I’ve hit the home stretch of the this semester! Less than two weeks until finals, and then I’m done!

However, this means that I’ll be spending every waking hour of the next few days writing papers big and small. Every one of my profs this semester happen to enjoy giving their classes papers to write.

I’ll be back after I finish multiple thousand plus word documents for the second week in a row. I’ll also give updates on Spring break and everything else I’ve done, promise.

Please bear with me as I attempt to complete one of the hardest semesters of my college life! Until then, enjoy this picture of an awesome group of girls:

Yay for two new initiated sisters and all of Phi Sigma Sigma! Thanks to Bev and Missy for taking the picture and posting it on Facebook.

See you in a couple weeks!

Tomorrow morning, I go to California.

Going to visit my best friend at CSUEB, and check out San Francisco for a week. Not only will I get to hang out with one of my favorite people ever, but I get to check out a cool city!

While I’m there, I plan on doing some research for a class paper. Pretty awesome, if you ask me. I’ll be visiting the site of a riot/uprising that happened in 1966 and didn’t receive much, if any, media coverage. Looking forward to it!

On a final note, been working hard preping for my conference in three weeks. So nervous! Hope I can pull it off!

I made a delicious salad today. Cooked up some lemony garlic green beans to go into the mix, along with raw mushrooms, corn, and oil & vinegar dressing. It was fantastic!

Ok, what’s the point of this surprisingly healthy endeavor? I may be vegetarian, but I kind of suck at the really healthy eating. Well, my sorority had a potluck tonight. And I was told to bring something.

…And honestly, all that stuff was in my fridge.

I had been planning on making a smaller version of this salad for about a week now, but haven’t gotten around to it. I figured that a meal with my sisters would be a good place to share it.

Ok, I know this isn’t really Fail Blog, but it sure feels like it. Sorry!

Since it’s been a good six months of no posting, I will tell you about my life since my last post in pictures. One picture per month? Sounds good to me!

August

September

October

November

…I got nothing. Initiation & Thanksgiving were memorable though!

December

January

February (so far!)

Thanks go out to all my friends who use Facebook. If you want me to take a picture down, let me know.

It’s been a busy half year, that’s for sure. And while I may not have loved every minute of it, it’s been enjoyable. My crafting’s been going down the wayside, a bit, thanks to school and my volunteer work, but I’ve still been doing it here and there. I’ve been teaching myself how to crochet, and have taken up knitting again. Both are great for relaxing!

I’ve also come down with some sort of ickiness. I’m hoping it’s not strep, but I’ll find out for sure this week, once I make a doctors appointment. In the meantime, relaxing and not doing too much seems like a good game plan.

Lastly, I’m going to California for spring break! I’ll be visiting the best friend while I’m out there. I can’t wait!

Oh gosh, it’s been so long! I apologize!

I’ve been all over the state these past couple of weeks, I swear. As I mentioned in my previous post 12 days ago, I was heading up to both Grand & Big Rapids to visit friends. We had a blast enjoying downtown GR, veggie dogs, thrift & coffee shops, and a blues fest. In Big Rapids, we sweltered inside the dorms, due to the heat, but swimming in a lake near Newego, and visiting a small creek near the school made up for it.

Feels like summer, doesn’t it?

On the swings.

Back in BR. Creek behind the Dairy Queen.

After I got back from Big Rapids, I home for a few days, then headed Downriver to visit my grandmother! I’ve been there since this past Wednesday, and last night, we drove a couple counties over to see my aunt  for a few days. I’m sitting in a Biggby’s at the moment, soaking up their Wi Fi and Italian sodas, after biking around the city a bit. After this, I head home for a night Wednesday, then it’s off to north of Muskegon for a long weekend! Finally, I’ll be going back Downriver for the rest of August, till I move back to school, since I was offered a fantastic temp job opportunity. Exciting, but busy! I love traveling, but I never thought I’d be seeing this much of the state this summer.

All this moving around means very little work is getting done on that denim quilt of mine, but I still have hopes of finishing it by the time school starts. Hopes! Since I’ll be at my grandmother’s, I’ll be using her very nice sewing machine, rather than my mother’s. Looking forward to that.

Speaking of my grandmother, she just called to find out when, if ever, I’ll be heading back to the house. I’ll miss the internet, but now I know where it’s at!

I’m leaving soon to visit a few friends in Big Rapids and Grand Rapids. I’m only going to be gone for a couple of days, but I’m looking forward to this slightly last minute trip. I’m amused that I’m visiting two different Rapids today, as well as leaving from my hometown Rapids. Michigan has a lot of Rapids!

