I have graduated

Please see the following indisputable proofs.



My family came!



Adam graduated and his family came, too!
We all ate at India Garden and then took a picture in the snow.

Unfortunately, I still have two classes to take:

Biochemistry and American Heritage :(

2 sisters + 5 birds = bird hat

My sister briana is back! She is moving to Salt Lake City to open her practice Fern Midwifery. But first she is staying at my house for a week, or so. The trick is: now we've got 5 birds in my tiny attick appartment. This is her beautiful lovebird, Ave (Avocado).

When I said 5 birds, they are: Lemon-lime, Ave, Martin, and two new ducklings!!!

Martin was pretty lonely in his box all day, so I bought him two new sibs from the IFA. They are three weeks younger than Martin, but hopefully their differences will even out with time.
Here is Briana with Platypus and Babs.



All these squeakers eat a lot of greens and poop a lot of poop. The Goose's Mother recommends duck diapers (so funny!) to solve this carpet-destroying problem. Briana, Adam, and I tried it out with varying degrees of success...



But we just can't take Martin seriously anymore!

Here we are thinking about ducks. Omlet has gotten us so into ducks we don't know what to do.

Bird's aren't too bad...welcome to the bird house!

Martin is getting so big. He grows one part of his body each night. His downy feathers are thickening and his real feathers are almost here. Last night he grew one inch to each wing!

Martin loves to see the world! And he travels by technicolor bag.

Here is Martin riding bikes with Adam, Kimball, Sailor Elaine, and Zina.

Martin goes to school!

children of the wild world

You probably come from Canada

the cold winds chased you down

Is that a touch of snow upon your wing

are you headed southward bound?

Move quickly wild bird, the hunter comes from town

He longs to see you on his wall you match his mantlepiece of brown.

Faster wild bird, your sun is sinking down

I'd love to ride your noble wings I would utter not a sound.

There must be some kind of blue sky somewhere

God made especially for you

Children of the wild winds go there now

And take what's left of living for you.

You probably come from Asia

where the seas are deep and clear

When you rise to break the rolling waves

your body glistens like a mirror.

Move faster great blue one it's the fisherman I hear

And there's a pretty price upon your head they're paying well for you this year

Faster great blue one your darkest storm is near

I'd love to ride your great blue tail all your secrets I'd hold dear.

There must be some kind of blue sea somewhere

God made especially for you
Children of the wild seas go there now
And take what's left of living for you.

You probably come from Idaho where the cool air treats you right

Where you roam the Sages Mountains in your savage delight

Move quickly brave one, the builder scales your heights

And your home to him's worth millions now so there's nothing he won't fight.

Faster brave one,

your moon is losing light

I'd love to run the trail with you,

scream your courage through the night.

There must be some kind of mountain somewhere

God made especially for you

Children of the wild lands go there now

And take what's left of living for you.

There must be some kind of new world somewhere

God made especially for you

Children of the wild world go there now

And take what's left of living for you.

Spring City, Utah

Hello, I have been up to much school lately. But also plant field trips, critical mass bike rides, watching Martin grow, and a trip to Spring City, Utah.

My friend, Zina, needed help cleaning up snow-damaged yurts at her ranch for teens.
It was really fun and everyone who came got to swim in a jacuzzi, sleep in a yurt, eat delicious food, and listen to conference outside.

The yurts were ordered straight from the source: Mongolia. If you get a chance to see "Cave of the yellow dog" or "story of the weeping camel," I highly recommend them. Mongolia and Mongolians are beautiful. They have the cutest, smartest kids, too!
The yurts were made in the most amazing way: wood lattice pieced together using leather (sinew?), lining of rainbow-coloured silk, insulation layer of yak felt, outer layer of canvas, everything tied down using horse hair rope and yak hair rope, everything held up with wooden supports and spokes that were lacquered orange and hand painted with intricate designs.

Here is one of the snow-crushed, teen pirate-claimed yurts:


Here is Zina wrapping up some horse hair rope.

