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Wednesday, March 24, 2004

paris

i've been in paris for 4 days now, and i'm still not quite adjusted to time zones here. We arrived at e's dad's hotel at 8am on sunday morning. as it turns out, most of paris decides not to work on sundays, and even if they do decide to work, they don't get up until at least 10am. e's dad took us out walking to the notre dame the luxemburg park, past the palace of justice, etc.

e and i were basically dragging the whole time since we were so jetlagged. we eventually sat in front of the the pompidou watching people walk through the habitrail like corriders along the outside and snacking on paninis and crepes. I bought a scarf because it's FREEZING over here when the wind blows. When I came out of the shop, the skies had gotten very cloudy. I went into another shop to look at really cool jewelry, and when I came out it was pouring rain. luckily, e and i had fit our humongous rain coats in my bag, and so we pulled our hoods on and ran back to the hotel where we collapsed for the next several hours before going out to dinner around 8pm at pied cochan or something like that. we ended up sitting next to a stanford medical professor/dean of med schools and his wife (small world).


---day 2----
the next day e and i hiked out to the eiffel tower and went up to the top and froze as we looked out on the city. after coming down, we went in search for lunch, and grabbed some tasty sandwiches and pastries at a bakery we passed. While we sat munching and shoeing away pigeons in front of the Seine, it started to pour, and we ran for the nearest train station. We ended up coming back toward home which actually is right above something called the Forum les halles (i think) which is a humongous underground shopping mall.

we walked around all the shops, and i went into H&M which I had read about on several lj communities (although I didn't realize it was a european store). the dressing room lady got pissed at me when she realized i couldn't understand which dressing room she told me to go into :( there was some cute stuff, but honestly, i had to keep in mind that the euro price is 1.25 times as much in US dollars.

e wanted to go to a vietnamese place we'd read about in the lonely planet guide book. we set out for the restaurant, only to find that sometime in the past two years since the book was printed, the vietnamese place dissappeared. we ended up eating in a japanese restaurant. apparently, cheese on sticks wrapped in beef is considered japanese food here... weird... and ultimately (according to e and his dad) gross.

----day3----
i woke up at 6:30 am, much better than the 3 am the day before. I made e get up around 7ish and by 8:30am we were out on the street. We walked all the way across the city to the catacombs. we passed a multitude of amazing shops that were closed until 11am. We stopped in at a cafe to grab some espresso at the bar. The server woman got majorly pissed at us because we didn't speak french, and grumbled the whole time we were there.

honestly, by the time we got around the catacombs, we were ready to drop. also, we couldn't even find the entrance to the catacombs! it was this inconspicuous little building that we circled a couple times before realizing that was where we were supposed to head. we got in and had to climb down an itty bitty spiral stair case that felt like it went on forever! then we started our way to visit the bones. I actually got really freaked out on the way there because the hallways were barely lit and only large enough for one person to fit (single file in otherwords). e was too tall for the hallways and had to stoop the whole time. It was quite a claustrophobic experience. Plus, I kept worrying that there would be a power outage and we'd be stuck alone down there in a maze of dark damp rock and 2 million sets of dead bodies. *shiver* Actually, once we got to the bones, it was wider and much better lit so I felt much better. The bones themselves were amazingly artfully/efficiently stacked. Skulls were used as decorative pieces and would be lined up in cross patterns among the millions of leg/arm bones. We didn't see any pelvic bones, but there were large piles of bones that went 40meters back in some areas so they might have just been hidden, plus, I think tourists only go through a small part of the catacombs. Some of the skulls were very shiny, and you could tell people rub them like buddha's tummy. Apparently there is a problem with people stealing the bones for souveniers (god how freaky is that?) so they check bags on the way out (as a side note, they also check on the way in, maybe to check that you aren't a criminal bringing more bones in?). All in all, the catacombs were very interesting but very morbid (duh!). I think my mom would have hated to visit it. I'm still amazed that the french even bothered to think of uprooting 2 million bodies and stacking them underground like that.

ahh... tired, i'll blog about today later... when i get back home (to high speed internet as opposed to dial up) i'll post pics... including some from the catacombs... ttfn!

