Sewing and Recycling

When I was much, much younger, my mother taught me how to sew. She is a WONDERFUL seamstress, and I grew up in her creations. Just about everything I owned/loved was made by her. I like to think of her as a modern pioneer-woman: she quilts, cans, gardens, composts, paints, and I'm pretty sure if she ended up in the middle of the woods, the whole place would be turned into a working farm with an azalea-lined cottage in the middle by the end of the day. I, on the other hand, am not blessed with her green thumb. Or her patience. Or her sewing ability. But lately I've taken up the sewing machine again as I find myself with things I want to repurpose. Like this little project: Fleece Blanket to Jacket Fleece is expensive. Pricey enough that I don't want to experiment with it, although I drooled over some of the patterns. And then I found the blanket. Poor, rejected blanket that had the cutest pattern on it! Monsters on one side, turquoise on the other. I had to mess with it. So I took an old sweatshirt pattern and cut out a general idea of what I wanted...and then kept cutting.

I added cuffs on the sleeves, split it up the center, decided I wanted a hood and pockets, and a giant button in the middle. And I tried it on - it was HUGE. Lesson 1: You can always make it smaller. I pinned and sewed and by the end of the day had something fun to show for it:

Silly? Yes! Fun? Definitely! And since then, I've added a chunky zipper up the middle and kept the button (I really like that button). And, as I'm sure you have noticed from the on-going terrible quality of my pictures, I don't have a real camera persay. I use my old phone as a point and shoot, and this results in not-so-great shots. But, I am taking pictures! And sharing them! Which means I'm meeting another one of my goals. Score!

Small Town Sunday

Living a hour outside a major city has its advantages: you don't have to deal with excessive traffic, you see a few more stars, and you're just close enough that if you feel so inclined to go out and have fun, it's not that difficult. But being fifteen or sixteen in this same town was miserable. There was "nothing to do" every weekend, and my friends and I had to get creative. Yesterday my BFF and I had a nostalgic day. Sleeping in late from a party-hard Saturday night, I got up and met her at the local dinner. Five dollars for a huge omlette? Uh, yes please. We chowed down, then proceeded to spend two hours just talking. Yup, this was a typical weekend in high school. Though admittedly, we probably would have arrived at said diner a lot later than we did this weekend, and stayed later, most likely drinking a pot and a half of coffee, being loud, and checking out the other tables. There would be glares from other patrons.

But then after that, we headed off to Q-Mart. Ah, Q-Mart: small town paradise for the weird and out of place. Think of a flea market meets knock off goods meets a Made-in- China mumbo jumble of things. It reminds me of "Portobello Road" from Bedknobs and Broomsticks, with a lot more pickup trucks and missing teeth.

But it's one of the few places we can still find nickel candy and candy cigarettes, sorts Runts and chewing gum we know is illegal for its addictive properties. There's leather shops, furniture stores, jewelry, meat counters, and, our favorite, the ice cream stand with real Hershey's Cotton Candy ice cream. It's a little scoop of ecstasy. Oh! And just about everything here is cash only. It's the perfect palce to budget: you enter with ten bucks, and anything that costs over that, you're not buying. Hence why most things you find there are never more than six or seven dollars.

Sure, the shopping is good, but the people watching is even better. Hipsters, grandmas with bumper stickers on their walkers, guys with really big speakers in a super tint car… you find everyone at Q-Mart. It's pretty amazing. Not bad for a small-town Sunday!

A Hair-raising update (hahaha)

So I went to get my hair done yesterday, as I mentioned in the previous post, and told them I wanted to go back to as close to my natural color as they could get me. I really thought it wouldn't be too bad: I had a good inch and a half of uncolored roots to match a swatch to, and my hairdresser in this area always told me he had been dying hair for twenty years. Don't get me wrong, when he dyed my hair red, it was great. Color was perfect for my skin tone and he was very accomadating to my nutso schedule (though was always hard to get ahold of - when a customer calls you, word to the wise, don't wait three days before calling them back). I thought this would be similar. He told me he would lift the color using an ammonia free system, which is great. I hate damaging my hair excessively. SO he went at it. And, at the end of two hours of lifting and tinting and washing and conditioning... my hair looks just about exactly the same. ::deep breaths:: Yeah, I don't mind having my hair different and wold colors, but when I have to pay for two hours of nothingness, I get a tid bit frustrated. Hair is no where near natural color. I'm just a slightly duller color of red-brown. (For those familiar with hair color, I'm a six, this is an eight.)And I can even still see my roots! Very frustrated, I paid, was polite (that's right! Stop Snarking in action!), and vowed to find another color artist.

