Happy Thanksgiving!

Unfortunately, I have been really quiet on crafts and home improvements. It may have something to do with the fact that I've been writing over a hundred thank you cards and just trying to keep up with lab stuff. I will definitely have some projects up here before Christmas.

The one exciting thing I have to report is that both Nate and I got iPhone5s! The iPhone5 is such an improvement over the iPhone3GS (which we both had). My pictures will be much brighter and less grainy and I think that will be improvement for all. Plus, I have been FaceTiming everyone who can put up with me and having Siri write out all my text messages. Oh technology!

Also, in the home improvement front, we will be getting new windows in the next week or two, so that should be awesome! Our windows are horrendous and since our bedroom has four windows, having better windows will improve our lives tremendously! With the new windows, I am hoping to put up and/or make new curtains, so we'll see how that goes!

Hope everyone had a relaxing and wonderful Thanksgiving break! 

Happy Halloween!

I did end up redoing the skirt and making it reversible with pockets. I cut out two rectangles the same size and put them each together into a circle to make two identical skirts. The pockets went into the seam of the orange side, but sewing them into the seam was surprisingly hard to wrap my head around. Once the two skirts were sewn (with the pockets on the orange side!), I could go on to joining the two skirts together to make it reversible.

For the joining, I first did it correctly on the bottom, but then I decided to do it the same way on the top and I didn't realize that this would make it so that I couldn't turn it inside out completely (it was sort of a mobious strip). Oops! I did get these fun pictures of Nate using the skirt as a bandana. 

I took out my failed top and ironed it and redid it (very neatly) from the outside and everything worked out. I then made a place for the elastic and put it in. I realized that it would get bunched up if I didn't sew the elastic in, so I went through and sewed the elastic in once around the diameter of the skirt. Overall, I was happy with how it turned out, but it was a little bit on the large side, so I should have made it a bit smaller (maybe 1.5x my hips measurement would have been better than 2x my hips measurement). If I averaged this skirt and the skirt I made last week, it would have been perfect. Unfortunately, you can't average real objects (kind of like how you can't CTRL+Z real life). Also, when I went to the fabric store, they didn't have the glow-in-the-dark fabric, so I got a dark fabric with purple words and used what I had of the glow-in-the-dark fabric for the pockets. Yay pockets!

I wore the skirt on last Friday when we had our department halloween party with some striped black and purple tights and then again on Halloween with just some grey tights. I was debating on wearing the less bright side of the skirt seeing as I was in a visiting lab, but I decided against it because the orange side is just so much fun! These pictures were taken neither of these times, but here it is being worn by me!

Also, in the spirit of Halloween, I carved a pumpkin this week. There was an organized pumpkin carving at the university that I'm visiting. It was a lot harder to carve than I thought! The tools we had were a bit primitive so it made it hard to work with. My pumpkin is the first one in the picture below (super generic, but oh well!) and there are some better ones that others made. 

I hope everyone had a wonderful halloween!!

Failed Skirt & Corn Maze

This weekend, I had two failed adventures. First, this Saturday, we went to the Davis Corn Maze. There were a few reasons we went there rather than other mazes in the area. First off, we had discounted tickets through MIT (only a few bucks off, but still helps). Second off, it was advertised as the largest, most intense maze in New England. And, boy, did it not disappoint. I have to say as a neurotic "completer" of things, I do not enjoy not thoroughly and wholly finishing things. Let's say that somehow we missed one of each of the rubbings, riddles, and QRC codes (although we somehow found all three geocaches without actually doing the geocaching), and I was a bit annoyed.

Laura, Boris, Olga, and Nate at the beginning and on a bridge within the maze.

We did spend a quality three full hours (they had time stamps on our booklets so this is not an exaggeration!) in the maze (the first time, just exploring, and the second time using the trusty "right-hand-rule"). In the end, we had tons of fun, but I would have wanted to do it once more and attempted to find EVERYTHING in the maze. There were quick and fun activities throughout the maze (pseudo catapulting, pseudo ring throwing, pseudo ziplining, pseudo sumo wrestling, etc.) and when Olga and I went to "sumo wrestle," I ended up tripping and falling and not being able to get up. It was HILARIOUS.

In the second picture, my feet are in the air and everyone is laughing uncontrollably!

My second failed adventure of the weekend was my double sided skirt. I started off so strong! The fabric is adorable -- the stars on the black side glow in the dark!!! However, I miscalculated my seams and the width of the waist elastic so it ended up a bit too tight at the hips. Also, it was not completely reversible. I also attempted to make some pockets that did not make it into the skirt because of their lack of reversibility. Anyway, it was an utter failure. It's still wearable but I am disappointed at my lack of getting it right. If I have enough time this week, I will attempt to get a bit more fabric (it's only a few dollars) and try again, knowing what I know now. I know why I messed up the reversibility and hopefully, I will even be able to put in the pockets correctly!

I'm holding up the tights I got to wear under the skirt in the bottom left picture. The way I flipped over the other side on that picture makes the pattern go upside down! Arg!

Curtains for Boris & Laura

Last weekend, I made some curtains for Laura and Boris's apartment. Laura and I went to a fabric store (Sewfisticated) to get the fabric. Laura wanted this grey jersey fabric with a black ribbon lengthwise through the curtain. I took the measurements she gave me and put together a sketch.

As the sketch above shows, I hemmed the sides first, then the bottom, and then folded over about 4 1/2-4 3/4 inches on the top, pinned 15 inches from bottom, and sewed across so I was sewing 4 1/4 inches from the top and 14 3/4 inches from the bottom. I sewed again about 2 inches from the top (so that the top would have ruffle and so that there was a designated 2 1/2 inches for the curtain rod). Finally, I attached the ribbon by first pinning it 3 3/4 inches from the bottom and then sewing both sides 1/4 inches from each side.  

