Feedback, please!

Hi, happy readers. I’m asking for your help.

I’m designing the invitation for a mini bridal shower that I’m helping to plan for one of my close school friends, and I’d like some feedback on the mockup I’ve made:

What do you think? Should I get rid of the words on top? Should I choose a less-busy pattern for the teacup? Is the flower distracting? I’d love your feedback. Please tell me how to proceed.

I’ll be going to hunt for cornflower blue paper and doo-dads tomorrow (her wedding color is cornflower blue). You wouldn’t believe it, but I spent my afternoon scouring three different stores for cornflower blue paper, and came up utterly empty! You’d think it’d be part of the normal range of colors for scrapbookers, but apparently it’s not - they had aqua, yes; and teal, yes; and purple, yes - but nothing close to cornflower…no wedgewood/periwinkle/indigo…not even slate! Hopefully I will have better luck at Village Stationers’ and University Arts tomorrow.

I was, however, able to pick up some lovely chocolate brown cards and envelopes and pretty shell grey ribbon at JoAnn Fabrics today. At a good price, too! The cards were $3.99 for a box of 10 (not the best price in the world, but cheaper than buying a box of invitations), and I got two 9-ft. spools of ribbon at $0.10 each (The labels said $0.50 in the clearance basket, but it rung up at the register as $0.10, so I guess the higher price must have been an earlier markdown…) For those of you who are texturally-oriented, like me, feast your eyes (courtesy of my new lens, which finally arrived about 2.5 weeks ago):

And while I’m at it, I think I’ll show you the mother’s day cards I made for my mom and my maternal grandmother (she and my grandpa live with my parents at home; my paternal grandparents are deceased).

These actually aren’t the final versions. I added a few solid metallic hearts to balance out the composition after I took these photos. (By the way, for those of you who follow my very intermittent posts, do you recognize the washi paper?)

A crane for my grandmother:

Bunny rabbits for my mom (both she and my grandma were born in the year of the rabbit - in different decades, of course - but my grandmother is afraid of rabbits because their pointy noses remind her of rats, so I gave the bunny card to my mom instead):

Thanks!

- s.

Playing Bento “Ketchup” - Part I

My seventh grade geography teacher used to set aside certain Fridays during each marking period as “ketchup days” (intentionally spelled that way), during which we could “catch up” on classwork.

I thought “ketchup” was appropriate for the title of this post, as it’s really a backlog of bento, with a few other pictures of food mixed in. Buckle in your seatbelt if you have a slow connection…we’re going for a bit of a ride! (To reduce loading time, I’m going to split this into more than one post. Watch for another of these ketchup posts soon).

Notre Dame Bento (made for the plane ride to ND - 3/26 or 27?):
Main container: egg salad sandwiches, peppermint tea for my tummy (i get airsick), individually-packaged walnut cookie (in foil packet), spicy pumpkin seeds (in orange packet with spots), mini custard, ginger candy, clementine. Sidecar: Diced honeydew melon.

3/29 (I cooked dinner for myself one night while I was at home for Spring Break because my parents were out with guests and I was tired from my flight back from South Bend):

From top, clockwise: Slices of leftover lamb, a red French rice whose name I can’t remember (my grandparents received a package as a gift and didn’t like it - but I absolutely loved it for its texture and nuttiness, so I helped them make a dip into it) seasoned with butter and salt and pepper, a spiced-up variation on apples n’onions “hash” (carrots, apples, shallots, slices of leftover baked potato, fried together and seasoned with thyme, cilantro, lemon juice, and some apple juice and raw sugar). I was quite proud of this dinner - it was very very yummy and when my parents came home, the house smelled so good, apparently, that my Dad (who normally won’t eat anything I’ve cooked since he’s such a good cook himself and he’s almost as picky about quality of food as me) asked me how to make it…

And this was my bedtime snack - chamomile tea with lemon (I added milk and sugar to it after I took the picture), and two digestive biscuits. Mmmm.

