Learning to Sew

I periodically read this blog, which features some incredible sewing projects. My favorites are her custom totes and clutches. As I've always been a pretty crafty person, and was also in need of a new purse, I thought I would try to make my own tote. The 1st problem is that I don't really know how to sew. I do have a cheap sewing machine, and have even used it once or twice....but for the most part, I can't sew. Problem 2 is that I have no idea how to make a tote bag. No big deal, I can just buy a pattern, right? Hmmmm....how exactly does one read/use a pattern? I was extra ambitious and decided I wanted a quilted purse. Have I mentioned I can't sew? The only thing I've ever sewn was an apron in 7th grade home economics.

Well, I finished. It took me a week to complete, and I definitely made tons of mistakes along the way. But overall, I think it looks pretty good!

Science in action

A lot of my job is sitting around and waiting for results. Today I had 15 minutes in the lab with nothing to do except wait. So I decided to covertly sketch a new employee who was busy doing her training. I managed to get the basic shapes down, but didn't have time to do much shading before I had to get back to work.

Will Cry for Food

Available here!!!

Fridays off!

I've started a new schedule where I work four 10-hour days with Fridays off every week. This means I don't have time to work on anything new during the week, but also that I will have an entire day to myself that I can spend drawing & painting. With nice weather fast approaching, I really want to spend those days off going out to different places around the city and just sketching for a few hours. Of course it rained all day on my first Friday off, so instead I spent the day finally putting pics from several trips into photo albums. I decided to sketch a few of the photos, so here is the first one. It is the California Lighthouse in Aruba. I went there several years ago....long before I ever thought of a travel sketchbook. The sketch is done using a Micron pen and my travel watercolor set in a moleskine watercolor book.