Life of a Single Married Lady

As the title implies, I have a lot less time when I have to commute such a long way. Thankfully I've found a couple promising leads in the MKE area, so if all goes well I won't have to drive for much longer. I've only ever worked at universities as a researcher, even in grad school, so I'm nervous about potentially starting something new. Big life changes are not my forte, but it seems they just keep coming so I'd better get used to it! In the meantime, I have "our past few months in pictures" to share with you. Have a lovely week! I made the cutest crochet item the world can possibly offer. We finally replaced our couch cushions! The old ones have the nostalgia factor, but the new ones have back support and no holes...so it's definitely a win. I went back to Madison Symphony Chorus for one more holiday concert, which was a good plan. We're doing some really great music and it's an absolute joy to perform with those folks.

I wanted to show the final product made from my hand-dyed yarn, so I thought I'd make a post about some of the things I've made or been working on recently! They're cute and I like showing them off :D This is going to be a shawl/infinity scarf combination piece. It's my second knitted item ever, and I'm really enjoying it so far. It's simple enough that a beginner can do it, but will soon be mixing in some lace/mesh bits to make it interesting. A lovely couple is getting married next year, and I made sure to work on their Star Wars-themed cross-stitch wedding gift while watching Rogue One! This is a preview, since the final product hasn't made it to the recipients yet. It's the cutest darn thing I've ever created EVER, and I cannot WAIT to show it off! This is what I made with my hand-dyed yarn: my very first knitting project, a hat! I love food. I made this chickpea vegetable wrap and it was delicious . If you're interest

Last week I took a leap of faith and dyed my own yarn! A while ago, I won a bunch of gorgeous, gorgeous yarn from a yarn giveaway (shoutout to Expression Fiber Arts!). In that 10-lb bag of happiness was one cake of DK-weight yarn in color "Ivory" - it's the little round one on the table in the picture. What better way to get into yarn dying than with a risk-free yarn that would (hopefully) turn out to be a luxury, hand-dyed item? So I turned to Google to read countless posts about how to dye your own yarn in order to prepare myself. Here, I regurgitate that process so you, too, can dye your own yarn! You can even over-dye old yarn - just make sure you know how color works so you don't end up with something a little bit horrible. INGREDIENTS yarn (natural fibers) food dye or Kool-Aid white vinegar a pot water latex gloves ( optional , depends on whether you care about food dye fingers) STEP 1 Wind your yarn into a cake or hank. I chose cake, because 1)

Good day, all! I'm trying to distract myself from the fact that America has just shot itself in the proverbial climate-based foot, so have a blog post about hair. I have hair. It's quite fine and generally frizzy. Seeing people with more hair in one pigtail than on my entire head is not uncommon. My typical hair routine for a long time was shampoo, conditioner, and an anti-frizz serum, which only kind of worked (that might have been the chlorine, who knows?). Then, my hair started to disagree with drugstore shampoos - after about two weeks of use I would develop a palm-sized, never-clean spot at the crown of my head that would take a couple days of different product, or baking soda shampoo, to alleviate. I thought I had hit the jackpot when my stylist turned me onto a set of Pravana products that happened to be sulfate-, gluten-, and paraben-free, as well as vegan. I don't know why most of that is important, but it seemed to be fine for my hair. One day I s

Thanks for the title, JFK! Our final ~36 Germanic hours were spent in lovely Berlin: enormous city, capital of Germany in times past and present, famously divided and reunited, and center of science, politics, and culture. Berlin was originally two cities on either side of the Spree River. They formed strong trade ties, created an alliance, and eventually merged with a couple other surrounding areas to become the Berlin we know today. Unfortunately we could only visit a fraction of the sights to see here, but we certainly gave it our best shot! We began our Berlin day with a bus tour of the city center. Besides the suburbs, one of our first sights was a long section of the Berlin Wall that remains standing and features work from local artists. Later on we saw longest remaining section of the wall, behind which is the indoor/outdoor museum Topography of Terror, which focuses on Nazi repression. The cellar of the Gestapo headquarters was found and excavated, and Topography of Ter

We have completed all our musical ventures and have now succumbed to pure tourism! So prepare yourself for a flood of pictures from Dresden, a city that is really too beautiful for pictures, but I tried anyway. Dresden was settled by Germanic people migrating east around 7500 BC, but its real beginning as a city was around 1200. Its name is Sorbic for "people of the forest". It sits along the mighty River Elbe. In the late 1700s, Augustus I of Saxony (aka Augustus II the Strong of Poland) decided to make Dresden his home and attract the arts and culture. During his reign and his son's, Dresden became home to stunning architecture and art collections unlike anywhere else. The Royal Palace, or Residenzschloss Dresden, was expanded during this time and showcases many different architectural styles. It was gutted during the bombing and associated fire in WW2 (13-15 February 1945), and until 1992 stood dilapidated. It is still being restored and now houses 6 museum