Wednesday, March 17, 2004

celebrating the end of the quarter

the end of undergrad years...
the end of finals...

st. patrick's day...




I'm not sure how I feel about this shirt yet... it evolved so much from what it set out to be...
Started with a plain black small t-shirt from Michaels ($2.50)
- i made it into a nice tank: took of the sleeves and left the collar on
- slit up the entire back side (I loved the shirt at this point)
- decided to stencil something on the front.
- Stenciled scarly lori's on the front
- absolutely hated the way the stencil came out
- grabbed a scrap of red t-shirt that I had cut from my french stencil shirt yesterday
- after drying and ironing the stencil, I covered it with the red scrap and sewed it on
- e said it looked like a batman shirt :(
- added ribbon up the front in two long parallel lines
- decided to add ribbon tied to do a cinched corset thing in front
- e said it would look better without the shirt material between the corseting
- cut out the corseting and hemmed the edges

it would have been fine before i stenciled it... but i thought a stencil might make it extra fun...

blah i need to get a 4 pack (much cuter than 6 pack on girls)...

done!

time to make skirts :)

epiphany

i am retarded...

well not quite retarded... but i spent two freakin' days pouring over all the readings from this stupid course trying to find ALL of the stupid terms in separate readings... as it turns out I only have to find 7... it's impossible to do all the terms because they overlap within readings...

aaaaAAARRRGGHH! aggraMAvation!

I wasted so much time on that... it reminds me of third grade when the teacher gave us a fake test. at the top in the instructions it said, "this is a fake test, sit back and watch your classmates make fools of themselves" or something to that order. Only one person read the instructions. The rest of us were doing weird things like shouting "hey!" really loudly, or standing up and jumping up and down (items to do on the 'test'). It was supposed to teach us to read instructions... blah!!!

I read the instructions tho for this exam... i just forgot when i got all 'into' term defining and citations.... oooh! fuson!

goddamn

this is going to give me nightmares

I mean dolls already freak the bejeesus outta me


but pretty little dressed up DEAD dollies freak me out even more

stumbled across those while checking out some clothing auctions posted to the gothmart lj

btw... i hate this final... it's so lame. not that it's hard, it just requires so much rereading of the stupid material. he designs his exams so that they are a "learning" experience, meaning you reread all the stuff all over again because you have to cite up the wazoo...

Tuesday, March 16, 2004

tutorial

i posted this on the craft communities i posted my shirt to last week, but for y'all, in case you get extra crafty, here's the tutorial i made for that rouched assymetrical shirt thing from two t-shirts.


i hate the automated systems

they can't freakin' understand me... ok well one of em understands me... but i hate when they threaten to put me through to a live person...

btw, this is in reference to my final...

today i made a shirt that really jsut didn't want to get made

i sewed the sleeve inside out... my solution... cut it off

tried stenciling with prebought stencil letters... ran into smudges, excess ink of the sides ARRGGHH... turned a couple smudges into 'star shapes', made some of the smudged letters a little thicker to cover up some blotches...

the stencil went longer than i thought it would and the 'B' i stenciled went through a bit to the other side of the shirt becuase i didn't realize i'd run out of the space where i'd put paper between the shirt... ooh!

i got frustrated, so i left out a word to do later after the rest of the shirt dried. i came back to do the word, and the sponge brush i used wasn't dry yet from washing (i didn't realize this) so the fabric ink spread outside of the stencil area in grey watery patches... AAAGGGHHH! i tried to cover up this as best i could making thick letters again...

with all that... the shirt still came out... okay... i'll post later when its all dry. but it's a shirt for me to wear to paris when we go... e translated for me, it says, "Je suis américain, mais je n'ai pas voté pour Bush"

he wants me to stencil him one that says, "Désolé, mon président est un idiot, mais je n' ai pas voté pour lui."

le sigh. i thought this was going to be one of the easiest shirts ever... go figure.

get well wishes

get well wishes to my friend ming!

may you skip the weird dreams of trains and travel...

in the middle

the last two questions on my final look super easy -- good

for one of em i have to call in to United Airlines and American Airlines and use their automated systems -- annoying... very

i can't seem to care much about this final since it's my last final of my undergrad career, and this class isn't really for my major... bad lori

i promised myself i wouldn't touch my sewing machine again before i finished my final. i kept saying no to myself everytime sewing popped into my head (about every minute or so)... i failed, boo

the good

got my new issue of Audrey Magazine a couple days ago.