I’ve gotten half my jean blocks sewn together, as well as sorted out all my squares. Pretty soon it’ll be time to incorporate their color to the denim – I can’t wait!

Also, I’ve decided on another aspect of the quilt. The back side, once it’s complete, will be nearly 270 blank jean patches. I want to have my friends and family sign, doodle on, whatever, as many of those patches as possible. I’ll need to buy some fabric markers for that, but I’m excited. My goal is to have this quilt go everywhere with me, lol, and it’ll get filled as life moves along.

I have a quilt in the making right now, but I’ve been procrastinating on it for the past month or so. I like making things, but I find that it’s hard to get from the “cut, cut, cut” stage to the “sew, sew, sew” stage. I may have gotten over my fear of cutting up fabric, but there’s still the fear of making horrible mistakes while I sew things together. But never fear, I’m getting over that too! I’ve now gone from cutting larger pieces of fabric into smaller pieces of fabric, to sewing small pieces into a larger piece. Quite an odd thing to do, when one looks at it…

However, there’s joy to be found in both destruction (or de-construction, in this case) and creation. And quilting certainly combines the two together.

The quilt I’m working on is an experience in reusing, repurposing, and recycling. It’s a “circle jeans quilt”, made from jeans that i’ve gathered from some family and friends, and my own closet. I’m also using non-jean materials, such as old shirts, scarves, bandanas, and more. Most of my fabric came from raiding my grandmother’s stash, a rummage sale, and through the kindness of a friend of mine. I will admit to buying a few pieces here & there though; the remnants bin at JoAnn’s is a hard monster to fight.

An idea of some of the materials I used. If you look at the bottom left corner, you’ll see pockets – there are 11 pairs sitting there, waiting for a use! I ripped them off all the jeans I cut up, to increase the fabric I could use, and showcase color differences.

Thankfully, this quilt is a “quilt as you go” design, which in this case, means no batting, and some unconventional layering to achieve quilt status. I found the design and tutorial at the Blue Jeans Quilt Gallery, and fell in love. So far, I’ve only got eight blocks sewn together, out of the 30 I’ll eventually need, but this is quilting: I don’t expect instantaneous results…even if I want them!

To create this quilt, I cut out circles from all the jeans I gathered. For the twin-ish sized quilt I’m aiming for, I needed 270 circles. That ended up being 11 pairs of jeans, plus some extra pant legs, left over from another project of Grandma’s. I was shocked! I thought I would need at least 20 or so pairs of pants. But since I mostly used older men’s jeans, I was able to get a large amount of usable fabric; up to 20 circles per pair, if I was lucky. The girl jeans I used didn’t give me as much material, but I was still able to harvest a lot more than I anticipated. I also had to cut out an additional 270 smaller squares from the non-denim fabrics, which will be layered inside the circles when I quilt everything together. I know that sounds confusing, but it works.

I’ve only sewn together eight blocks of circles at this point – the squares won’t be added until I actually do the quilting. Each block consists of a basic nine patch pattern, and is about 15 inches square, when completely finished. Because of the variety of denim used, there’s a ton of variation in the colors and look of the blocks.

Two views of the blocks. The one at the bottom of the photo is actually going to be the back of finished quilt. The other view, with the rounded flaps, is the top/front. Crazy!

Here’s a close up of the “top” to be. The smaller squares will be inserted under the flaps, then the flaps will be sewn down with a tight zigzag stitch, holding everything together. I’m excited for the finished result; I’m thinking it’ll look slightly kitschy and/or retro. I’d almost say it may have a vague Urban Outfitters feel to it, but I don’t think it will. Too round.

This is just a fun little note that I’d like to show off. A couple of circles were purposefully cut so that they’d have holes (worn in or cut out) in them. I patched them up with differing fabrics to highlight them. and the other side will have another pattern as well. This really shows the point I want to make with this quilt – it’s created from used, loved, and worn items, and will continue to be used, loved, and worn once it’s completed.

I’m no where close to being done with this project, though my goal is to have it ready to use on my dorm bed once school starts up again. But the process, and the thinking it inspires, is fun. As will be the finished product, I hope!

Via this post on Pandagon, I learned about a crackdown on saggy pants in Flint. If you think Detroit’s crazy, go look at Flint. I think they won the crazy contest.

Flint residents now have to watch their butts because Police Chief David Dicks is on the lookout.

Dicks, who took over the department last month on an interim basis, announced that his officers would start arresting people wearing saggy pants that expose skivvies, boxer shorts or bare bottoms.

