Tiny Flowers: Finished!

All done! Here is what that skirt looks like on someone standing in front of their closet. I wish I could have other people model my creations, anyone in Los Angeles up for posing? I can pay you in love & friendship!

Anyway, I'm feeling pretty confident about this pattern. It can be reproduced & altered pretty easily which is fantastic! If I were feeling more ambitious, I'd attempt to make something in other sizes for other people, but I'm so slow, I don't know if anyone would be patient enough to wait for something to be done!

I Don't Like Your Designs!

In the past, I have always gotten things done/been really productive, but I could never really explain how I managed & always felt quite rushed. I feel like a lot of this is because of all the millions of recommended ways to organize yourself, none of those fit me very well. Often with planners, the boxes are too detailed or too small or just not the way I want to view a month. The closest I came to a perfect solution in the world of planners was Moleskine's Weekly Notebook Planner which gives you a calendar on one side & a ruled page on the other. But then I would still carry around a sketch book for drawings & the rest of my ideas that didn't fit on the ruled page.

So I have decided that 2011 will be the year I organize on my own terms! I bought a notebook of blank sheets & stamped one day for each spread. This means that my "planner" is only good until the end of April, but it means that I can keep all my thoughts & reminders in one book. Having days labeled ahead of time means I can easily look forward to due dates. Plus, if I take one day at a time in life, why not do so in my planner?

The Start of Something

I started a painting the other day. For whatever reason, I find mixing colors simultaneously incredibly relaxing & thrilling! I also really like to leave chunky blobs on the canvas instead of painting them out smooth. Whenever I go to art museums, I tend to try & look at paintings from the side because I feel like texture is something you won't ever really notice unless you're there in person. Sometimes I feel a bit silly looking at paintings that way, but I don't think anyone really notices.

Where did the Time Go?!?!?

Remember a few months ago when I was all, "OMGzzzz don't expect me to post that much because I just moved & am all disoriented/busy!!!" (in my imagination, I am 3,000 times more obnoxious online than I am in real life).

I still managed to basically post at least once every three days, but now I have fallen short on that goal! Yikes! This is my life now: I am always in libraries, studying things about libraries so I can be on a computer writing papers about libraries. Libraries! Not complaining, I really enjoy my studies, but there are roughly two weeks left of instruction & then final everythings are due so I've been a little frazzled. I'm going to schedule a few posts tonight & hopefully things will be back to normal soon!

Another Project

I have a new blog up & running! It is a project with one of my most amazing friends who I miss all the time. A kind of communication project because we are often too busy to share the smaller details of what's going on & personally, those are the things I miss the most. To be able to see pictures from home & to share my own experiences with a close friend is something I'm really looking forward to!

Now I suppose we could always just email things to each other, but we are looking to see if it ends up being a type of story. If it does, it'll be a story you can follow too at No Postage Necessary

A Quote

I tend to hate quotes. I also tend to hate negative words like "hate", but really I think I don't like reading quotes because every quote I stumble across online is about men & how you don't need them or some kind of optimism encouraging thing. I love optimism, I encourage it, but I don't think it needs to be sugary sweet. I feel like my optimism isn't that flowery. I believe that everything will work out just fine, even if things initially seem to be going terribly, part of that is because I am a little bit superstitious & feel the universe is my friend. Mostly, I believe everything will work out just fine because I will make it that way & refuse to live a life that is anything short of amazing!

At any rate, I didn't intend to write about quotes, I wanted to share one that I came across while doing some research for my midterm papers (note: it has nothing to do with men or optimism):

"This fast food approach to information consumption drives librarians crazy. "Our information is healthier and tastes better too" they shout. But nobody listens. We're too busy Googling." ~ Peter Morville

I have been spending so much time thinking about information lately & I wonder at what point do people decide that the information they have is good enough even if it isn't the best? I am torn between loving & hating the internet because the internet allows us to search so many different resources, but it also makes us kind of lazy.

Personally, I feel that Googling works just fine when I want to know something trivial & I want to know it quickly. For example, I just saw an adorable picture of bunnies & thought, "I want a bunny! No, they poop too much. Why do bunnies poop so much?". So I went to Google, typed, "Why do bunnies poop so much?" & basically discovered common sense things.  Tiny animals = short digestive tract, high metabolism, who cares that's how it is. Question answered.