It's the beauty/health/fashion magazine for Asian American women. I really really like it (and not only because it's about AAs or has AA models or is specifically tailored to AAs -- although I do love all of those things). but it's actually a very good magazine. I'm interested in the articles, and I find the fashion fashionable.

I highly recommend this to any AA women out there sick of looking at only white women and who hate having to adapt makeup tip colors to Asian skin. Also noted is that they do a good job publicizing AA fashion designers/jewelry makers/ political figures/ etc.

get it!
ok i'm done.

the annoying

i mixed up my left and right contact this morning.

Sunday, March 14, 2004

hee hee silly e!

awwww... poor e :) the two things he wanted me to keep sold! aww! hehe, but i bought some really great pink plaid for a new plaid skirt for me. I love pink right now, so this skirt is going to be a keeper!

i made a shirt similar to one that i saw in a magazine (it was $880.00!). Of course, I tweaked it and then stenciled on it, but i really like it...and it's pink of course!

I'm now wavering on the idea of selling more of the stuff I make, it's so hard to part with! lol! although, I like other people to enjoy things I make so it's a hard decision to sell things...

I've been working all day on my final for comm. i thought octapop was going to call me to go to cantor today to see the exhibit he wrote the placards for, but i never heard from him :(

Paulie was talking about how limml doesn't like to think of herself as girly... i think i used to have that sort of feeling when I was in engineering (weird huh?). I guess I always felt out of place enough that I tried to defeminize a bit in my CS classes.

Now, however, I love being girly! Especially now that it's warm. Skirts, ruffles, tanks/halters, pink stuff, heels, sandals, platforms, makeup - being girly is fun! I still wish I had more girl friends so that we could be girly together. Not that I dislike hanging with my guy friends, but I feel like I miss out on late night giggle sessions and fun makeup and clothes shopping (not that shopping with minger for those things isn't fun... just different and infrequent).

I made the purse for my grandma. Joann's had this great Chinese brocade fabric that I'm sure is way marked up from what I could get in Chinatown (but who knows when I'll be heading there again). I made her purse out of this GORGEOUS satin green brocade with gold dragons and pheonixes all over it. I have some left over from the purse making, and it's going to be made into an uber sexy skirt like this one but green (although, damn Gina, this purple skirt is HOT).

I leave for Paris next Saturday. Ugh, the plane departs at 8:45 am... still I can't wait to get away and sit in cafes eating really tasty baked goods. E's parents paid for us to fly out there (I thought I was going to be spending spring break fixing up the apartment and sewing since I have no money). His dad really really wants to see him/us I guess. Cool beans, I'm sure not complaining.

I'm trying to use an lj cut here to see if lj parses out the image on the lj feed. it should look normal to anyone just looking at the blogspot page...



yes yes, laugh at my amusingly serious expressions! I laugh at myself when I look at the photos, although recently, I just find smiling in these photo things really odd... gosh, i hope i don't become one of those people who NEVER smiles in photos... that seems so sad... i'll make an effor to smile more often now... i promise!


[edit] it worked yay... now ming doesn't have to be afraid to read my blog at work...

Saturday, March 13, 2004

made this morning

while procrastinating doing my take home final...

from a humongoid men's dress shirt I got at the thrift store for $5.

what i did:
- took in the sides
- added darts in the front to make more fitted
- cut off the bottom 1.5 ft (it was so big!)
- cut off most of the sleeves and hemmed 'em
- sewed the collar open to a certain point to make it less formal and more sexy
- added pink stretchy fabric bought at Joann's yesterday to the bottom, now can tie in front in a wonderfully girly/80's/pretty way

make up style: eyes smokier than usual (used a dark charcoal gray all around the eyes... could have made it darker to look more intense in the photo, but then i'd scare people in real life :) )

I was going to stencil "GIRL" up one of the front sides on the shirt, but i'm still undecided on that. e likes it the way it is.

Thursday, March 11, 2004

almost done!

