Paper Crane Earrings

Since senior year of college, when my friend dragged me to get my ears pierced, I've been collecting earrings. I have blue ones (3 different pairs in 3 different shades), green ones, purple ones, and more. They all tend to dangle (with the exception of the squishy spikey studs I have) and I love them all. Oddly, I never seemed to find the perfect pair of red earrings.

March 2009, I was dating a boy from Portland and when I visited his city, I came across some paper crane earrings. They were 20-30 dollars -- way out of my price range. Since then, I've coveted paper crane earrings.

Last summer, my friend "Gator" and I went to the St Louis open studios. I saw some jewelry made from bike chains and other interesting mechanical pieces. Like the paper cranes, I decided they were too expensive.

Recently, a friend dragged me to JoAnn Fabric to help him pick out buttons for a pouch. There, I saw an earring kit, and on a whim, bought it and some pliers.

After much trial and error, I made my long-coveted red, bike chain, paper crane earrings:

<3
Hao

PIE-venture!

I have a friend who LOVES pie. And I really do mean LOVE pie. Recently, he heard from his mother that there is an amazing pie place about 40 minutes outside of St Louis with good country food and famous, travel network worthy pie.

With much gusto, my friend gathered many of us on a pie-venture. We drove for 40  minutes and arrived at a dinky little town called Kimmswick, Missouri. The pie place was definitely the largest structure in the area. And it was painted blue -- rather appropriate since it was called the Blue Owl:

Botanical Gardens and Jumping. Lots of Jumping.

So early April, I went to the botanical gardens with my friends.

We climbed trees:

I pretended to be the three anti-evil monkeys:

And then we did lots of jumping. I really like this picture:

And that was that.

I'm fond of the botanical gardens. :)

Free Ice Cream Day!

Yesterday was FREE ICE CREAM DAY  at Ben and Jerry's!

My friends and I went and got a free ice cream cone! I got the coffee coffee buzz buzz buzz and it was super tasty!

We got there around 6:10 and the line wasn't long yet, so I decided to devour my ice cream and stand in line again! :D

I then got the strawberry cheesecake. It was yummy too. I offered a bite to a friend and he took most of the ice cream and then laughed at me. T.T by then, the line had gotten really long and I didn't want to stand in line again. It would've been REALLY SAD but it was too funny.

Sorry the post is boring... but it made me happy so i wanted to share.

<3
Hao

Firespinning Tonight!

I <3 fire. I <3 how St. Louis has really lax firespinning laws. That's why my roommate and I go fire spinning often.

Yesterday, I decided I was going to drag some friends with me to watch me spin. I'm not very good, but I am very addicted to the art. If you've never HEARD fire, you won't understand, but the whooshing sound is so loud and so close to your ears that it makes your blood rush. It is one of my two addictions (the other is caffeine).

Anyway, my friend has a really nice camera, and he took some pictures of me tonight. I might post more later, but here are 3 to start. Enjoy!

 Fans. This was right after I lit them. I over fueled them enough that my safety was telling me to be careful. 

 

Pacman Seascapes

Last week, I put up my sewing machine and set up my work station for painting again.

I'm not very good at painting, but I love cute things and nerdy things. My favorite art blogs are these:

Blow at Life  by Lawrence Yang
He paints really simple colorful pieces with cute characters and creatures in the background. A lot of the stuff I'm trying lately is really trying to copy his style and maybe make it my own one day.

Shadowscapes by Stephanie Law
I've been following her shadowscapes website since I was in 7th or 8th grade. She has a beautiful watercolor layering technique I really want to try but haven't due to my impatience.


Mall, Melissa Haslam, UrsulaV, and Audrey Kawasaki are also really cool. :)

Anyway, I made these two pieces over the weekend. I think of them as Pacman Seascapes  1 and 2.

I don't really have particular attachment to them... so if you want one, comment,email me your address, and I'll mail it to you.

<3
Hao

Photos at Dawn

Three weeks ago I got to make a choice. I could pull an all nighter in lab to get my work done and then hang out with my friends who were visiting or I could go home, sleep, and not get to hang out with my friends. If you know me, you'll know which choice was the only choice I could make.

Anyway, I stayed up until almost dawn watching buffer drip through a his-bind column (translation: I watched salt water drip through some beads so I could collect proteins I wanted). There was a lot of down time, so at around 6 am, I went home, took a shower, grabbed my camera, and went to the park. It was one of the few times I'd be awake at that hour, and I was determined to catch the sunrise.

It was still rather dark when I got there: 

Oddball Dreams

I had a weird dream last night. I don't remember it well anymore, but I typed up what I remembered when I woke up this morning and saved it as a word document. I'm not sure it makes sense, but I thought it's worth sharing... just so you can see how oddly linear yet nonsensical my dreams can be. I think the oddest part is I went through the same dream what seems like twice and got to correct my mistakes the second time around. Granted, things didn't go PERFECTLY, but the outcome was less depressing the second time. Less death or something. I thought it would make a good Alice in Wonderland type story since there were cards involved and the dress was definitely blue. i don't know why i remember that... so i used the name Alice for the character.

Anyway... this is what I wrote this morning:

Alice flees. Up and up the castle walls, things almost break off but not. At the top, there is a sliver of light. Pushes on it, escapes. Runs. Flees. Sees three cards: mother and two close friends.  Rest of deck are of people still alive. Alice hides them. Tries to hide them in her sleeves and under her undershirt.  More running. Captured. The ones under her sleeves are found but not the ones closes to her chest. Made to drown the cards in a pond. Cries out why mother left her, but knows mother is on her chest. 

I want to use it as a story idea, but it doesn't make enough sense.

Oh, well. Sharing dreams can be fun. 

<3

Hao

Snowy Forest Park

In February, on a particularly sunny day, I was hit with the sudden urge to be artsy. That was the day I poked at Food for Thought. That was also the day I wandered to the local park to take pictures.

Forest Park in St. Louis is the coolest thing about living in St. Louis. It's about 2 square miles of land that is free and open to the public for picnics and fun. There are two free museums and a free zoo on the property, lots of fountains and lagoons, and even places to rent paddle boats! Also, there are musicals in the summer (not free but not too expensive) and free music concerts.

One of the prettiest spots in the park is Art Hill. Every winter, after it snows enough for sledding, the city lines the bottom of the hill with bales of hay. At the top, there are two fire pits and the city throws out some firewood. Children of all ages (myself included) would bring sleds (or steal dining hall trays) and sled down the hill. The bales of hay are to prevent the sledders from falling into the ornate fountains from the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair at the bottom.

Cthulhu Blanket

Last year, one of my best friends graduated college. I decided I wanted to get him something for graduation. After much thinking, I thought it would be best if I made him a blanket.

Originally, I had wanted to make a pacman blanket because it would be a wonderfully nerdy thing to do. I got a bunch of felt and even drew out a design when I realized it was too daunting of a task to tackle as a first major sewing project. I didn't know if I could cut out pacman shaped pieces well enough or even properly sew all the pieces onto cloth. Thus, I decided to try something simpler. With much thought, I decided on a making a cute Cthulhu because I thought the Cthulhu I drew here was really cute and fairly reasonable for a intro sewing project: 

With the image in mind, I began making the blanket.