Teabag INVention/ALTeration

A new semester starts on Tuesday, and I'm grateful for the long winter break - 4 weeks - because I think I've finally come down from the stress of fall semester, and I'm ready to start again. This past fall was the most difficult semester yet, and it leaves me apprehensive about the year and a half I have left. The workload was overwhelming and the schedule wrecked me, physically and emotionally; I finally hit rock-bottom, and I know that the pace and schedule I kept is not something I want to do again. (Zach would say I hit rock-bottom a few semesters before, when he got up in the morning and found me sleeping face-down on the floor with bits of bass wood stuck to my face, and an empty ice cream pint container in the trash can beside me. I know that was not my lowest point, because at least I fit in time to sleep!)

The good news is that I don't think it can get any worse than last semester, and I'm hoping that I can learn from the difficulties to navigate the remainder of my time at school with some balance (and even grace?). I'm very pleased with the skills I learned and the work that I produced, and I'm looking forward to sharing some of it once I process everything.

The reason for this post was not to share my MTV Real World confessional, but because I am excited about my new tea-drinking habit. I know I can't blame my blood clot at midterms on the constant stream of shitty front-desk coffee that fueled me last semester, but it was definitely a factor in my demise.

I'm really enjoying rediscovering some specialty loose tea that friends gave me a year ago for my birthday. I never quite knew how to brew it, since it was loose and I didn't have any of the loose tea paraphernalia. The other day I was reading through a book my mother-in-law gave us for Christmas, Real Simple's "869 new uses for old things," and the coffee filter re-use ideas inspired me to fold up some loose tea in a coffee filter and use a binder clip to hold it on the side of my mug. I'm not sure if I've seen this somewhere before and the book just jogged my memory, but I love the simplicity of materials and straightforwardness of the system. Many of the ideas in the book I won't or can't use, but I love reading through it as a collection of exercises in seeing everyday materials in a totally different way.

This would be the principal point in my design manifesto if I had one, whether I'd written it today or years ago when I started this blog (and ran my business).

It might not seem like much, but it was the little bit of basic, practical creativity that I've been yearning for lately. And getting to make the little teabags is a project that still captivates me, so I'm hoping that drinking tea becomes a healthy habit that helps me navigate through school a little more gracefully (or at least less jittery).

My Dad is Awesome

I haven't posted here in a while, but I wanted to interrupt my blog silence with a quick note about how freaking awesome my dad is. You may remember that he's the oldest member of a college marching band, The Pride of West Virginia (People Magazine article here), and this is his 11th season playing with the band (not counting his years in undergrad).


In August, my dad played Trumpet Voluntary as Zach and I walked down the aisle at our wedding, and nailed every note, despite his father-of-the-bride jitters. And now his latest gig is with High Street Jazz, a mish-mash of student musicians that busks on the main drag in our hometown of Morgantown, WV (I heard they also played briefly at a coffee shop before being kicked out - badass!).






They set out an instrument case, Lar kicks in a $2 bill, and they play for fun and a little money, which they put back into their instruments. I'm told the tuba was bought at a sale and painted silver by a car repair shop, then my mother painted "High Street Jazz" onto the bell. There are more photos at my mom's flickr here (and I'll credit the photographer once I find out who took these awesome photos!)

So, as you can tell, my dad totally kicks ass. Lar, I hope I'm doing what I love and having as much fun as you are when I hit 70, too!

Poor Woman's Patio

The semester's winding down, but during rare breaks I've been dumpster diving for concrete pieces and gradually digging out the mess of nasty weeds in the backyard. Today I finished a partial patio in the backyard, which I made completely from free concrete and stone, and which will hopefully keep the enormous weeds from coming back.

Here's the corner of yard with the dead weeds last fall. They were green and lush in the summer when they filled the whole corner. The dogs even had a tunnel system through them.


The root system is a crazy web across the whole area, and I dug up hundreds of nasty clumps like this:


Here's the strip once I tore out the dead dry stalks, before digging


My rag-tag collection of concrete and cinder blocks that I've been collecting:


and the final "patio":


I left 2-foot aisles around the washer pit (I made washer pits for Zach's birthday last month! He got the first cupper!), which I'll plant with some sort of vine-y ground cover. Next weekend, when all my finals are done, I'll plant my square foot garden in the big wooden box. I bought a bunch of heirloom seedlings at a neighborhood sale yesterday, and even planted a bunch of seedlings inside last week. I'm still shocked that they're sprouting, which is silly because that was the whole point. But I didn't screw it up yet! Exciting!

It's still looking pretty shoddy back there, but I think it'll come together!

Dumpster Diving!

My main non-school project is making something out of the backyard. I'm sick of cleaning off the dogs every time it rains and the backyard turns into a mud pit. Plus we'll have myriad family and friends over this summer (Zach's graduation, projecting movies onto the garage, Pearson's going-away party, and, um, our WEDDING :) , and I want to have a reasonably nice space to entertain.

We're in a rental though, so I hope to spend next-to-nothing to clean the place up. Note my stealth pose as I scout wood scraps with which to build planters for my vegetable garden. Pro!

