Koha - I [still] LOVE YOU!!!!

Byebye Koha... I wish you didn't have to graduate, but I hope you have fun being a model, or whatever other crazy (or non-crazy, but that's unimaginable with you) things you go on to do... T_T

To commemorate her graduation, K-Snow and I ventured out to iHop for some Papancakes and Hapi☆Hapi Sundaes (perhaps with very! berry! strawberry! on top) followed by a Koha song title photo scavenger hunts of sorts, combined with a grocery shopping stop.

Our first stop was the iHop itself, where we admired the very Kirari to Fuyu street and window decorations.



Followed by an extremely large meal of Papancakes. Their eggnog pancakes were delicious, and K-Snow appeared to enjoy their Pupumpkin Papancakes muchly (along with... an entire tilapia dinner... O_O).


We finished off the meal with a Hapi☆Hapi Sunday (I mean, sundae) with strawberry compote on top!


After managing to drag our beached whale selves out of the restaurant, we decided to stop by Whole Foods for some more scavenger hunting and grocery shopping. On the way there, we saw a little shop where you can Tan Tan Ta(a)n! if you so choose.

Can you find all three Tan-s?

We also spotted a Rainbow Pink with an additional Tan for good measure.


Outside of the Whole Foods, we noticed that they seem to have a special going on EVERYDAY PRECIOUS DAY!!!


Inside the store, we were immediately met with very! berry! strawberry!

Yes, with all those exclamation marks... this giant pile was literally right inside the door...

Whole Foods was a treasure trove for Koha titles (as well as delicious delicious food that we were both too full to be really interested in...).

You can never go wrong with an appetizer of Himawari seeds


followed by a main course of Spaghetti.


And of course, everything will be great because Whole Foods is dedicated to providing you with SUGAO-flavor all day, everyday:


In addition to edibles, Whole Foods is dedicated to making you feel beautiful with their crazy organic bath salts.... So much so that they felt compelled to stick a Koi Sign in their salt bucket...


Having acquired a stockpile of food, we left the store and headed for a brief stopover in Chinatown, where we found a certain dimsum chef being extremely Happy


And who knew Milky Way condoned gambling?!

(It was better than getting in trouble for looking suspicious while trying to take pictures of the stars on police and fire department buildings/vehicles... >_>)

And now, back to the train station to head on home! What a long day! But oh no, we have to wait for the train :( In the meantime, we spotted some Futari wa NS

Apparently the Chicago L-map makers were big fans!

Oh, and they even managed to incorporate Sansan GOGO into the transportation system!!

(Bus route 330 on 55th Street)

Once home, we took some quick snaps of my Kirari-inspired outfit (Kirari + Lolita = Kiralita?)


Hey look, my skirt's even got some Mizuiro Melody on it! (At least, the melody part...)


OMG Koha's climbing out of our living room wall!!!


PHEW... what an exciting day! See how much we love you, Koha?! Please keep on doing crazy awesome things, even now that you've graduated!!!

Wa~ MERRY PIN X'mas!

Winter Knitting 09/10 - Scarf Frenzy!

Given the fantastically frightful winds here in Chicago, I've been on a scarf hunt lately. But I figured, rather than buying simple scarves that I could make myself, why not go ahead and make them? So here's four scarves, two of which are for myself, and two of which are for my lovely Lolita mentor.

I've been trying to incorporate more pastels into my winter wardrobe, so I made two long ruffly scarves for myself in pink and baby blue:



Of course the two scarves for my Loli mentor are going to be presents, so I won't post them here until after she's gotten them ^.^

All of the scarves were made with one skein of Red Heart Baby Clouds yarn. The pink skein was 2 ounces larger than the blue skein, so the scarf came out super long, but I love it!

Hope you enjoy!

Winter Knitting 08/09 – Part 2.2: Hat Lined with Fleece!

Well... It's really not winter 08/09 anymore... In fact, it's already pretty much winter 09/10, but life got in the way of actually lining that hat. However, in order to make it truly functional for my boyfriend, I have finally finished putting in a fleece lining for it!

(See part one here).

Not only does the lining make the hat longer by about 1 inch, it also makes it that much warmer now that there are two layers between his skull and the elements.

Onto the one picture I remembered to take before he carted it off to Boston with him!


So, the tiny ribbed portion of the original hat got eaten in the seams, but overall the hat is definitely longer, and now double-layered. Apparently I miscalculated and the hat was a bit tight and the seam for the bottom band fell right on the ears, but my boyfriend says the hat's now loosened up from wearing, and it's all good now, so yay!!

So there ya go!!

<3

Winter Knitting 08/09 – Part 2: Herringbone Scarf Done!

I finally finished that scarf!! (And yes, I know it's not winter anymore).  I actually finished sometime in March, but didn't have time to write up a post about it.  I had just enough yarn left afterwards to knit a matching hat.  However, the hat's just the tiniest bit shorter than I think it really should be for a normal-sized adult head.  And it's only single-layered, so I have doubts about it's warmth-keeping properties.  I'm thinking I'll get some matching charcoal fleece and make a lining for it (as well as make it just a bit longer for better ear coverage ^o^)

But pictures!!
[caption id="attachment_93" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="The whole scarf"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_91" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Edge detail (moss stitch border, herringbone main body)"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_92" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Matching hat! It has some ribbing at the very edge, the rest is just straight stockinette stitch)"][/caption]

So yeah, the hat may or may not reappear again with fleece lining ^.^ I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out, considering both the scarf and the hat were done without a pattern (the hat was very much improvised :-P)

I can haz tofu!!