3/31 (for the flight back to California):

Main container: lox and cream cheese sandwiches, mixed-rice onigiri (with leftover boiled mustard greens as filling), cherry tomatoes, ginger candy, mini-custard, spiced pumpkin seeds (hidden beneath the other food), peppermint tea (tucked in with the napkin); Sidecar: tropical fruit salad (fresh papaya mixed with canned pineapple and juice). Not pictured: Apple (see photo at the top of this post).

That’s it for now. Part II will have three bentos that I’ve made since the beginning of the quarter (there were actually more, but I didn’t have a camera lens for about three weeks, and my phone’s camera really didn’t do anything justice, so those poor bentos in the middle just didn’t get documented).

- s.

E’s Graduation Gift

My poor readers. I can almost hear you groaning and rolling your eyes. “FINALLY,” you say, throwing your hands up in the air, “she is doing a backpost…about time, lady!” My apologies. But yes - here it is…the first in a series of…oh gosh, well - many.

This is a piece of artwork that I made for a friend who graduated early (in March). Our little group of girlfriends had a lovely afternoon sendoff for her on the sun-drenched patio of the Cantor Art Center’s cafe.

E really loves nature, so I thought it might be nice to do a four seasons concept. I ended up deciding on mixed-media collage, since my drawing skills are so out of practice that they’ve almost entirely disintegrated…the texture of mixed media is fun, anyway (I’ve noticed I’m sort of into mixed media - or at least, mixed forms - in my poetry these days, too…is this a trend?).

Before framing. (Excuse my messy desk). See the extra (washi paper) tree to the left? That became a matching greeting card, which I haven’t posted, for privacy reasons:

In its frame (ugh; couldn’t get rid of the glare in the photo):

The gift, all wrapped up:

Our guest of honor loved it, and wore the tissue flower on her wrist like a corsage all during the afternoon. Since March, she’s moved to Berlin, and is living and working there. We miss you, E! It’s hard to believe that the rest of us will soon be moving on, too (in about a month!).

Keep your eyes peeled for a bento redux, soon.

- s.

Ribbit!

I’m heading off to Manzanar (the former internment camp) for the weekend. It’s a trip I’ve been looking forward to for a while - not necessarily “fun,” but rich in cultural importance. My poor camera has been limping around without a functional lens for the last week, and the company from which I ordered the new one has been having difficulties processing my order (frustration! frustration!), so in the meantime, a friend of mine has been very kind and allowed me to borrow his own 18-70mm lens. This morning I took it out and put it through its paces. I looked up the manual online and figured out how to attach and detach the filter and the lens hood, and I cleaned some smudges from the filter’s surface. I also took a few test shots to get the feel of it - pictured is a little plastic froggie toy (it’s one of those plastic bath toys) that some friends gave me as part of a “welcome-home-from-oxford” gift last year. He is sitting on top of a pretty container of Korean star paper that I received as a Christmas gift one year (I’m a very slow star maker, since I have a short attention span and get bored quickly, so I haven’t made more than a few dozen out of the kit so far!) You also get a sneak peek of the “reference section” of my bookshelf (or, rather, the writing-related section; I have a whole other section for htm, css, and web design books…). May I point out some of my favorites — the St. Martin’s Sourcebook for Writing Tutors, Barron’s Painless Grammar (mostly useful for tutoring/teaching), and of course, one of my two MLA style books (I have both the Manual and the Handbook, 6th Edition). Unfortunately, my current favorite - my copy of Jump Write In (a book of creative writing prompts that appeal to kids but which I find are perfectly useful for college students who are nervous about writing poetry, as well…) is not on the shelf, since I pulled it earlier this week to bring to a write-in that OT had. Which means it’s probably somewhere on my floor, which means I ought to put it away.

And now I really must do my laundry and run errands, if I ever want to have clean clothes for my trip.

Make up posts and Manzanar post to appear sometime after I return.

- s.

I haven’t fallen off the Earth!

Yes, I realize it’s been nearly a month since I last posted, and I’m very much behind — lots of bentos and crafts and, most importantly, grad school visits (!) to share. But I’ve been absolutely beleaguered by the amount of attention that I’ve been giving to this baby, my work as a Bible Study leader, straightening the paperwork for graduation, and trying to find a summer job, that I have barely even had enough time to finish my schoolwork (and I’m only taking 12 units this quarter!). To top that all off, my camera lens is broken and I am working on finding a new (and more versatile) one for a good price! >_<.

