A self-portrait done in pastels, a medium with which I don’t frequently work. I’m trying to get back into it, because I like working with color but I’m no good at painting, and colored pencils are too delicate for my tastes.

Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve updated; I plan on completely redesigning the site within the next few weeks, and once I get back to school I will update every single week, if not more often than that.

For my BS class of the semester (Art, Design, and Visual Thinking), our first project was to be a lesson on “points”. We had to take a photo of ourselves, and blow it up several times on a crappy photocopier (the crappier the better) until our faces took up the entire page. Then we had to draw a 1-inch grid over it and cover up the “unnecessary” (for recognizing us) squares. Then we had to take an 11×17 piece of paper, draw a bigger grid on that (I used 1.5″ squares), turn both pieces of paper upside-down (so it’s easier to replicate, because you’re not focusing on the actual features of the face), and stipple a self-portrait using a pencil eraser and an ink pad. (I shaved my pencil eraser down to a smaller size so that I could make the self-portrait more detailed.) Then you erase the gridlines, and voila! You have a reasonably accurate replica.
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The following is the text that appears in an eBay auction for my latest duct tape creation, the Anti-Terrorism Duct Tape Bag. Yes, I am fully aware that spending this much time writing an eBay auction means I am a loser, but it’s not like that’s something we didn’t know already.

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Let’s face it: you’re a busy person with things to do. Or, at least, you’re surrounded by busy people with things to do, while you just kick back and drink a can of PBR. And can I, for a moment, assume that, were there a hazardous chemical attack, you would prefer not to die a slow, asphyxiated death peppered with auditory and tactile hallucinations? Well, maybe that hallucination part would be cool, but the rest sounds kind of lame.

Where was I? Ah, yes. You’re a busy person, or a lazy hipster. You anxiously check the White House Homeland Security homepage every morning along with the weather forecast, just in case (”It’s going to be partly cloudy today with an elevated chance of terrorist attacks!”). But — until now — there was nothing you could do to help. (Note that I said “until now,” which implies that NOW, there IS something you can do to help! That’s a clever literary device that we writers call “foreshadowing.”)
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In Ithaca, the most ubiquitous article of clothing is the “Ithaca is Gorges” shirt (Ithaca has a lot of gorges, for those of you who are a little slow on the uptake). On any given day you can be pretty sure of the fact that at least 10% of the Cornell population is wearing one. It’s become such a popular shirt that half the people who wear it are wearing it to be ironic and campy. I own one, but tend to wear it only when I’m not in Ithaca.

There have been many take-offs on the shirt, either replacing “Ithaca” with the wearer’s proper noun of choice (”Last Call is Gorges”, Last Call being one of the a capella groups) or replacing “Gorges” with another appropriate adjective (my personal favorite, “Ithaca is Cold”). Basically, as long as it’s a solid-colored t-shirt with the a bubbly seriffed font, it’s identifiable as a take-off on an Ithaca is Gorges shirt.
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Another victim of the accidental film mis-processing. Oh well.

My first duct tape bag was a huge hit. Countless strangers have stopped me on the street and asked, “Excuse me, is your bag made out of duct tape?” To which I reply, “Why yes, yes it is!” They then express some amount of surprise and admiration, usually in the form of, “Wow, that’s so cool.” I respond with something along the lines of, “Thank you,” and then, like two ions in an NaCl solution, our temporary bond is broken and we continue on our separate ways.

Anyway, I had some duct tape left over from my birthday gift from Ben, and though I myself had no use for another bag, I knew that Meri–who often expressed her admiration of my mad duct tape skillz–would appreciate something wrought with my hands. So I made her this bag with the white, yellow, and silver duct tape. This one only took me a couple of hours; I am perfecting my duct tape technique.

(Preface: The following project, like all projects to come for the rest of my natural existence, will not live up to the Duct Tape Messenger Bag.)

I just rediscovered this flowchart that I made last year. I originally had this really optimistic, elaborate story idea that would involve all sorts of fake “supplemental” resources… well, that plan fell through, as you can imagine. Perhaps someday I’ll resurrect it. But for now I’m just proud of the chart. It’s supposed to be from the “Fiske Guide to Relationships” (can you tell I was going through the college process when I made this?) and it took me a really long time to get the layout right with only minimal line-crossing. Click on the thumbnail to see a version that you can actually read.

As some of you may recall, one of my goals from last summer was to make a bag. Like all of my other goals from last summer, this goal remained unachieved. Until now.

A crazy wind has swept in, bringing with it a new wave of inspiration. First I cleaned my room during winter break, throwing out three heavy duty garbage bags of heavy duty crap in the process, as well as checking one item off of my Do Something Extraordinary list. Then I knit a new scarf (okay, I crocheted it, but I did knit a scarf for Ben for his birthday). Then I got my Driver License (though I haven’t actually driven since my road test). And now… well, now I’ve gone and outdone myself. The crowning achievement of my life has been accomplished, and from this point onward all other achievements will pale in comparison.

I made a bag out of duct tape.
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I have wanted to cut my hair for at least four years, but never had the guts to do it. I’d had short hair when I was little and had occasionally been mistaken for a boy (granted this was by other stupid little girls who had no clue what they were talking about) and I was afraid that, while it had been adorable on me in my younger years, it would just not suit my new face.

Finally, a week and a half ago, I took the plunge. “I want it short,” I announced to my hairdresser. I pointed to my jawline. “Up to here.”

“Are you ready?” she asked, scissors poised, lock of my wet hair in her hands.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I replied. Snip. Snip.
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My father retired today after working in the New York City school system for thirty-four years. That seems like a pretty big thing, so I decided that I’d bake him a cake. But not just your regular, average, stir-and-bake, pop-open-the-cannister-of-frosting cake. I made a cake from scratch.

I suppose I should start by saying that baking is not one of my fortes. I don’t know what my fortes even ARE, but I do know that baking does not even closely resemble any of them. There are two things I’m good at baking, butter cookies and caramel-filled chocolate cookies, and they’re both essentially foolproof. Still, I feel that maybe one of these days I’ll unearth some sort of cooking talent, and so I keep trying.

I started out last night by dusting off the good ol’ “Joy of Cooking”, the chef’s bible. Opened it up to cakes, and selected a chocolate génoise because I had once seen this French guy on Martha Stewart Living make it and it had looked pretty easy. (Lesson #1: If you see a French chef on Martha Stewart Living doing anything, even washing his hands, it probably is so difficult that you’ll never, ever be able to do it.) The little “about génoise” blurb in the book said that it was best brushed with simple syrup and layered with buttercream icing. Alright. I could deal with that, it was for my father after all.
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