One of my friends has spent the last year or so in Japan, and he came back to visit this weekend ^o^ Not only was it awesome to see him again, but he also gave me the cutest Hannari Tofu cellphone/keychain charm!! ^.^






Yay Ume Plum Blossom Tofu!!! <3<3

Imma going to Anime Expo!!!!!!!!!!

Wooh!! I'm so excited XD I've been considering going to AX for quite awhile now, basically as soon as I found out Momusu was going to be performing there :-P But it was kind of like... ehh... do I have money? And then, my flight home from visiting Northwestern got overbooked, which in retrospect was awesome, because I gave up my seat, flew into Manchester instead of Boston, and now have a free round-trip voucher that I can use to fly to LA! Plus, my boyfriend's got family in Orange County, and he wanted to visit them sometime in the summer anyways, so housing is free too!!

AND TO UP THE EXCITEMENT, the all-awesome Miri is applying for booth + performance space/time at AX for Sekai no Melody!!!!! Yes... that's exactly what really pushed me over the edge to motivate myself to figure out logistics for getting to AX... I MIGHT GET TO ACTUALLY PERFORM!!! In real life with the awesome people from SnM!!!

That combined with seeing Momusu in real life... I'm waaaaay too excited about AX now XD I finally registered me and my boyfriend both, and bought tickets to the Momusu concert. Now he gets to deal with me being super-hyper the rest of the weekend. I've been getting about 4-5 hours of sleep a night for the past 3 nights, soooo.... I'm soooo very hyper!!!!

Now I have motivation to actually do my Amulet Spade cosplay :-P I already have the socks, the boots, and the hair, I just have to make the actual clothes ^.^

WHEEEEE!!!

Northwestern vs. UPenn

It's that time of year... when I get to hear back from all the grad schools that rejected me... TT.TT And indeed almost all the schools I applied to rejected me... *sigh* oh well.

The two that didn't are Northwestern and UPenn, which I visited on two consecutive weekends. Yay travel fun! And it was indeed fun (other than coming down with some awesome coughing ailment following the UPenn visit >.<).

It's going to be a pretty hard choice to make, since both schools have awesome programs with a good balance between theoretical, experimental, and computational research. And the funding packages they're offering me are pretty similar as well... *ponder ponder* Northwestern is located nicely NOT next to a "bad" part of the city, but then again that didn't stop me from coming to MIT... So yeah... decision time... -.-

But instead of continuing to whine and sigh, I shall offer some amusement by displaying the pictures I took during my visit to Northwestern. A couple of the current grad students were awesome and led an expedition into Chicago, which included a stop at the Chicago Cultural Center to look at their pretty stained-glass and mosaic domes, Millenium Park to visit "The Bean" and the spitting face fountain that was not spitting, the Art Institute of Chicago, and dinner.


Pretty picture of Chicago from the lake-shore next to Northwestern. Apparently there's a tradition for couples at Northwestern to draw/write something in chalk or paint (hard to tell under all that snow and ice) on the rocks lining this shore. We found a heart drawn by one of the other prospective students' high school music teacher.


Me standing in the middle of a street somewhere in Chicago... Look there's even a bright red sign saying Chicago on it!


Look! A giant stained-glass dome! But it's so huge you can't really see any details in this picture -.- Luckily I also zoomed in on one of the panels and the center rosette ^.^





Here's a picture from the mosaic dome. I actually couldn't get many good pictures of this dome... everything came out kind of blurry like my hand was shaking or something... oh well...


Whee! Millenium Park!!!


Shiny crazy-looking thing... Apparently it's an outdoor theater of some sort?


Aaaand there's the Bean! It's very very shiny... much more shiny than I thought it would be... O.O Shininess results in awesome pictures!



Yes I'm a dork...


Me and two of the other prospective students taking a picture of ourselves taking picture of ourselves reflected in the Bean... ^w^


All the snow that day made the park really pretty to look at. This picture totally doesn't do it justice, but it's the best I had apparently...


The face is actually kind of scary... but it wasn't spitting since it was so cold out.


Yay pretty river view!

All in all, Chicago was a really nice city! XD Too bad I forgot my camera when I visited UPenn. Although it was kind of a dreary day... rainy and cloudy... so maybe it wasn't such a bad thing after all :-P

Oh noes! This sucks!! >.

Totoro can haz dust ball?

My collection of Studio Ghibli stuffies has grown!!! About a year ago, one of my best friends got me an awesome Totoro stuffie while he was interning in Beijing ^_^ And I thought that was awesome, but then a couple weeks ago my Totoro found a dust ball friend (courtesy of my now boyfriend's trip to Japan)!!!



I also got some other interesting presents, including the cutest toe-socks I've ever seen! SQUEE!



And this bag, which he thought was really funny (and then K-Snow and I explained that "Chu" means kiss... and hence the XXX are probably kisses... -.-)



WHEE PRESENTS ^o^ But Totoro's new dust ball buddy definitely wins the prize for most awesome ^_^