I just had my last class ever of my undergraduate career. it was a good one too! tonight I have a class presentation with e and nickchan (the presentation can only last 1 minute, so it's not really a presentation).

Then I just have to do my take home final, and that's it... no more undergrad classes *sigh, sniff*

I applied for a couple jobs yesterday, the most notable being an internship at the highly admired IDEO. They hire for numerous positions, but one of 'em is specifically called "human factor" and they need psych majors for this... it'd be fun to work for them for a little while just to get a feel for something completely different. But I'm not holding my breath on this one. They're majorly selective, and being from Stanford automatically makes it harder for me to work there (the company was started by a Stanford professor, and they get so many Stanford applicants, they want to diversify their team more).

otherwise, still gotta look for profs to do RA ships with...

today i was stupid

i have to put together this poster board for my comm class. so i was trying to arrange the printed slides on the board, and i was going to staple it to the board. so i put the stapler against the board and paper and press.... oh my f*cking GOD! my fingers were behind the board. My right index and middle finger started bleeding from my puncture wounds pretty quickly. Boy did I feel like a dumbf*ck.

And the worst part is how much they hurt! all those damn nerve endings in your finger tips that are so helpful with perception are screaming at me right now. I had to run around the psych department looking for bandaids to keep from bleeding on everything. I felt like such a whiny person... i mean it was just a staple for crissakes!

now my touch pad mouse refuses to work with my bandaided fingers.

agh...

on the plus side of life, i'm wearing my new shirt i posted here recently. I've already had a couple people ask me what boutique I got it from. Rock on!

*nurses punctured fingers that are now purplish from lack of circulation due to tightly wrapped bandaids*

Tuesday, March 09, 2004

yesterday was productive

i finally went around to run errands i've been meaning to do since the beginning of the quarter...

went by the financial aid office, the registrar's office (i apparently have to take of leave of absence from next quarter so i don't have to pay $11,000), picked up my mail (got a check from that overcharging for cds lawsuit thingy... yay $14), and ran by the URO office and found out i was never mailed some paperwork i was supposed to give them...arggghhh!!!

I've been tres exhausted, so i can't think. i came home early today to take a nap, but instead started sending my resume into places to look for a job...

fun new tshirt surgery

a shirt i did after school. I was going to make a skirt and then suddenly decided to make this instead. I may have to add a strap on one side since it is just slightly too large for me and i don't want it to fall down... of course i could just hem one of the seams in a bit...

hmm... decisions decisions... what do y'all think?

Sunday, March 07, 2004

i'm feeling better

that evil person's account got suspended finally, probably due to the wonderful support i got from friends and the asam lj community.

Anyways, want to see some of the fun sewing projects I've been up to? well get ready cause here it ... comes....


e really really really wanted me to keep this one... as a compromise, I'm going to make a similar one in another color for myself. This one was completely handmade as opposed to reconstructed! I adore the bunny buttons. cute buttons have a way of just bowling me over :)


you saw this in a previous post, but I finally added a cute beaded fringe. it feels great and sounds awesome to walk around in this, but it's just a tad too small for me, so it's up on ebay! Honestly, I think it's such a hot vintage skirt, but if no one picks it up, i won't mind trying to readjust it to my size.


this one would have looked better if i had taken the pictures of someone wearing it. unfortunately, i can't put it on because it's a size 6. You might notice that it is reconstructed from the top of the librarian-esque skirt that i used for the pansy bag. This was fun because i got to add lots off detailing like beaded lace and rainbow lace and a big fuzzy heart! Also I corseted up the side slit I made with a pretty orange ribbon.


e loved this one as well, and also begged me to keep it... and if it doesn't sell then i guess I will :) that's the good thing about making clothes I like! Minger says this one looks the most professionally done out of the stuff I've made. Oh, btw, it's completely handmade. I love the way it came out. The skirt I'm wearing in the pic is also completely handmade by me (and has those adorable bunny buttons!!!). I'm keeping that because I find the length and flowy-ness just perfect for me!

I've also made a couple more skirts and I stenciled some more shirts, but I haven't taken pics of it yet..