Also, I spotted some big concrete slabs in a dumpster a few blocks from home, and the super nice neighbor loaded them into my trunk with a tractor.





Four things:
1. I need a truck.
2. I need a tractor.
3. OK, I only want these things.
4. But they would be super helpful to have in my dumpster diving kit.

Patio Swing, AKA, I-Told-You-So Swing

Last July I dragged this gem out of the alley and into the garage:



and, naturally, Z was not pleased. I mean, look at this thing:



Not exactly something you'd want to sit on. Lawn swing needed some love, so I stripped it, admired its good bones, and then it sat in the garage for 8 months.



And then! Spring Break! I found 300' of seatbelt webbing on ebay for $40:



and wove the shit out of the seat:



It broke my heart to cut the webbing, so I decided to weave the whole thing in one piece (minus the weird places at the front where the frame didn't extend far enough). Which turned out to be a nightmare, but once I got started it was more of a personal issue than a practical one. And for some reason, it worked in the end.







TA-DA!





And then it snowed 7" the next day. Not to worry, the webbing recovered nicely and is back to its handsome, super-comfy self.



One of my favorite dumpster diving projects! And I've got about 80' of webbing left... any ideas for cool projects?

P.S. Zach... I told you so :)
P.P.S. Sorry you have to put up with me storing shit in the garage for months (years) on end.

All the pics from this before & after project are on flickr.

hey there, long time no see

I've been busy on all sorts of projects, but most of them are school projects, and it just hasn't felt right to update this space with grad school assignments. So here are some things I've done in my "spare" time (aka procrastination time) in the last few months...



In January, Shannon, Saffron, and I made concrete planters. Shannon was inspired by my last blog post about making concrete planters for materials testing, so we mixed up a few batches at my place. Notice it's pitch black through the blinds in the background; we started at like 2, thinking it would take just a few hours. I think they left around 10 pm. We mixed the concrete in a big plastic bin on the side patio, which was covered with a frozen sheet of ice, smarties that we are. Saffron was such a trooper:

First batch was two tall planters, the shorty with a large planting space and the tall one with a smaller hole. Plastic tubes added for drainage (wondering if this will work adequately?).

My favorite is this rectangle planter we made by lining a gridded plastic basket from the $1 store with a plastic bag, and filling with concrete. Next version should have drainage holes, and I'd like to make an actual mold that would put the pillow-y grid on the top instead of the bottom:




(gridded basket in the background)

Concrete Samples

The semester's not over, but I'm officially on Thanksgiving break so I'll take some time over the next week to update this space with some of my projects from the last three months.

We made concrete samples a few weeks ago for a class in Building Materials and Technology - one standard concrete test, and one with a bonus ingredient. They were strength tested at a lab today, but I was late and couldn't figure out how to get in :( so I'll update when I hear how the zip-ties and pink paint held up. We had to write a paper summarizing the project, and I thought it would be fitting to also compose a tribute video. It was going to be a music video with an 80's hair band song, but I didn't want to block out the intimate conversation and subtle moments. Also, I couldn't decide on which Loverboy song to use.

Virgin Studio

This week is/was orientation and a skills workshop for architecture studio. Here's how the studio looks on day 1. I'm looking forward to when it looks more like this.

PKND 6 recap

PechaKucha Night volume 6 was 3 weeks ago so I figure now is as good a time as any to post these pictures. It was a fantastic event; eight Denver designers plus one out-of-towner presented to the 300+ people who camped out in Buntport Theater's parking lot. The keg ran out before sunset but at least there wasn't a lightning storm or tornado. Basically, it was awesome.

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

I took these pictures with my iPhone, so once it got dark I let the legit photographer take over. Randall Bellows III took phenomenal photos of each presenter and did our audience shot at the end... will update with those soon.

PechaKucha Night Denver volume 7 will be on October 20 at Buntport Theater. Details on that event to come!

Flipbooks of my Favorite Places Part II

Genius Locii flipbooks in action!

A digital film of an analog flipbook of a digital film. How meta is that?

I catalogued my process of making the flipbooks on flickr and there is a recap of the "Looking for Locii" exhibit on the Museum's website. Plus, my last post gives every mind-numbing detail of the making of the flipbooks. It's just like How It's Made, only not really.

This sixth and final exhibition for the DCM is a cross-city challenge between citizens of Denver and San Francisco. It's a pop-up museum that has (so far) appeared in Mod Livin', the Denver Art Museum, and the CTA architecture office (my summer volunteering gig) on the Santa Fe art walk. Next month the exhibit it heads to SF to pop-up around that city for a few weeks, and then it will be gone. I am pretty sure it is just going to evaporate.

I think I failed to mention that I was the only person to complete all the community challenges at the DCM. To honor my star participation I was awarded the prestigious golden pickle!

I'm fairly certain that it's the only trophy I have ever received in my life. That's what happens when you take art classes in school instead of playing sports...

DCM creative challenge recap:

Missing Map

Mummify Me

29

My Little Mania

Bottled Up

Wonder Room

Looking for Locii