A little bit of crafting, a lot of sewing, and no blogging

My apologies to anyone still out there.. sorry I've been so lackluster around these parts!

But it's hard work keeping up the blog. For the most part, I've been doing a lot of uninteresting things, with the exception of a few big events. However, it's hard to set aside time to put together a blog post when that time could be spent frustratingly enjoyably sewing. Plus, I'm a little camera shy, and a lot of my recent makes involve me gussying myself up and preening for the camera (in a preferably picturesque locale). You can see why I don't do this.

Funnily enough, my friend just posted about blogging procrastination. It's a much funnier version of what this post essentially says (TL;DR Sorry I suck at blogging). Go check it out, she's a very funny lady.

I thought I would just share this little phone snapshot of a bit of embroidery work that I did on some lab coats for work. The university provides us with lab coats with personalized embroidery but there's a turn around time of at least 6 weeks. And it didn't work out with a student worker, so we got these two with his name even though he'd been long gone. I took the liberty of unpicking/cutting off the embroidery and going over it with a little bit of hand embroidery of my own to hide the many pin holes left behind by the previous name.



I'm hoping to up my blogging game in the coming months since I'm going to try and do Sally's summer stash-bust challenge. I've already technically finished a piece after June 21, but sadly I have no pictures to do it justice. So, I'm just going to have to suck it up and go out there dressed to the nines to pose for a self timer.  Blogging is weird, right?

Incidentally, you may still yet see some interesting side projects that I have been working on (cloth napkins! wood burning!)

Is blogging about your life weird when you don't do much? Or maybe it takes a certain kind of person to like blogging? Anyone else out there with me on this?

Funny Sightings

Just a few funny signs that I've seen around. Thank goodness for camera phones, regardless of their quality, they are quite handy.

 We get a lot of stuff that is temperature sensitive, so most shippers go the route of big words that say KEEP FROZEN.  Sometimes a snowflake picture shows up, but this is my favorite 'keep frozen' label.  What a dapper little guy.

Looks like a normal 'no smoking' sign..until you get up close and read the fine print.

I did a double-take the first time I saw this sign.  Apparently, our lab manager has a sense of humor.

'Orange' you glad we're valentines?

 At work, we're doing an elementary school-style valentine exchange.  Everyone is getting a little something for everyone else.  I came up with this cute, if somewhat elaborate, sight gag.

I bought a 5 lb. box of Cutie mandarin oranges and devised this little fruit cozy to put on them since I figured taped cards might fall off.  Plus, I think people will enjoy a bit of fruit during the deluge of sweets on Valentine's Day.  All in all, each little orange cost me less than 30 cents to put together, and it's a lot more thoughtful than a store bought card.

And here's the pattern that I made up for these.

With orange:
Rnd 1: Ch 5, sl st to form a ring.
Rnd 2: Ch 3, [DC, Ch2] repeat x6 (into ring). Finish with a sl st to the top of the Ch 3.
Rnd 3: Ch 3, [DC, Ch2, DC] into DC of previous round.  [Ch3, group] repeat x6 (group is DC,Ch2,DC)
Rnd 4: Ch 3, [DC into Ch2-sp. Ch 2. DC into Ch3-sp. Ch 2.] repeat around. Finish with a sl st to top of Ch 3.
Rnd 5: Ch 3, [DC2TOG, Ch3] repeat x6
F/O

With green: (leaf)
Ch 5
sl st in 2nd ch from hook, SC, SC, 4 HDC in last ch.
On other side, SC, SC, sl st.
F/O

Slip in your fruit and use a bit of yarn to loosely weave in the last round to be used as a drawstring.  Before tying a bow in your drawstring, make a little tag and slip that onto the yarn. 

Enjoy :)

It's definitely Monday today.

You know how I know it's Monday today?

When I got to work this morning, it took me nearly 45 minutes to get started on any of my experiments because I had to take apart my scope and replace the bulb.

It's going to be a long week.

A Secret Admirer

So it's not really a secret, but I got a nifty little valentine from a lab coworker/friend.

So sweet and thoughtful! The inside was a Littlest Pet Shop panda. So cute.

As much as I love well thought out, homemade cards, I also love cheesy store-bought valentines (especially if I know they're coming from non-crafty people). I remember when my best friend from high school bought a box of Pokemon valentines to give to our group of 6 friends and ended up giving each of us 3 different ones :)



Many works in progress, currently. Hopefully, I'll finish some of them soon!

"I was a good student"

Overheard today at work-

LC [re: the music on the radio]: They always play old songs! Like from when I was in high school! At the dances.
KN: Is that good? Did you like high school?
LC: I don't know, it was all right.
KN: Did you have a boyfriend?
LC: No, I was a good student.

Ergo,

Boyfriend = Bad student?

I love my coworkers.

This lovely gem was left on our lounge whiteboard. Those are days of the week magnets with a "daily agenda" written under each one. It says "kill worms" under each day except Sunday where it says "break". Reminiscent of Eddie Izzard's "Dressed to Kill" standup?

"Death, death, death, death.... lunch.... death, death, death, death.... afternoon tea...."

Video contains language and mature themes, reference starts at 3:00 minutes into the video.

Nerdy and Cute

For my P.I.'s (the lab boss) birthday the other day, we had cupcakes at our lab meeting! I work in a worm lab, so, appropriately, they were all decorated with little frosting worms. So cute. They were super delicious: white/vanilla (?) cake, lemon gel in the middle, raspberry hidden underneath the fluffy lemon frosting, and sugar sprinkles and a hardened frosting worm to top it off. The best part is that they were homemade! Amazing.















The first picture was a hasty camera phone picture, that's why it's all blurry :/
I also saved the little worm to eat later, it's hanging out with some cookies.
Side note: the worms that I work with are not blue and green.

Science in action!

Have you heard of Ecospheres? So, this was a gift to my lab from a member who left recently. They are a completely self contained ecosystem with sea water, algae, phytoplankton, and you can see at the bottom 4 tiny brine shrimp. The only thing it needs is light! Pretty neat, and they'll continue to coexist for about 2-5 years according to the manual. The shrimp will never reproduce so the lifespan of the shrimp translates into the lifetime of the Ecosphere.

And, what kind of nerdy lab would we be if we didn't name them appropriately after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? (or the famous Renaissance artists if you want to go with that)

This is where I work.

10am to 7pm everyday. What's not to love about this job?