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 ^_^

Winter Knitting 08/09 - Part 1: Herringbone Scarf!

This is one of the two knitting projects I've been working on this winter. Originally I wanted to do the "Henry" scarf from knitty.com, but I really suck at knitting scarves sideways because I just lose count of all the stitches way too easily. Not to mention the tubular edge thing didn't work out to great when I did a test swatch...

So instead I decided, well I've never done a herringbone texture before, so why not! And my attempt to keep it from curling quite as much involved putting a seed-stitch edge on it, but that doesn't seem to be working as well as I thought. I think I'll just have to try to block the living daylights out of this guy when I'm done...

It's also the first time I've done a scarf using sock yarn... It takes much longer than any other scarf I've done T.T

But enough talk! here's some pictures!


All crumpled up...


Seed stitch border...


The herringbone texture...

It's not visible from the pictures, but the herringbone isn't very even, mainly because it took me awhile to get a hang of the whole knitting through the back loops thing... But I think it'll turn out decent ^.^

YAY!! Yeah, this one is the one I worked on all winter break (3 weeks) and it's not even halfway done yet. I reminds me of the anime "Maria-sama ga Miteru" though because I watched the whole first season of it while knitting this.

Being sick sux, but Spongebob makes it better!

Well, I've been sick since yesterday with who-knows-what. Fever, sore throat, and now cough... meh, hopefully it will pass soon...

But! My awesome friend Niv went and got me a Spongebob thermometer!!!

It even plays music when it's done taking your temperature!!!

I <3 you, Niv!! ^.^

Finally... more about the Javinale wedding

Now that I'm finally moved and mostly settled in my new place, I have time to write a little more about Javinale's wedding ^.^  It was really really awesome, with the ceremony being a mix of Indian and Christian traditions (although admittedly there were many more of the Indian segments).  So it was definitely exciting, since I'd only seen Indian weddings in Bollywood movies before :-P Amazingly enough, the real thing was pretty much as ornate and crowded as the movie ones!

The night before the actual wedding, they held a dinner reception with a talent show, which was lots of fun. I played the violin for their talent show, and even though I thought I really did poorly, given that I hadn't actually practiced the violin for about a year, everyone apparently was very pleased, so that was good ^.^

I also got henna art done on my hands. That was super-exciting because it's the first time I've had it done by a real henna artist (rather than just random friends playing around with henna).



The reception after the wedding itself was also lots of fun, with speeches by family members, videos/slideshows made by family, and then at the very end, open dance floor.

I had a great time, and hopefully I'll be able to find some more pictures from this to post!

Javinale Dreamcatcher

August has been a really busy month for me, and it's barely even started yet! In the midst of moving from my one dorm to another, I also went to the wedding of my friends Javier and Finale.  I was trying to make them this dreamcatcher for their wedding present, but didn't finish in time.  Luckily, they're coming up to Boston for another get-together celebration with all us MIT peoples, so I finished it for that ^.^

It's an interesting and symbolic (in my head at least) variation on a dreamcatcher that I came up with, although I'm sure other people probably have done it too, I just have never seen it myself until I made one. It's two overlapping dreamcatchers woven simultaneously. In addition to the obvious parallel to Javinale's lives now being intertwined, it also forms a Venn Diagram, symbolizing that their two distinct lives now have an overlapping component representing their relationship with each other, but at the same time still maintain their distinctness, representing their unique personalities and interests. Or maybe I'm just a nerd... That's okay, they're nerds too.

So without further ado, pictures!

The entire dreamcatcher:


Closeup of the green and blue medallions (instead of feathers because I was having trouble finding ones that I was sure were synthetic, also, they're circular, that seems to be a theme...):



And a closeup of the web:


The webbing was made from LionBrand Suede Yarn (I don't have the exact color names anymore, I threw away the wrapper). The frames are actually a pair of bamboo purse handles that I ordered a long time ago and didn't end up using (for that Geisha swap purse, in fact). The medallions and beads were all from the bead section of the Pearl Art in Central Square.

Now I get to go back to packing my room up for moving.... X.X

Mad Hatter

Here's some more creations! This time... hats!!! Winter hats, to be exact...

The first hat is a red hood I knitted up. It's made with Lionbrand's Wool-Ease Thick & Quick in Cranberry, so it was a really fast knit!

It's really warm and I absolutely love it! Plus it matches a new coat I just got :)

So without further ado...

The front view: please excuse my awful facial expression, I'm bad at pictures :-P


The side view: you can see more detail on the braided edge.


The back view: you can see the seam :)


And the second hat is a pink tam, which I love wearing, but it's not nearly as warm as the hood. This one is knit with Lionbrand Wool-Ease in Blush Heather, an absolutely beautiful color. I made the edge band a little small for the amount of hair I have, but it still works :)

The front view: can't really see much of the hat itself, but that's how it looks from the front.


A side view: you can see how it sits, slightly slouchy at the bottom, which I like a lot.


A different side view: gives a better idea of the back, plus the pompom actually shows up!


An actual back view: You can really see the segments on the hat, and the pompom!


And that's me being happy because I really like this hat :)


That's all for today, folks, but I'm in the process of knitting my boyfriend a 6-foot long scarf, which I'll be sure to post when it's finished!

Nice cup of tea

I'm back with another update of projects I made for a Craftster swap. The theme was tea time. I found some really cute tea time related charms at the crafts store and decided to make matching earrings and ribbon bookmarks.

The earrings were really simple, just a colored bead and then the charm. I ended up making five pairs:











I made the matching bookmarks from ribbon, and attached the charms and beads with wire. The ribbon I liked only came in the wired variety, so I had to pull those out before making the bookmark. I made four bookmarks (with a closeup of corresponding charm at end):

















I also made a recipe book full of recipes involving tea. On every page I put a picture of a different interesting-looking teapot that I found online. There were ones shaped like turkeys, frogs, Conestoga wagons, ladybugs, and tons of other interesting shapes.

I also made a small tea wallet. It's basically a wallet with pockets the right size for teabags and sugar packets. There was even an elastic in the centerfold to hold stirrers!



And here's what the inside looked like! The orange rectangles were actually Post-It notes with labels for what flavor of tea was in the pocket, since I sent it with teabags already in the wallet.