One more week!

Just one more week before my husband is here to move me back home! I have a lot of packing/cleaning to do, and things to finish up in my lab and classes that I am teaching, but every day is closer to being home! In the meantime, here are a few more amigurumi dolls, including an original design.

"Inky" from www.LionBrand.com:



Cute little frog, and I think I may give him away as a gift to someone. I found some pictures on twitter of amigurumi sea turtles, so I will also have to try one of those out soon.
This design is also from www.LionBrand.com:




An original design! The ET looking fellow below was inspired by Inky. I really liked the round head with far-apart eyes, so I made a little man (alien?) based on it. He is a little wobbly, but very cute: any ideas for a name?




My plants have been growing like crazy! And now I think they need a bigger planter box. Hopefully they don't grow too much before I can get back home and replant them in something bigger. The picture below is of the five yellow squash plants.

Tomato plants that are crowding each other! At least they are cherry tomatoes...

My husband sent me flowers! This was such a nice surprise, and he even included a heart-felt note. I hope they last as long as possible, and I am so excited to move back! Only 13 more days.


For the past quarter I have been trying to grow some herbs and vegetables on the balcony of my apartment. It only gets about 6 hours of direct sunlight a day, in the morning, but I think they may be doing okay so far. The above picture was about 3 weeks ago.



And this is what they look like now! I have 4 cherry tomato, 3 basil, about 6 cilantro, 5 yellow squash, and 7 cucumber plants! I finally thinned them out this morning, so the cucumbers in the picture above are now singles. I hate having to thin the plants, even though I know they won't grow well without it. In between the cucumber plants, I scattered a mix of seeds that will eventually be green and purple. That is all I can tell you, since I have forgotten exactly what kind of flower seeds they were! But at least they seem to be growing.

Here is the finished giraffe, along with a few of his buddies. I am working on a purple octopus now, and he should be up in a few days.

After I took this photo, I realized it looked sort of morbid, in that Frankenstein's monster, sort-of-way. This will be a giraffe once I am finished with the arms, mouth, and mini-horns. He is turning out pretty cute! You can find this one on www.LionBrand.com if you want to crochet it yourself. It is super easy.

I actually designed the bear below. My first attempt had a head that was too small to be cute, so I started over with a larger head. The mouth almost looked like a pig's snout, but I think I was able to save it, with the results below. He looks contemplative, so I positioned him gazing outside, thinking about finally moving home in early June. Or was that me, thinking about that?

This picture reminds me of my puppy, Wallace, when he wants some attention. He is the same color, too. I miss him.

There was a time in my life where I was afraid I was going to end up one of those people that start projects and never finish them. It's true for some things in my life: working out regularly, design school, making an entire quilt; but I have managed to actually finish many projects in the past several years, and it has been, to say the least, very satisfying. So in my basket of to-do projects is the above scarf. The yarn is a ruffle-yarn, so the ruffles happen all by themselves, as long as you knit it correctly. It just takes forever to add any length. I figure it will take me until the end of summer to finish. But it should be beautiful when it's finally done.

A couple of weeks ago, I started on this cute little elephant pattern I found online at LionBrand.com. After completing the body, trunk, and all four legs, I realized that I was out of yarn. Panic set in for a few minutes, then I realized I had been using the yarn as part of my wip (work-in-progress) hexagon blanket (see http://attic24.typepad.com/weblog/ for the pattern). So I dutifully ripped out the yarn and was able to make the ears for, what turned out to be, an adorable little elephant. I couldn't quite get the trunk shaped like the picture, but cute nonetheless.

Basically a sphere with a couple of eyes and shamrock-shaped appendages, this has been one of my favorite amigurumi animals. Also found at http://www.lionbrand.com/.

It was a going-away gift for my roommate, who moved last week.

So there are just three weeks to go in graduate school before I move back in with my husband. I am excited. Very, very excited. Most of the time I will be packing, cleaning, and gathering as much data from the lab as possible. I have a meeting with my committee this coming week to see how I can turn this project into a Master's thesis and defend it next Fall. It may be quite do-able, and if I can accomplish this, I think I will have added one more "finished project" to my list and be quite happy.

Why do I do this to myself???!!?

My husband and I were married almost two years ago, in June. At the same time, I was working part-time, attending college full-time, preparing to take both the GRE and the biology subject GRE, finishing and writing my biology honor's thesis, and traveling around the country to present the final product at several research competitions. Looking back, I remember it being hectic and rushed and I was not sleeping or eating as much as I should have, especially in order to maintain my weight for the wedding. My husband may remember his future wife going slightly crazy. I thought I would never do so much at one time again, but, alas, I may have just gotten myself into that same situation again.

In my attempt to leave graduate school for a normal life with my husband, my advisors have realized that I am 1 unit and a thesis project away from getting my Masters. I have been working on a project for the past four months, so, in theory, I could get it done this summer. However, it would mean that over the summer I would have to:

1. Get a full time job (I am waiting to hear back on an interview and some applications I have been working on over the past month or two).
2. Find a committee. <-- not as easy as it sounds.
3. Resume my life with my husband, dog, and gecko.
4. Bring all of my research materials from graduate school.
5. Convince an unsuspecting but reliable undergraduate to help obtain data from the lab AND process it AND email it to me in a timely manner.
6. Analyze the data and get a result (ha!).
7. Write the thesis.
8. Travel back to graduate school and defend it in front of the committee. Without going insane from the pressure.
9. Try to fit in the anniversary trip my husband planned.
10. Get this all done by the end of summer quarter.

So is it worth it to complete my masters? That is what I am trying to decide right now. Being so close, it is tempting to power through this next summer and get it done. But there is the fear that my project won't work or my thesis won't be approved by the committee. Arg! I guess if I try and fail, then at least I tried.

In the meantime, I will try to keep my sanity by working on more crafts and trying to get tomatoes to grow.

Shopping bag that I crocheted: For the first attempt, I didn't pay that much attention to the pattern, and the handles suffered. I thought it would make a nice gift, so on the second try I followed the pattern and changed the color. Not too bad of a result.

Second attempt:

First Blog

You will have to forgive me, as this is my first attempt to blog. It will be awkward, but hopefully, I will improve with time. I have had much free time lately, so I have been working on several projects, including improving my sewing skills, learning how to crochet adorable amigurumi animals, and trying to grow some summer vegetables in an apartment. Below are some pictures of my projects.

Amigurumi rabbit (not my design) and owl (my first design!).

Close up of the sexyman fabric on the wall organizer.