When both curtains were done, I went over to Boris and Laura's and Boris installed the curtain rods. The final product looked fine overall, but since the fabric was a bit on the heavy side, my two inches of ruffles kind of went limp. I should've done a bit less and it would have been a bit more ruffly on top. 

I am thinking of making some curtains for our bedroom because the ones we have are not sufficient and we have four windows in our bedroom so it gets cold very easily. 

I did not do any crafts or home improvement projects this weekend. On Saturday, my parents were in town for a day long layover, and today we went to deCordova Museum & Sculpture Park. Nate was unsure of it going in and left feeling "meh" about it, but I thought it was AWESOME. I highly recommend it to people who like sculptures and/or just pretty places to walk around and see art. 

While at the fabric store, I got some halloween fabric and will attempt to make a two-sided skirt next weekend! It should be awesome!

Painting On Loan

The MIT Visual Arts Center has a program where you can borrow a piece of art for the school year to hang in your own apartment/dorm/lab/whatever. Since the demand for this is pretty high, you submit a little card with your name and three works that you would like and then they put all the cards together and pull them out one-by-one (giving people one of their chosen works) until all the art is gone. Although I have put in a card every year, this year I was lucky enough to get a painting (actually, all the grad students in my lab got paintings along with many other grad students in the lab next to us -- the probability of which is staggering).

The collection is quite varied, but I got a Joan Miro. It is one of about sixteen that are untitled (in the MIT collection), and it is unsigned, but it's still petty darn awesome. I did some internet sleuthing and I think it's price is approximately two thousand. Nate is always super amazed that paintings are expensive. Every time I ask him what he thinks the price of a painting is he always comes up with something on the range of $3-$10. I don't think he realizes that a frame costs more than that, but we'll let that be. He always states that he could have done better and that there is absolutely not inherent value in a painting. (Nate edit: It's a fiat system of value.) Nate just doesn't seem to understand art.

The left is the picture from the internet, and the right is my picture of the real thing I have.

Anyway, I really wanted to put the painting above the TV, but Nate decided that would not work for him. So I put it up to the right of the window in the living room. It may not have the colors of the living room, but I think it turned out very well. It makes me so happy when I'm sitting on the couch and I look over and see it!

Something that you may have noticed in this before and after is that my bookshelf is much taller than it was in the first pictures of the apartment three years ago. When Nadia moved out, she left her bookshelf so I moved it to the living room. I acquired these black canvas boxes (seen on the second and fourth shelves) from IKEA and store nick-nacks in there to keep clutter down. 

I am working on some curtains for Laura's apartment this afternoon, so I will put up pictures of those next weekend!

Ceiling Fan

This weekend, we finally installed a ceiling fan in the extra bedroom! When my brother lived in that bedroom this summer, the light bulb in the ceiling lamp died. When we went to replace it, we realized that it was an odd double circular fluorescent bulb that was very difficult to find and cost at least $30. I didn't want to spend that much money on a light bulb so I figured it would be easier to install a nice light fixture that used cheaper and more standard bulbs. When I was looking at light fixtures, I realized that getting a ceiling fan wasn't that much more expensive and would be great to have in the bedrooms. I went to Home Depot and bought two fans along with two remote controls. I bought the smaller Hampton Bay Clarkston for the extra bedroom and the larger Hampton Bay Glendale for our bedroom. The remote controls were actually half the price of the fans but my parents have them at home in all the bedrooms and they are incredibly convenient (especially in the extra bedroom that has the light switches outside the door of the bedroom).

After my brother moved out this summer, we tried to install the fan, but the fan box was installed unevenly in the ceiling (seen in the top left picture where you can also see a black ring around where the old light fixture was on the ceiling). Therefore, we had to find a way to level the bracket (seen top right) that the fan was going to be hanging on. I achieved this by using lock washers along with regular washers and making sure everything was level after screwing it together. This took the longest time (say two months) mostly because I have been out of town quite frequently and we were waiting until we were both available on a weekend to get this done. The picture above is me being excited that the bracket was finally perfectly level!

Next, we needed to wire the receiver (I'm holding it down in the top left picture) into the mounting box and wire the mounting box into the ceiling (Nate is doing that in the top right picture). Finally, the blades were screwed into the box and then the lights were wired and installed (shown above in the bottom two pictures). The directions were very straight forward so the hardest part after the leveling of the bracket was putting together the wires of the receiver so we could stuff them between the bracket and the mounting box.

After we installed the lights, everything was done! We turned the circuit braker back on and tried it out and it worked!! The remote control is very nice (shown above left) and the lights and fan work great. The fan looks good in the room because it matches the bed, nightstand, and hardwood floors.

And it works:

We feel so accomplished that this is done and working (even though Nate won't admit it, I think even he is excited about this project)! The only thing left to do is touch up the ceiling where the old light fixture made a few marks but we can do that later. Now, we'll just have to install the fan in our own bedroom...

Hemmed Shirts

Now that I am finally caught up on current events, I am moving forward with a post about my new sewing machine...

I bought this sewing machine from IKEA. I know this sounds super sketchy, but it works AMAZINGLY and it was only $70. For the kinds of crafts I need to do, it's the perfect thing for me. My first project was hemming two shirts for my brother. He bought two cotton shirts and thought they were one inch too long so he wanted them shortened. I undid the hem and hemmed them using my new sewing machine (in a fun zigzag stitch).

It took me about fifteen minutes to learn how to use this machine but it was super straight forward and now I am ready for many new projects!