I promise a full return, as soon as I get my act together, but for now, let me leave you with two things.

First, this, the first of a backlog of about five or six bentos (this is from my trip to SF State):

Main compartment: leftover Pizza Chicago, green beans
Lid: Annie’s ginger snaps and chocolate mint cookies
On the side: “cutie” clementine
Not pictured: second clementine and a ziplock of garlic and herbs water crackers

And then, this, the most important piece of news to hit this girl’s life recently:

I HAVE DECIDED TO GO TO NOTRE DAME NEXT YEAR. OFFICIALLY! YAYYY!

That’s all for now, folks.

But stay tuned for more on how I came to that decision, later.

- s.

And in the writing sphere…

…things are busy - buzzing quite frantically, actually.

I realize I haven’t done a writing post in a while, so here’s a little update on how things are going.

Last week, O.T. went to hear Kimiko Hahn read at SJSU — it was awesome, even though we got there late-ish and got a bit lost (at one point, a wise guy who will not be named decided we ought to shortcut through the “Botanic Garden,” only to realize that the darn thing dead-ended with a hedge and some dumpsters - we ended up tromping through a hole in the hedge, anyway…) and, in fact, ended up with so little time before the reading itself that our “dinner” ended up consisting of the hors d’oeuvres served afterwards!  One of the members apparently knew Ms. Hahn, which was pretty cool (he’d taken a class with her before), and much to my amazement, he boldly invited her to our Friday reading afterwards! (She didn’t come, but it was cool that he was brave enough to ask).

Friday, of course, was the long-awaited reading itself.  We had 8 readers (all of whom did an awesome job - I was mystified that so many of them had been shy about sharing in draft exchange when their work was so good!), a great spread of dessert donated by the English Department, and a surprisingly large turnout. All the chairs  that I set out in the Writing Center were taken, and I think people pulled up more afterwards.  The night turned out to be a smash hit, as far as I was concerned, and I even had to kick people out when it was time to lock up the building at 10 (they were hanging out, having fun around the food).  I can’t wait until next quarter — with SOCA, the AATP collaboration, and our own reading, it looks like it’ll be absolutely wonderful!

On the more academic side of things, I’ll be visiting SFSU today and sitting in on a workshop class.  Fun times!  Well, more like “exciting” than “fun”…especially as I have to come home to the fog of paper-writing I’ve been living in for the last three days (and will continue to live in until the end of the week…).  Will bring along the camera and blog about the visit when I get home.

- s.

Spring at Stanford!

Boy, I’m posting all over the place, aren’t I?

I figured I might as well try to get rid of some of my giant backlog of posts, since I’m a bit of a zombie at the moment from lack of sleep (it’s finals week) and have some time to kill before I need to start the next thing.

Last week I took my camera with me to class, in order to document the arrival of Spring to campus. Everything is a complete riot of blossoms. The sky is clear, clear blue. It’s beautiful!

I give you…pieces of spring at Stanford:

Random art “interventions” (because it’s not pouring every day anymore)

(I actually don’t know whether it was an art piece or a prank; someone had left these lamp shades stacked up on some nearby bollards the day before — the next day, they had been moved to the side. Whatever the original intention, though, I found the collection a very interesting study in texture and shape).

Fountains sparkling in the sun:

(This is my favorite fountain on campus — at Old Union. I actually don’t much like the shape, but since they renovated the building and courtyard, they put in these BEAUTIFUL blue-green iridescent tiles that sort of remind me of the inside of an abalone shell…)

A profusion of blossoms everywhere…

(I don’t even know what these are, though I’m tempted to think they’re cherry?)

(although, they seem to have too many anthers to be cherry…plus, the form of the plant seems to be that of a scraggly shrub, not a full tree…hm; whatever they are, i like the pale touches of pink on the petals!)

…mixed in against a backdrop of palm trees and a turquoise dusk

(I love how this little shrub/tree has pink, white, AND red blossoms! some interesting genetics going on there…)

The magnolias are always the first to bloom, and they keep on almost all season. They make me feel hopeful even when it’s rainy, gray and disgusting out:

O’Keefe-esque.