I loved my salon person in Pittsburgh. Seriously. Capristo is AMAZING. I have actually waited until I'm going back out that way to get my hair done. Sarah is my lady/homegirl/fabulously talented and sarcastic brush-weilding heroine. But, in all truth, I work primarily with guys at the fire house who if I showed up with purple hair might ask me if I lost weight, or did something a little different with my eyebrows. I love them, wholly and completely, but I'm not so sure they'd actually notice anything different! I'll be sure to take pictures of the hair later and post them next to the original hair color so you can see the "difference"! ;)

With my hair salon appointment looming tomorrow, I though I would venture a little into my hair-raising experiences with cuts, dyes, and control.

I'm currently a red head. And a darned good one too. Generally, my appearance fools people into think that I'm a natural red head. Of course, now that I've told you that I'm not, you'll look at the photo and say "of course you're not, who would think that?". Everything is clearer in hindsight, especially fake red heads.

But, yes, I like red. A lot. My first experiences with the color though were a little interesting. In college, bored one night, I mixed up a batch of henna and didn't bother to test it. I really didn't mind all that much what I looked like. It was October, and I figured if it turned out poorly, I could use the upcoming Halloween holiday as an excuse. Well, guess how it turned out.

Does my hair look like:

A) Gatorade

B) That girl from Fifth Element

C) Carrots

Yes, it was ORANGE. But I had a good laugh for several weeks and then went to the hairdresser, who mildly freaked out at what I had done, toned down my hair, and I ended up with a really pretty red that I kept until later that winter.

But red was hard to maintain, and I was feeling the itch to change things up again. (I like minor shock factors, FYI.) So, I went to my hairdresser and asked for [[drumroll please]]

Brunette! Dark, dark brown. It was a shocker. Really, I looked in the mirror and half wanted to cry. I had no idea of my reflection half the time I had brown hair. It wasn't as bad as it started to lighten up, but it was certainly a dramatic difference going from red to brown. Because, in reality, I'm a blonde.

And, like tomorrow, I will dye my hair back as close as possible to my natural color and leave it the heck alone for the summer months. It's not that I'm lazy (well, I am a little when it comes to beauty stuff), it's that the up keep between the sun, chlorine pools, ocean romps, and general hair-abuse makes maintaining a lovely colored mane pretty impossible.

It's also the season I usually let my hair grow, contrary to all other girls in this world. My season for haircuts is fall and winter. For instance, when I went to France, I went to their version of a SuperCuts and had six inches hacked off, and even got these angled bangs that proceeded to annoy me for the rest of my trip there. Really – I had this piece of hair that was always dead set on being smack dab in the middle of my face. Argh.

Otherwise, I get the whole/layered/collarbone length thing going on, and like it for the first two weeks until I really want to braid my hair, or pull it completely out of my face. Once again, not fun. Someone needs to remind me I don't wear my hair down and that I need to let The Beast (my hair) be long, blunt cut, and manageable so I don't make myself crazy when I'm spending hours at a computer typing or attempting to blow hair out of my face for the fiftieth time while rock climbing.

Tuesdays and Posting

I was just pleasantly drifting off to sleep when a panic-stricken thought awoke me: I hadn't posted today! In a flash (read: I dragged myself out from underneath my covers) I was turning on my computer to struggle to post these sentences.

So I've been reading more and more up on spring enrollment for graduate schools. It's been a little rough between trying to figure out what universities meet my rather demanding criteria as well as having spring admissions and aren't too far from a major airport (a deal breaker for me: I need to get home in an emergency no matter where I am).

But the other fairly serious consideration has been living expenses, namely apartments. I was really blessed with my first real apartment. It was HUGE, cheap for the location (and its location was great), on a major transit line, and I could even walk to school. Downside: the landlord wasn't the most attentive, the place was falling apart, and living on a main artery as far as traffic went was a little rough with all the sirens and accidents.

Looking at new schools though, I've started comparing cost of rent using Rentometer.com. It's really cool. You plug in where you live/ where you'd like to live and see how the rent compares. Bottom line (and no shocker): the farther South my school, the cheaper the rent. The best place I've found so far has been University of Georgia: it's the perfect combination of close to airports (Hartfield Jackson is right there), a great school (one of the top five for my major), and reasonable to live in (500$ median for a one bedroom apartment). Plus it wouldn't be so darned cold in the winter. I'm tired of numb toes, bring on the sun!

I'll certainly have to do more research (gasp! research!) and try to figure out how I should move all my stuff. Ugh, moving. How I despise thee.

Until then, bed. I'm pooped.