pug portrait

So last night, MG and I attended a charity silent auction for Pawsitive Alliance. And I bid on a custom pet portrait. Lo and behold, we won. Our downstairs neighbor (who is on Pawsitive Alliance's board) joked that the artist would have to draw a pug and then smear it every which way since Hemi never holds still. And then my coworkers joked that I'm becoming one of those crazy pug people. I told him that the sanity train left the station a while back.

engagement story

Since there was a contest on engagement stories, I quickly entered ours:

MG and I got engaged last September. He had been carrying the ring around since May of that year and was waiting for the right moment to pop the question. And after waiting five months in vain for said moment, he decided to make one.

MG had told me early that day that we were invited to watch Super Troopers (his favorite movie) at his recently-singled friend's place. Little did I know that he was going to propose at Gasworks Park (Seattle) and had made reservations at a fancy restaurant. Thus, when we were getting ready to leave, I put on some sweats and flip flops in preparation. I was a little surprised when MG commented on how casual my outfit was. I do believe my response was, "Dude, we're going over to ***'s. He doesn't even have dishes, just piles of used paper plates covering the counters." He looked quizzical for a moment before responding, "Fair enough."

When we got into the car, he concocted another story about having to pick up some friends from "a wine bar across the street from Gasworks" (which if you know the area around Gasworks is a statement akin to *I'm going to Nebraska for good Chinese food*). He lured me into the park area by saying that the friends were probably walking drunkenly in the park and that we should go find them. It wasn't long before my flip-flopped feet started getting muddy and gross (as Seattle will do on any month except July) and MG said that we’d turn back for the car after he tied his shoelaces. While he bent over, I started turned to look at the city across the water and when I turned around, he had the ring out.

Later, while we were at the fancy restaurant, he mentioned how nervous he had been because there had been so many holes in his story. He kept thinking that any moment, I would realize how ludicrous half of his assertions were. And in looking back, I wonder the same thing considering that I’ve bought all his shoes since we started dating and all of them were slip-ons.

baroness beret

Just finished the flower. It's for someone that has a one biological child, a crapload of non-biological children and three jobs. For those days that there's absolutely no time to brush or shampoo.

lemon candle

I had a dying champagne Illuminations candle. We also had fish for dinner last week that required only half a lemon. And when these two worlds collided, that leftover lemon and the leftover wax became a Martha project.

wavelength

I've started a crochet project! I've been meaning to learn how to crochet so when I saw the wavelength pattern, I just had to try.

lv luv pug

I made Hemi a jacket with fabric I found in Hong Kong a long time ago. It's reversible with a really happy pink and orange striped fabric on the other side. The velcro and trim are from Pacific Fabrics. I used one of his other jackets as a template and wish I knew how to properly trim sewing stuff. I'm going to have to redo that ugly buckle on the back one of these days. But isn't he an adorapug?

how does one say "whine" in german?

A certain skipper was complaining about having all the posts be about wedding shiznit and stuff, so to appease that bugger, here's a picture from our Christmas Eastern Europe trip. Yep, MG and I found the Google offices in Munich. It was relatively close to a bunch of hofbrauhauses.

endpaper mitts

Finally finished after hibernating my Endpaper Mitts for around five months. What finally motivated me to finish? Toronto Craft Alert's giveaway to inspire people to finish their projects. And my, are these babies warm! Perfect for the typical March in Seattle.

all unfinished projects

So many... unfinished... projects! thank goodness I've accumulated a bunch to be able to enter this contest. The Toronto Craft Alert is to be hailed as the great craft-hurry-and--finally-finish-it idols. My brief list:

• Endpaper Mitts
• Redo the buckle on Hemi's LV jacket
• YACK (yet another chalkboard [wall] kitchen)
• Millenium Rogue (since it might actually take a milenium to finish)
• Sister's duvet cover
• The ugly knit bathroom rug
• Felt-lining my green knitted hat

Next week, I swear, I will make headway into these projects.

inspiration board

There's a contest over at weddingbee to make an inspiration board with a Kathlin Argiro bridesmaid dress. Since the grand prize consists of five custom bridesmaid dresses, I had to give it a go. So I spent a good amount of last night (i.e. submitted at 3am) putting together this board of stuff I would love to have were I to win the lotto. Whaddya think?

mokume gane

MG got me a beautiful engagement ring with clean lines and a very sparkly bauble. To complement it, I think I'm leaning towards this kind of wedding band. The woodgrain design is made with traditional Japanese metallurgy techniques, mokume gane. I like the idea of having more a more structural design without any stones to compete with the main sparkly.

everyone and their mother

So when Mike and I got engaged, we were sandwiched by quite a few friends getting engaged. In fact, there was an engagement every week three weeks prior and one week after (for a total of five weeks in a row). And it's been great! So many people to talk to about wedding crap! And now I have another person to harass! Notmartha! Congratulations, M!

Why do it yourself?

When someone's already made all these inspiration boards for you?

wedding dresses...

Gotta start thinking about planning stuff. So here's a couple of styles of wedding dressed I've come across today. Three drastically different silhouettes but each dress has its plusses and minuses.

OMG, TGIF

That "F" in TGIF stands for funding. The stimulus passed with the Specter-Durbin (Republicans!) Amendment intact. We might not need to deport the non-US citizen post-docs that are in my lab :) And people will be funded to find the cure for Alzheimer's or Parkinson's!

back in the saddle again

Yarn dominance. These two words are going to be the end of me. Halfway through the second Endpaper Mitt, I've realized that I've been holding the wrong yarn in the dominant position. So the balance of green on white has been disturbed. There may be a frogging of four inches worth of mitt in the near future. Sadness.

yes my friends,

It's been a while. Life's gone a bit gaga with trying to get a (scientific) paper together, Christmas in Europe, a conference in Colorado and this whole thing about keeping my place from looking like a pig sty. But I promise to start blogging again. Really.

But I have been doing some craftiness... witness the hats we're wearing in the picture above. I made those! Because it was friggin' cold in Vienna after we ran out of glühwein for the fourth time.

And another place to learn to cook from in Seattle:
Culinary Communion

comments on the veep debate

I've been keeping up on the national polling at 538.com. The proprietors of that site as well as most of the mainstream media are liveblogging. I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon.

Overall, Sarah Palin didn't do badly. But that's like saying the last Star Wars movie was "better." Joe Biden also didn't do badly. I was hoping for a NASCAR-like wreckage, though. I'm pretty sure that there isn't much that would sway people's minds or hearts toward one way or another.

Hey Jackie, Collette, John, Gary, did you hear that? Your reward is in Heaven!

(Look, I'm LIVE-blogging!)

excel

=IF(AND(D22="left", C22="C"), COUNTIF($F$5:F21, ">0")+1, "")

This has now taken over as the most complex function I've ever written in Excel. It's a baby step in my attempt to learn to program. Eventually, I'd like to be sufficient in Matlab and possibly Python. And though it isn't really that complicated, it took me an hour or so of staring and googling to figure out how to twist Excel functions to do my bidding. Probably would have taken 3 minutes in Matlab or python....

how to make friends on the internet...

Bribe them. Of course, they get to bribe you back. Mutual friendship ensues. So if your WOW friends don't send you enough real stuff (that +2 sword doesn't count) then maybe some crafty friends can be made via swap-bot. Who knows, maybe some new swap-bot friends can be convinced to start playing WOW.