(I love doing shots that are imitative of her work — the centers of flowers are indeed almost as beautiful as the petals themselves…)

Another beautiful mutant variety…

(These daisies grow outside my dorm, mixed in among the regular white ones. I wonder, though, where the tinges of purple came from, as the wild type seems to be exclusively white, and I don’t see any purple flowers anywhere nearby. Actually, I’ve never seen any purple flowers of this variety, though there are maybe three or four of these purple-tipped guys sprinkled in amongst the rest on our lawn. I wonder what happened to cause this weird pigmentation? Perhaps it’s more common than I think - I seem to remember seeing red-tipped daisies of the same variety outside sigma chi…though I’ve never seen purple ones outside of the Wilbur grounds!)

Sometimes I miss taking my plant biology classes a lot more than I’d like to admit, English major that I am now.

- s.

Palm Cross - Version 2

In the last post, I showed you how to make one version of a palm cross. Here is its sister tutorial, which will show you how to make a second, fancier-looking version. A note of acknowledgment: this is basically a photo version of this line-drawing tutorial, with my own directionality aids and suggestions added in. If you do better with diagrams than with photographs, I suggest you go there (you’ll have to scroll down the page to find it).

As I wrote in the last post, this model isn’t particularly stable — because the last tuck and fold is made on a diagonal, the knot tends to slip a bit, and furthermore, since there is no loop to reinforce the strength of the bottom vertical arm, the base tends to shred a bit and will get brittle as the frond dries. However, it stays much flatter than the other version, which is quite conducive to giving as a gift that can be kept between the pages of a Bible or pressed under glass. In order to reinforce the knot and ensure that everything stays where it’s supposed to be, I’ve taken a double strand of plain beige thread and embroidered a Chi Rho symbol where all four arms meet, making sure to go through ALL of the layers with my needle whenever possible. The Chi Rho works nicely because it has an X shape that holds the layers of the horizontal arms together diagonally across the X portion of the design, as well as a vertical Rho symbol that secures the layers of the vertical arms. In short, with the exception of the danger of the bottom arm shredding or breaking off — this cross isn’t going anywhere anytime soon!

Palm Crosses - Version 2 (”X design”)

Materials:
1 Palm Frond (try to choose a long-ish one if you can)
Scissors to trim, Needle and thread if desired

Step 1

Hold the frond vertically, with the tapered end (A) on top and the fat end (B) on the bottom.

Step 2

Grasp the frond at about 1/3 of the way up from the bottom, and fold the top 2/3 down so that they overlap. [It's important to note here: we'll be working the cross from the back, and won't flip it over to the front until the end].

Step 3

Fold the front section to the right so that it’s perpendicular to the vertical, back portion. From now on we will call the longer section that you’ve just folded right section “A” (after end A), and the vertical portion “B”(after end B). B will form the vertical main post of your cross. A will form the cross-beam and the wrapped X-shape.

Step 4

Leaving the length desired for your right hand cross-arm, fold section A back towards the left and behind the rest of the cross, making sure to line up the horizontal layers as much as possible (please disregard the crookedness of the model being folded in the diagram - it’s hard to fold with one hand while holding a large camera in the other!)

Step 5

Leaving the length desired for your left hand cross-arm, fold section A back towards the right and over the TOP of the rest of the cross. You might have to readjust things at this point - keep pinching the center, or everything will come unfolded.

Step 6

Carefully fold up section A at about a 45-degree angle to the Top (North) and Right (East) arms of the cross.

Step 7

Now fold A back down at a diagonal, over and BEHIND the back of the cross. It should come out at a Southwesterly position, between the Left and Bottom arms.

Step 8

A is now going to return to a horizontal position. Fold it over the front of the Bottom (South) arm of the cross.

Step 9

And just as quickly, we are going to return A to a diagonal position. Fold it up behind the back of the cross in a Northwesterly direction so that the tip comes out between the Top and Left arms.

