her projects

Anyway, I apologize for never writing in here and being really bad about posting pictures that people are actually excited about (like from graduation or weddings I’ve recently attended). I have been saying that it’s because I am too busy and that is definitely true (I now have an army of undergrads – okay… 2 undergrads – to train in addition to doing all of my stuff) but I think that it’s partly that I’ve been kind of depressed lately. I get the feeling that my pictures aren’t going to be good anyway so why do I even try? And then of course I take lame pictures and I get mad at myself and go hide in the corner and am all emo instead. Also, lab work is actually starting to feel like it is destroying my soul. I am kind of having a life crisis about it – here I have spent years of my life training to be a scientist and what do I have to show for myself? Rage?! I hate it so much right now! It breaks my heart to think about how much time and effort I have spent working on something that makes me frustrated and infuriated and stressed out, etc. Here I am so close to finishing this degree I have wanted all my life and instead of feeling relieved and excited about the future, all I can see is how much work I have left to do and how much I just don’t care anymore. :-/

Whoa… that got deep for a minute. Anyway, I thought I owed you guys the truth so there it is. Now it’s your turn – ideas for new projects? Potassium needs some distractions from science, which is eating her soul. Also, if you know this feeling I am talking about, care to share some insight?

Potassium does not like cold

Ugh! Looking at this picture makes me miss the fall colors already (pic on the left was taken at the end of October and pic on the left was taken this Wednesday)!

So we got a pretty good snow storm earlier this week. It would have been fine if it hadn’t been followed by ridiculously low temperatures… I woke up yesterday and it was -11 F outside. I’m originally from California… we do not do below 0 F there. Luckily for me, I have a ton of data analysis to do so I stayed home working on my computer while burrowing in blankets and snuggling with stuffed sharks all day. At one point, Cobalt even brought me the fanciest hot chocolate ever! Maybe I should stay home and work again today!

I did actually end up braving the cold last night to go to a girls night where we attempted to decorate Christmas ornaments. My attempts are below – there’s a shark on the clear one (as well as a shark in the 3 of 2013) and a skull for Cobalt on the red one!

I’m super happy that these guys didn’t get messed up upon exposure to the 3 degree F weather on the drive home…

What temperature is “cold” to you? Can you handle -11 F? HOW?!?!? Anyway, what do you have planned for the weekend? I have some pretty exciting things planned! I can’t wait to tell you about them next week! :D

Artistic sisters

Helllooooo everyone! I hope you are having wonderful Tuesdays! Today’s post is about art and science! Last week when my sister was here, we spent a lot of time driving. We went to Fort Collins, CO to speak to some summer research undergraduate students about grad school. On Wednesday, we participated on an alumni panel and on Thursday, we returned to check out the students’ research posters and hear the keynote address. It was awesome getting to know these students and hearing about the successes and frustrations with their projects this summer. When we were not hanging out with the summer students, we hung out with the other grad/med school students on the panel and the keynote speaker and it was really nice to make new friends (all the alumni had the summer program in common but none of us actually participated in the same year). Everyone was so cool and inspiring! However, by the time we got back to Boulder on Thursday afternoon, we were exhausted/tired of driving. So first we ran around like crazy in a big rain storm and then we settled down in Cobalt’s and my living room to do some art before we had to take my sis back to the airport. This was my creation from our art afternoon. I have to say that I’m pretty proud of it! :D What do you think it should be called? All I can think of is “Whales in the sky keep on turning…” hahahaha…

What were you guys up to this past weekend? Cobalt and I celebrated our anniversary by staying at a lovely bed and breakfast (also in Fort Collins… he drove that time) on Friday night and then spent the rest of the weekend at IKEA/putting various pieces of furniture together. Also we had our neat anniversary party on Sunday! Stay tuned for pictures (but don’t be dismayed if they don’t show up in a timely manner this week; my summer students have their poster session/end of the summer banquet coming up)!

Horses and Painting

Potassium, A, and C on their respective horses (Misty, Max, and Andy) after a lovely morning of horseback riding…

Even though it’s been crazy snowy during the weeks here (apparently we’ve gotten over 35 inches of snow over the month of April), it’s been absolutely beautiful and warm on the weekends (Colorado is weird…). A few weekends ago, A and I went to our friend C’s family’s ranch, called the Fifth Element Ranch, to ride horses! They have four horses on the ranch that C’s mom (T) uses for horse therapy workshops during the week but this weekend was all about fun. C, T, A, and I all got to ride together. Seeing as I was the least experienced in horseback riding (I have ridden horses a few times but they were all a long time ago…), I got to ride their mare Misty. I was really nervous at first but T was awesome at teaching me how to work with and interact with Misty. After Misty realized she was going to have to listen to what I wanted us to do we got along pretty well. It turned out to be a really fun day and the weather was awesome! I can’t wait to go back and ride more!

Some more pictures (Thanks to T for the photos!)…

Potassium and A explore the ranch…

Potassium and Misty

In the evening, A and I headed to our friend J’s house to have art night with J and our other friend L. It tured out to be a fine ending to a neat day. First we had pizza for dinner and then we spent the rest of the evening drinking wine and doing art. J, A, and I painted while L went through fashion magazines for a project she’s been intent on starting. At one point, L found all of our horoscopes in Italian and cut them out for us! I decided to incorporate mine into my painting and I think it looks pretty neat. Check it out below!

Materials used in this painting: Japanese paintbrush and ink, acrylics, and magazine cuttings. I wasn’t really sure where it was going at the beginning but I actually really like the way it turned out…

So I have to admit that I am kind of stalling about telling you guys about something super exciting that Cobalt and I have been planning recently. Partially it’s because I want to talk about the fun that happened on these past few weekends first and part of it is that it’s hard for me to believe that it’s actually happening. So I’m going to end today’s and Thursday’s posts this week with little hints and then we’ll get to the excitingness NEXT WEEK.

Today’s hint: It partially has to do with my work (and no I’m not graduating… but this could possibly help me graduate sooner than later…).

Now it’s your turn. Is there anything about your work that you’re excited about right now? What do you think of horseback riding? Awesome? Scary? Finally, is it spring there yet? I’m so sick of snow. I have been telling myself that it will lead to a beautiful summer but I am getting really impatient for that summer!

The Valentine’s Day Shark Cake Pop says….

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I hope you all have a wonderful day! The Valentine’s Day Shark Cake Pop will (though he is currently residing in my tummy… sorry shark cake pop! You looked so delicious!). Anyway, if you have yet to get your special someone a Valentine’s Day card, the Monterey Bay Aquarium has some adorable e-cards for you! Check them out!

I made the shark pop at a Valentine’s Day themed craft party last weekend. I also made this little Valentine’s mousey (don’t judge my sketchy sewing skills…):

Now, tell me how you really feel about Valentine’s Day. Yay Valentine’s or ugh… pink…? Are you excited to see the millionth Die Hard movie tonight or are you braving the crowd to go out to a fancy dinner (or both)? I like Valentine’s Day generally, though I worry that people will think they only need to tell their special someones they love them only on this one day. So remember to tell those people you love them not just today but every day!

Dragons and Whales

With some of my Christmas money, I bought myself some Japanese ink wash painting brushes to allow myself to continue acquiring fun arts and crafts tools and learn how to use them. I got this sweet set of two brushes, an ink stone (a suzuri), and an ink stick from Amazon – perfect for a beginning artist. It arrived on Friday so I stayed up waaaaaaaaay too late painting on newsprint. In a high school art class, we learned how to paint dragons using this technique so I used my 10 year old memories and had fun. It turned out that painting with these brushes and then using my pen and ink set to add in small details worked out pretty well. Above and below and some fun pictures of my art. I like it. Can’t wait to spend more time improving my skills!

Do you like doing arts and crafts? What projects are you currently working on? Are you like me and you are too ADD to just have one project going at once? What is your favorite medium to work with? Apparently my answer to that question is all of them because I am currently jumping around between drawing, photography, using my Wacom drawing tablet, painting, sewing (I got this awesome book for Christmas with all these cute patterns…), crocheting (still have my top secret crocheting project…), etc. That’s the life of a grad student – you are so busy every day that you have to find something to help you relax. I am finding that doing random creative projects like these really help me! :)

I find the name ‘fascinator’ fascinating…

It’s been almost a month sine we got married. How crazy is that?! Our apartment is still a total disaster though. Maybe this weekend we can finally get things together.

Anyway, for today’s post, I am going to talk about my veil/fascinator that my awesome friend The Chocolate Pudding made for me. I think it was about a year ago, TCP and I were looking at all the crafts at the Taste of Colorado festival and we found a booth dedicated to tiny hats with veils on them. We liked them but I knew I wanted some sort of birdcage veil/fascinator thingy for my wedding. TCP said she could try to make one for me and thus began our quest to make the best veil/fascinator ever!

In May, I got various types of fun French netting and a comb from Britex Fabrics in San Francisco. Then I ordered some pretty anenome flower clips off of Etsy to go with the netting. Due to life craziness, it wasn’t until the Tuesday before the T and I left to go to CA for the wedding that TCP and I had time to meet up and work on the concept of what the veil would look like. That is what that top picture is from (and yes… we were working on my veil/fascinator in a bookstore… points if you can guess the bookstore…)!

Fast forward to two days before the wedding. After the bachelorette/hen party, TCP brought over the almost finished veil/fascinator and I had a prewedding panic attack. The veil/fascinator looked great but I was freaking out so much that I wouldn’t like it that I couldn’t even decide if I liked it. TCP told me that she was just going to finish it and then I could decide on the wedding day whether or not I wanted to wear it.

Fast forward to the wedding day, I got to see the finished product and I fell in love with it. Originally, I was planning to keep the veil/fascinator on for the ceremony and pictures and then take it out and leave the flower clips in for the reception but I loved it too much to part with it… Yay! Thanks TCP for making pretty much the best veil/fascinator ever and thanks for putting up with a crazed Potassium while you did it. :)

And finally, a picture that I stole from my friend T from the reception (Thanks T…)

One more thing. My super awesome grad school friend PV is getting married this weekend to the lovely PD. So excited for you guys!!!! :)

And now the typical Q and A time. What did you do for your veil (if you are married)? Would you have a veil (if you’re not)? Tell me your thoughts on veils… Or tell me something different. Whatever you feel like doing is fine with me. :)