I would love this as the door (and door step) of my home!

On our way out of town, Adam and I stopped to drink at the spring that made Spring City famous and also at Zina's dad's ceramic shop. I bought a cup and a bowl!

Martin

I have been waiting for spring for many reasons. One is that i would like to have a duck running round in my garden.
On friday night i had a dream that i had three eggs. The first hatched one normal sized yellow dove and the other two hatched one inch tall yellow chicks.
I woke up Saturday with new purpose and rode my bike straight to the IFA farming store. I rode home a few minutes later with a duck and a chick and a heat lamp.
It has been an adventure figuring out how to take care of a duck and a chick in my attick apartment urban homestead. but it's quite fun!
Unfortunately, the chick died last night :( but the duck is as alive and cute as ever. Its name is Martin. It loves to run fast on its tip-toes, chase your feet around the house, and jump high. It also does not stop squeaking...

but look how cute little Martin is:


Here are some videos of little Martin running round.

Mushroom party

Hello, it is my birthday on March 18th.
I will be 23 years old.
I like to have mushroom parties for my birthday and this year was no exception.

I made hazelnut and pistachio mushroom log cakes filled with coffee and cardamom cream :)
Annalisa made a really great mushroom decorated cake (thank you!)
As you can see, we all ate a lot of delicious food:


My home teacher came!



Zina and Mariana (in mirror) came:


Briana and Cassie came:

My *boyfriend* Adam came:

the cakes all came:

And handsome Ruel came :

Other friends came, too. And we all watched beautiful mushroom slideshows.

I really love mushrooms.

March

I love March :)
for many reasons.
Here are some of the things i have done so far in March:

My sister came to visit:


And we made lots of food:



I checked on my winter garden:


and it is doing pretty well:

I made squash raviolis:

I went to my first rugby game, and i liked it:

I went to girls' night:

I saw the first crocus flower of spring:

I saw a beautiful art exhibit:

I love this!

I hung out with little Elijah. He gets cuter and older everyday.

This is brie in my bed:

The show:

Finally I will post about the show.
We didn't finish everything; actually, we finished barely half of the outfits we began...but we pulled together a few good pieces that followed the same idea.

So you can get a feel for the scene i was working with, check this out:
coca-cola hair station


here are our things!



Annalisa is very talented at making hand-felted wool hats. All the models wanted to wear them :)


Tess, Alejandra, Hailee, Aiko, Marikh, and Rachael.

Thank you for a great show and 10-day sewing adventure!

Tess and Annalisa: sewing friends!

denim seams

When recycling jeans into something new, usually just the main part of the pant leg is used. This leaves behind the gnarled, fat, needle-breaking and otherwise unsewable seams. Annalisa had the great idea of trying to make something entirely out of these seams.

We requested on freecycle for any ripped or worn out jeans and got a pretty good response.
Here is Annalisa cutting the seams out and saving the rest for later projects.


They look appealing with the yellow stitching and faded parts, huh?

Annalisa used these denim seams to follow the curves of a siver princess-seam dress. Very pretty. Unfortunately i don't have a picture of it right now.

I used the short pieces to create a wide belt. I like how the colors and textures made a new fabric.


We are going to develope this further...more to come :)

doily skirt

About two years ago I began collecting antique doilies to piece together into a beautiful skirt. It was such a time consuming process to get the right doily of the right size, shape, and weight in the right spot, and to get it all into a three dimensional form, delicate but sturdy enough to wear...that two years later, it was barely half complete. Annalisa and I decided this doily skirt was the perfect combination of recycled multiples plus good design to finally finish it and include it in the show.
Also, this skirt is nearly $250 in doilies (oops!)


Zina Bennion helped pin and sew lots of doilies together (thank you Zina!!)


We planned to have a pale blue dress under this skirt, but ran out of time. After looking at this picture, I decided it looked alright over grey pants. Good enough.