Step 10

Fold A diagonally back down the front and towards Southwest, but this time tuck it underneath the topmost layer. Pull through until everything is snug. Trim the excess length at the tip of A so that everything lies flush with the side of the Bottom (South) leg. You may also want to even up the very bottom of the cross, at tip B, so that it’s straight.

Finished!

Flip the cross over to the other side (you’ve been working the back of it the whole time), and you’re done! Secure the folds with stitching, if desired.

- s.

Palm Sunday

Today is Palm Sunday, when Christians celebrate the Triumphal Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem a week before his death (Palm Sunday also marks the beginning of Holy Week, which leads up to Easter). This year we actually received palm branches in church (I’ve been going to nondenominational churches out here at school…and not all of them celebrate Palm Sunday in the traditional way), so I decided to revive a childhood tradition of folding crosses from the fronds (two to pin on my door, and some to give away). I’d gotten rusty on the technique, so I had to rely on the help of a couple of tutorials, but here is the result of my labor:

How do you make these things? It’s actually much easier than it looks.

I made two different kinds, but the kind without the cross across the front is actually my favorite — the folds lock together a lot better, and I also like the look of four looped arms. Read on for a step-by-step (NOTE: much thanks to this tutorial. I’ve kept most of the steps, but clarified what I thought was necessary and added some arrows and things to help directionally…)

Palm Crosses - Version 1 (”Looped”)

* * *

Materials

1 palm frond (long and thin is best), pair of scissors for trimming

Step 1

Hold the frond horizontally, with the tapered end (A) to the right and the fat end (B) to the left

Step 2

Taking a little more than 1/2 the length, fold end A up and across the top so that it is perpendicular to the left “arm.” The part of the frond that is now pointing up will become the (vertical) main pole of the cross, and the part pointing to the left will become your crossbeam.

Step 3

Fold A down under the back of the crossbeam piece.

Step 4

Fold A up again over the TOP of the crossbeam piece.

Step 5

Now take hold of end B and fold the crossbeam piece OVER the top of the (vertical) main pole piece and to the right.

Step 6

Bend end B around towards the BACK of the cross and slip it between the two backmost layers (you should see a little “sleeve” like vertical portion that you can slide the tip through). Pull the whole piece through — you should now have a stable knot that you can let go of without having everything unravel on you.

Step 7

Take hold of tip A, fold down towards you (on the front side of the cross) and slip it under the top layer of the knot. Pull down until you have a top arm of the desired length.

Step 8

Bend tip A back up again and slip it UP under the knot. Pull through until you have a bottom arm of the desired length. The vertical (main pole) of the cross is now complete. (Note: Tip A should not be exposed above the top of the cross).

Step 9

Flip the cross over to the back side, and orient it so that the crossbeam piece (with tip B on it) is on the right (tip A should now no longer be visible, as it will be on the other side of the cross).

Step 10

Fold tip B to the left and slip it underneath the topmost layer of the knot. Pull through until you have a cross-arm of desired length (Hint: generally the cross-arms of a Latin cross are about the same length as the top, vertical arm).

Step 11

Fold tip B back to the right and slip it under the topmost layer of the knot again. Pull through until the final cross-arm is the same length as the one you made in Step 10. Trim away any excess bits of the frond that may be sticking out at the end.

Finished!

Flip the cross back over to its front side, and you’re done!

* * *

Whew, that took a while to complete (the tutorial). Tomorrow (or later tonight, if I get around to it with all the studying I need to do) I’ll post a second tutorial showing how to make this version:

[Without instructions or a pattern for the embroidery, unfortunately - I added it to these three because I want to give them as gifts that can be kept for a long time, and the sewing helps keep the cross from slipping apart, as this is a less-stable folding technique].  By the way, in case you’re curious, the symbol I put on the cross is a Chi Rho - which stands for the first two letters in the Greek spelling of the word “Christ.”

- s.

Ego boost (grad school update)

This is the last one…

SFSU - Accepted!
ND - Accepted!
JHU - Rejected
UMich - Rejected
UMass Amherst - Rejected
WUStL - Rejected

Still leaning towards Notre Dame at the moment - partly because they’re offering me a decent amount of money, and SFSU says it can’t offer me a fellowship (I’d have to go through loans, or wait till second year to apply for a teaching position).