However, if for whatever reason, I were really trying to thoroughly study why bunnies poop so much, I wouldn't go to Google. But here is the sad part (shame on me), I would definitely first check the academic databases for online resources. I would search carefully, use every synonym I could think of & phrase it with Boolean logic. Once I'd exhausted those resources I would check for actual books because honestly, a lot of the time I'm like, "Uhhhhh where am I going to find the time to walk to school & then go to the library & that particular library is all the way in north campus (because sometimes my thoughts are incessantly whiny) & then I have to snoop around & check it out & bring it back, blerghghghg". Not to mention that working in libraries for so long kind of makes me feel like I don't want to be there on my days off the same way most people get tired of shopping at a store they work in.

Part of this is because during my undergrad days, our campus library was not really functional since it was under construction. We would request books online, have them brought over, & just picked them up at a desk like magic. No trying to reach impossibly high shelves or trying to remember when the library is actually open. I have somehow trained myself to think that online resources are good enough. That is bad. I am a library student & feel incredibly guilty about honestly just being to lazy to go to the library sometimes.

I"m sorry to go on some random library tangent, but am so curious! Is Google's information good enough for you? Online information in general? Is it that you feel your question has been fully answered as best as it can or is it that an extension of research is a bit more work than you'd like to put in?

I guess my answer would be a little bit of both. Regardless, next time I need to research something less frivolous than bunny poop, I am putting on my walking shoes & heading to the library.

In Progress: Lining, Zippers & Hems

I feel like although this skirt is taking an incredibly long time to make, it's actually pretty fast work. Generally, the only thing preventing me from getting this done is the lack of time to work. I've been somehow magically balancing school, work, dating, making new friends, volunteering, maintaining this blog & crafting so I can't quite dedicate as many hours to my personal craft projects as I used to because really, I feel creating some kind of home/life here is more important right now. My biggest fear is currently that I will get sick (totally throws off my time management skills) or that one of these things will just fall apart due to things beyond my control. Of course, I am hoping winter break will be craft time to the max! Hello, my hometown is hours away, just think of how much crocheting can happen on the road!

In the meantime, I am fitting things in where I can. I had a free hour last week so I managed to sew the lining in & do a top-stitch, put in the zipper (note: image #1 proves how inept I am at zippers, look at all those pins!), & start putting on some hem tape (although I didn't get to finish). The end of the quarter is getting so close so things are getting crazy, but my next steps are finishing that hem, giving the skirt a wash, & doing some final fittings!

Salvador Plascencia's, "The People of Paper"

Time to go off topic again, because today I feel like talking about books, not crafts.

I read this book not too long ago, but it has been following me around since then. I can't even properly mention what it's about as I feel it's about a lot of things & none of those things follow a linear plot very well, nor did they need to. There is a story of a surgeon who makes origami organs from paper. There is an immigrant story. There is a story about a saint who decides to live the life of a luchador instead of something more holy. There are so many stories about failed relationships.

Mostly it is a book about incredible sadness which is probably why the feelings from reading linger much longer than the details of the various plots. This book may not break your heart, but it will make you feel that way regardless. The book also makes you fully aware that you are only reading a book, which in a way made me feel silly for being so invested. It reminds you that there is an author, that the characters, to you, exist only on those pages. It makes you aware of how you are holding the book as you read.

In Progress: Tiny Flowers

I'm still really obsessing over tiny details in the clothing I make. This time I let my sewing machine do most of the work, using one of those fancier stitches to add some decoration to the waistband of what will hopefully end up being a fuller, a-line skirt. I am using a pattern I made based on the one I created for my last sewing project, bringing the lines out & away from the body rather than keeping them close.

I also took a visit to Mood to get the lining for this skirt & was blown away by the sheer amount of fabric in that store! I really wanted to go at least one time for the simple pleasure of pretending to discuss my fabric choices with Tim Gunn. Next time I go fabric shopping, I'll probably go somewhere cheaper, but I'll definitely remember where Mood is when I need something special! I will leave you with this video clip that explains why I loved Project Runway more than any other competition reality show: