Art, Food, Friends

Learning to roll

Last night, Carmela and her husband held a sushi lesson/boozefest at their house. There was about 20 people or so in attendance. They asked a sushi chef at Wegmans to teach everyone how to make sushi. At $15 per person, everything was provided: appetizers, drinks, sushi mats, chopsticks, condiments, and all the sushi ingredients needed. We learned to make about 4-5 different rolls, starting with the California roll above.

With the right tools and correctly made rice, sushi is very easy to prepare. I had fun, and the hosts didn’t skimp on the ingredients. My sushi rolls had combinations of salmon, tuna, lump crab meat, crab sticks, avocado, and cucumbers. That amount of (inevitably) drunk people posed an annoyance near the end of the night, when people’s skills and attention spans started dwindling. There were lots of yelling, stumbling, and throwing things about. Massive props goes to our instructor who was calm and took it all in stride.

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Art, Friends

Baubles for your wedding

Shiny crystals and things!

Shiny crystals and things!

Closeup of the bridal party earrings

Closeup of the bridal party earrings

I’ve always been a fan of accessories, which led me to take a jewelry class. I learned a lot and have even created some earrings for friends as Christmas presents when I was stressed out. A few years go, my friend, Carmela, wanted to give her mother some new personalized jewelry for her birthday. She asked me to make some for her. I assume she was satisfied with my craftsmanship because she asked me to make earrings for her bridal party.

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Art, Friends, Random Thoughts

Inadvertent heartthrob

I was cleaning out the unused pictures in my Photobucket account and came upon these:

Acqua test 01 Acqua test 02 Acqua test 03 Acqua test 04 Acqua test 05
(Click for a bigger size.)

Those pictures were were from my test sheet in photography class. The object of the assignment was to choose a product—in my case, Acqua di Gio, as suggested by my model because I had no idea what to do!

Anyway, the above model, Mark, came to me by accident. My original model, Ken, flaked on me claiming he had forgotten that we had scheduled the photo room. Years later, I found out that he had told people that “some random Asian girl came up to me asking me to pose for her!” Jerk! :evil: We went to the same high school and college! Not only that, but he volunteered for it, upon hearing me discuss the project with my friends. He’s quite the classy guy :roll:

When Mark heard that Ken flaked on me, he volunteered to be my new model. I’m so glad he did! Though the photo shoot was early in the morning, we had such a great time and it became a collaborative process. (The crotch shot was his idea!) And, I didn’t realize how photogenic he would be! Continue reading

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Art, Blog, Family, Friends

A fusion of color

As per Stress reliever and Let’s get crafty…, I’ve been feeling crafty lately; plus, it’s starting to get cold again, so I decided to whip up a scarf. A classmate of mine gave me a HUGE bag full of yarn as a thank you when I helped her with her class website, so I went digging through that stash to make these projects. I’ve crocheted 4 scarfs so far.

Luna Lovegood Scarf

A pale plum-colored scarf modeled after Luna Lovegood's scarf.

This scarf is for my friend. It’s modeled from Luna Lovegood’s scarf from the Harry Potter movies. You can get the free pattern here. Continue reading

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Art, Random Thoughts

Worry not

While I was cleaning up part of my room, I found these:

Worry dolls

The penny (1 cent) next to the dolls is to illustrate their very small size.

They are worry dolls I bought in my Spanish class’ quarterly mercado (market) with pesos we earned in class based on participation, test scores, extra credit, etc. Every night, you tell each doll a concern/worry that you have, and you place them under your pillow as you sleep. The belief is that the dolls will take away your worry in the night; and by the time you wake up in the morning, your worries will be gone.

I remember using these during high school whenever I’d have tests or presentations the next day. It’s probably just superstition, but it helped lift some of my nervousness and anxiety the next day. I’m sure it’s all in my head. Still, it was nice to be able to “release” your worry/concern, whatever they may be.

 

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