Other than I don’t like boxers on guys, holy cow, Flint police. Do you really have so much time on your hands that you’re now resorting to looking at guys’ butts to determine “public indecency”?

I vote that every start wearing boxer briefs or whitey-tighties, instead of boxers, to actually give the city something to look at. Because really, they’re going after boxers.

This upcoming weekend, I’m making a trip to Toledo, OH for a combination 4th of July/birthday gathering. Three of us from my service/volunteer group at school had birthdays at the end of June, and we decided that meeting up for a mid summer get together would be a fun thing to do. After spending eight months together on campus, going four months apart and spread out isn’t all that fun.

I’m excited because I haven’t seen my friends since I moved home for the summer, and because it means I get to give gifts! Handmade sketchbook/journals, to be exact.

I wanted to come up with something for my friend’s birthday, since I only sent him a card for the occasion. He’s an art major, so I figured a small sketchbook would be fun – and I wanted to make it. I started off with the idea to make a small one out of recycled paper bound together with a coptic stitch (tutorial from curiously crafty); something I’ve seen beautifully executed with plenty of books on Craftster and Etsy. Because I wanted a more masculine feel, I sewed some denim from a pair of jeans that used to belong to my grandfather onto the cover.

However, once I started putting the book together, it started to feel a little…special. I used hot glue to hold the paper onto the cover, and my inside pages had to be replaced due to an operator error in the creation process. While it was a good first attempt, I really didn’t want to give this one away.

You can see all the recycled papers – some were from high school and others were from freshman year of college. I even have notes from Hamlet and A Doll House in there.

The binding. You can see the individual signatures in there, and well as the glue, ribbon, and cardboard, lol.

So I decided to make another one.

I used a different binding and covering technique for this sketchbook: one I found on Instructables, from someone making an envelope book. This book was much easier to make, and looked so much better as well. Almost like something you’d buy in a store! It’s not perfect, but I’m okay with that.

I really like the scrapbook paper I used for the cover and binding/hinge. Not the blue/brown theme I wanted originally, but still cool looking.

I bought that stamp from Vozamer on Etsy, along with some letter supplies for a birthday gift. So cute, and it’s an octopus!

The binding. I cut the paper into half sheet pieces, rather than folding like I did for the first one. I like this way much better.

Though I’ve only made two little books so far, I’m excited to make more – in fact, I have a few planned, and I can’t wait to try out some different binding techniques. I’m hoping to branch out beyond computer paper as well.

****

An update or two:

I mentioned that I put my Wii up for sale before. I got some bites! I’ve sold a couple games on Half.com, and a friend from school contacted me via Facebook about the console itself. I’m happy, and getting closer to being able to buy a sewing machine. What’s funny to me, is that that I originally bought the Wii and games through Facebook Marketplace, from someone at school. I love how that worked out.

Also, sitedad, from EMUtalk, was nice and linked to me on the site. Thanks, sitedad! Hopefully there’ll be more school/EMU/emu talk once orientation and classes roll around.

I did some cleaning and digging around around today, and found the letters I received last summer. I’ve been on a letter/stationary binge this past week, so it was nice to bring those out again. I really enjoy being able to read them, and look back on things – I’m a sentimental person, though I try to pretend otherwise.

Looking at them, however, reminded me that I’m in dire need for proper (or at least better!) storage for my letters and papers. Currently, I have my supplies in a desk drawer, and my letters sitting near my laptop. Most of them were in a shoebox a few hours ago, but i don’t think that was a much better situation, lol.

I’ve harbored various thoughts of what do for storage. I could find another shoebox, and store everything in there, but the Converse box with all my shoelaces seems to be buried somewhere. My mother suggested that I find or buy a photo box, but…much like with the envelopes of the previous entry, the thought of making or reusing something seems much more enticing.

So in that vein, I’ve been trying to figure out how to make a decent box for my letters and supplies, or where I could find one. The finding won’t be hard, but I’d like to inject a bit of adventure into idea. I like the thought of having a special place for all letters and memories.

Suggestions or ideas would be appreciated!

****

In other news, I listed my Nintendo Wii on Half.com, in order to help fund a sewing machine for myself. Turns out, there’s a place in Ann Arbor that sells used sewing machines, and I’ve been itching after one for almost seven months now! Mom has a half decent Kenmore, but it hasn’t been serviced since she got it from her mother, and I’m not allowed to “borrow” it and take it back to school with me come fall.

It would be nice to get a machine for myself, so I can learn how to sew and quilt better – what an accomplishment that would be for me! I’m excited. I may be selling my Wii, but really, a sewing machine is a much better investment in my life.