My trip with minger to St Vincent de Paul was incredibly productive. I got:
- 3 more t-shirts to do surgeries with,
- and button up men's shirt to surgery,
- a cute pitcher that I'm using to hold my kitchen utensils,
- a scratched chitty chitty bang bang record to make into a bowl,
- one of those kitch apple pie plates I've been wanting (with a recipe at the bottom and a lid covered in ceramic apples. lol),
- and 3 striped ties to construct into bracelets and chokers.

I made johnny a scarylori shirt (black on red) for his birthday and sewed him a card with the extra plaid from the red skirt above (i was a doof and sewed it so it opened backwards, but oh well... it has character. someone else gave him a butt plug with a suction cup... i'm still kinda confused about the suction cup thing.

gotta wrap up and do work now. I spent last evening feeling sick from frustration and anger at that lj user, so more work must be done now.

Saturday, March 06, 2004

wow

one of the most racist evil comments i have ever received

and yes, of course I'm offended. I could respond, but to what end? obviously this person is doing this sort of thing solely to get a rise out of people. Obviously this strikes close to home not only because I'm worried about my current weight, but also because he's making obviously racist remarks about Chinese people in general. Agh. I'm venting, but I hate people sometimes.

[edit] since the user is suspended, the comment is no longer there, but if you're wondering what he/she/they said it was, "NICE GUT...... I THOUT CHINKS WERE SUPOSED 2 ME LITTLE" where 'me' probably should be 'be'

Thursday, March 04, 2004

oh god i'm so tired

went to bed last night, but i kept making clothes in my head. You know, I thought I was just dreaming about making clothes, but then I'd role over and sigh and realize I was awake/conscious. i don't know how much i slept because of this.

tomorrow will be better. i want to go check out the st vincent de paul store near me, i get $25 for 45 min of voice recording for some survey, i need to go to joann's to get stuff for my projects.

projects i'm gonna do soon:
- finish up some clothes, some corsets, some reconstructed and get them on auction

- my uncle just had a new baby boy. His name is Reiji. I want to make Reiji a new feece blanket with his name on it and a felt picture of the world stiched on... maybe it'll say something cute/cheesy like "so glad you came into this world" or something like that...
~sub presents: i want to get a pic of the new boy and make a stencil and stencil shirts for the whole family: mom, pops, and big sis!

- my grandma's birthday is next week. she's in hong kong right now, but I want to make her a pretty tote bag, maybe i'll stich a pretty hummingbird and flowers onto it. she adores hummingbirds! I have to make this and send it soon so it will get to her

- make the stencil and shirt that i wanted to make for myself and a friend i'm not naming cuz he reads this...

- make a cute large felt portrait of e, me, chewy, and skeeter like this one (by my favorite diy designer who's from san jose), to hang above our futon


oh the projects!
i'm having problems flipping through mags now. i see elements of a shirt, a dress, a neckline, and waistline, that i'd like to incorporate into my own clothes. I made a fantastic shirt last night. it's really gorgeous, it's done in a smooth red and black flowered lustrous fabric. I need to get some black satin ribbon for it and it will be all done. e wants me to keep it, but i plan on making one slightly different for me... this one's going on auction anyways (i need to make some money soon). It's actually more goth than i have ever worn, but i think people will like it. it's pretty hot. i'll take a pic when i'm done.

I have to say, it's quite empowering to make your own clothes. I didn't realize how absolutely awesome it feels to make the outfit I want to wear the next day, the night before. Obviously it's a lot cheaper than buying from stores, and I can custom styles for myself exactly how I want them. Honestly, it makes me feel more me, and i feel more confident walking around the hallways and talking in class. odd huh? such a silly superficial thing can make me feel so much better...

oh and i broke ANOTHER needle on my sewing machine! this time i was using some thin fabric and trying out the button hole functioning. the needle didn't get stuck, but the machine sucked some fabric down into itself. When I pulled out the fabric, my hand hit the needle pretty forcefully (i got pricked a bit... boo) and i snapped the needle. I still have two more needles, but at this rate, i better buy some extras pronto!

ok class time. gotta go be emotional

from Kiohl's lj







What Planet Are You From?


this quiz was made by The Autist Formerly Known As Tim


Wednesday, March 03, 2004

a randomly fun night

last night was randomly a lot of fun at some random places.

ming invited e and i for pearls around 10:30pm
so close to 11 pm we show up a q-cup to meet fu, ming, and johnny-bakes-alot

we had to order quickly because they close at 11pm. but we still got to hang there for about 30 min or so (the pics of ming's pansy shirt are at qcup)

since q-cup was closing, we headed next door to pizza my heart and e bought a bottle of water so we didn't feel like we were just using their table (although really we were, because it was cold and rainy outside).



since pizza my heart closed at midnight, we left when we were the last 'customers' in the joint... where to next? well, off to the rose and crown which had just finished some sort of show... (we need to go to quiz night some tuesday evening...). ming and johnny actually had some real drinks, and we got made fun of for calling a cabernet sauvignon "cab sauv." Apparently, it's just "cab." silly us. fu and i had root beers. we switched tables twice, and we learned some weird dice game from the bartender. Even though the music was loud, we had pretty good conversation all night. I have to say it was really really nice to go out and keep wandering around for a change.






ming's pansy shirt

ming's digicam is missing its cord, so yesterday i took some pics of him wearing his new pansy shirt. The middle pic had weird coloring that i couldn't doctor in photoshop, so i blasted out the contrast and brightness.

Tuesday, March 02, 2004

who wants to wrap me in duct tape?

haha... i know that sounds weird, but I'm thinking since I'm getting so into sewing/surgerying my clothes, I should make my own dress form... and there are many tutorials on the web that show you how to do it...with duct tape.

apparently, i get a long tshirt (i'll visit my recently discovered thrift shop for that) and have someone wrap lots and lots of duct tape around me. then i slit it up the back, and climb out. Stuff the form and voila! it's bust-o-lori!



duct tape bust tutorial

Monday, March 01, 2004

red corset top

i got this idea from someone in a diy community.

This was a nice shirt to create because it involved no sewing, only a pair of scissors. the pics are a little blurry, and my mirrors are dirty so there are spots where there shouldn't be.



I plan to make it more decent for normal day wearing by buying some sheer fabric (white or black) and sewing it to the inside. all in all, i think it's much cuter than the original t. I should start taking pics of these things before I ravage 'em huh?

update on the e stencil

i hand wrote band names with a fabric pen around the hem (all the way around the back. reads: death cab for cutie * flaming lips * the new pornographers * the shins)

everyone should have a scarylori

What's that you say? What's a scarylori? Well it's only the newest in frightening fashion. Designed at the request of a tall skinny white boy, now all of you can own a scarylori of your own. She's fierce, she's frightening, some might call her ugly... she's scarylori! Take a look for yourself:



AND A CLOSE-UP (not for the faint of heart!)



Now, for those of you who say, "I've got to have a scarylori of my very own!" you are in luck! Getting your own scarylori is as easy as pie -- make that a hot cherry pie!

Just provide your own shirt (or pay the designer to buy one) + $2.00 for paint and work and VOILA! you can wear your scarylori with pride.

how indie are you?

general
You're Generally Indie. There's nothing wrong with
this. You like music all over the map and
aren't adversed to listening to some Top 40
here and there. You just know to comment that
The Neptunes are the best producers around
right now. You don't feel the need to debate
constantly with other music geeks, because you
know that Pavement were the best band of the
90s.


You Know Yer Indie. Let's Sub-Categorize.
brought to you by Quizilla

made another new shirt!!

hehe, I'm wearing it today...





Why yes, those are stamps on my shoulder, chest and waist! Am I a fashion maven or what?!! hehe... what's that you say? I'm a fashion DIVA?? yes, yes, oh go on... lol... i'm in a fairly good mood can you tell?

anyways, this was an old free shirt i got from stanford's Bases group (some business entrepreneurial group). It was a v-neck. Obviously I chopped off the top shoulder and ran flowered ribbon around the new neck line. I chopped the remaining sleeve in half, and angled the bottom of the shirt. I made a bunch of slits up one of the sides and tied the pieces together. I plan to buy a zipper and run it up the other side and tighten the shirt up a bit. I also might stencil some stuff across the bottom.

Playing with this shirt was my reward for finishing my papers yesterday.

did i mention i love my sewing machine??