fall, where are you?!

i'm ready for fall. ready for that crisp air, the crunchy leaves (can't wait for wicker park to get even more adorable), the jewel tones, the excess of knitwear. i'm ready to not be sweating my ass off on my bike when i want to ride to the grocery store

so i came across the bastard love child of my two main interests. i'm not sure if i need to run out and buy some of it, be a c*cksucker and rip it off, or run....er hop on my bike in jimmy choo's and ride off into the hills. first of all i'm neither a fan of bianchi or acne jeans (god could you pick a dummer name for your company? i understand its an acronymn but was hemroids or genital warts already taken?) but i'll be curious to see if the fashion or cycling world can come together under such terms. i was toying with the idea of doing a biking collection in the spring for that photo class, but i was going to go a different route, more inspiration coming from tour de france circa 70's.

well i've been busting my concussed ass into gear trying to throw together a whole wack o' shit for this competition on monday. i'm not exactly enthused by what i've done but i guess i'll have to take it. the bonk on the head set me back like 3 weeks on shit and now i'm really suffering from it. photos after the weekend when i'm done with it all.

and omg school starts in like 2 weeks. freakin out!

ooh ooh and i found a new fav store in wicker park. gamma player on division just west of damen is the shit. i haven't come across a store with such amazing designs. i picked up a dress there (yeah shouldn't have blown $100 on a jersey dress) that was just amazing in design. aparantly (and when i told chad about it he was like, oh it was made by people who aren't starving artists) they only make a few of each garment and never remake a run. so my dress is one of like 5 in the whole world. fuckin sweet because its a great dress. so check them out, the store isn't outlandishly pricey, it is expensive but they have stuff like hussien chalayon and crazy designers you've never heard of that are really innovative.

anybody got a job for me?

ta da...... i rode all the way to skokie on tuesday. i found the elusive North Branch Trail, which i had not been able to find for several years.

so i rode to skokie after having been hit by a car saturday night, which probably wasn't the best idea. i collapsed on wednesday, got to go see some more doctors. i got a concussion, which sucks....i think today is the first day i didn't wake up with a splitting headache and an overwhelming feeling of depression. sucks what one smack to the head will do to your brain chemistry. i forgot a lot of things, like i told the same story like 10 times till the point my family wanted to crack me on the head again. it also sucks that the dude who blew the red light and hit me totally drove off without a care. and that some people are being some real C yoU Next TuesdayS about the whole thing. at least i know who my friends are now
so hey look i clean up pretty well. i went to boystown a few weeks ago and put on heels for the first time in months. not that that's a bad thing, i''ve just been biking so much that i haven't really had an opportunity to wear heels

oh and on another note, all the TA's in the fashion department basically got fired for the rest of the summer. like i still have a job come fall, but for 6 weeks i am out of one. no warning, just dumped on me, especially when i was about ready to faint from the concussion. and i'm not going to be able to do this dog walking thing forever so IF ANYONE KNOWS A DECENT JOB, I AM MORE THAN WILLING TO TAKE IT. please, i need to get through senior thesis!

infected by the hipster disease

so here's the jacket i'm working on for the dude in product design. its just the shell so far. its chillin in a dye bath over the weekend at school.


and this was a cop convention that chad and i saw when we were at the bob inn a few days ago. there were like 30 cops. and chad's sideboob. and the heron we saw on our bike ride. the chicago nature museum up by the lincoln park zoo looks like a bond villan's lair.

so i went to village discount outlet today. O M G. check out that spread! i got 5 tshirts, one tank top, a pair of shorts, a pair of shoes, an old lady track jacket, a silk handkerchief, and a pair of ralph lauren jeans that had $2 in the pocket. all of that was only $20. SCORE! and all the stuff i picked up is soooo hipster its scary. living in wicker park has finally gotten to me. and i've accepted it. and those jeans look fucking amazing on me!



so i made my first purse this week for brett's leather working class. its pretty cute. everyone thought i was just putting a new lining in an old purse and i was like, hell no! there's some stuff that didn't work out but i'd have to say for a first attempt, i'm rather pleased. plus its lined in charmuse for secret sexy awesomeness

a little bitter

so apparantly i'm being called a copycat and that i can't design anything despite some people having their heads shoved up you know where so far that they might have discovered a new process of digesting. and i will definitely admit that i'm a bit bitter about it. I'll get over it, but i'm still nursing the wound, especially where it came from. if anything, its making me give the finger to people even more and work harder and harder to prove them wrong. so instead of one 3 outfit collection by the end of summer, i'm going to make two by august 18th. i'd like to see anybody else try to copy me.

ok it doesn't help that i'm still sick over a week after i got a cold and i'm totally pms-y

getting fixed next week

so on completely unrelated, yet equally important to me, news, i'm going fixie next week. that's right, the girl who would spend 100 hours sewing some avant guarde piece, is just as passionate about cycling as she is about the art of fashion design. so having been riding my road bike since march, and usually clocking 130-150 miles a week, i'm switching to fixed gear at the end of next week. I have spent much time scouring the internet, finding favorites hipsternascar.com and trackosaurusrex.com, getting excited to make the change. i'm going to get new velocity wheels, probably in seafoam. i now want to spend the next 6 months trying to train to compete in the Tour da Chicago. i sat on youtube the past few days watching the most insane videos of this year's stairmaster stage and nearly shit my pants. so trackstands, wheelies, and skids (all in dresses!) here i come!

done with the vespula collection

ugh, i'm finally done! this is my Vespula collection for Spring/Summer 09 couture. it is ALL HANDSEWN. everything. by hand. with one needle. one cone of thread. all of the materials were fabric and clothes that i owned already. it was definitely a very personal collection considering the time and devotion that i spent on it. i can look back and pick out the pieces of fabric and have stories about where it came from and what i was doing and so forth.

so what's next? i have to work on a jacket commission for a product design instructor that will be on display at Columbia's A+D gallery at 619 S wabash starting in august. After i get that done, i'm going to spend the rest of the summer putting together a small pre-fall collection, The Victorian Cosmonaut, which i'll hopefully take over to Habit in august and get some stuff sold.
I'll probably pick up some more dogwalking hours since the $$$ i'm making this weekend is enough for a new tattoo and my ticket to Lollapalooza. and if i can sell at Habit, then i'll really be making bank. I need to save some since i'm graduating in like 10 MONTHS. OOOOOH SCARY.
Oh so yeah all these photos will be bound into one of those iphoto books. considering i have like $70 to spend for it, i'll probably have like 5 printed and keep those in my portfolio. well....grad school here i come!

random electronic binges

quite frankly, things have fucking sucked. i can't word it any better. i've been in and out of the hospital a lot lately. lots of tests. still at least one more to go. I got taken off birth control after being on it since i was 16 and now i'm officially insane. i flipped off my favorite teacher today and stormed out of his class only to come skipping back in 5 minutes later. i rode to school in 13 minutes today, a ride that normally takes me at least 20, 25 if i'm lazy. basically i blew through every light and was going about 20mph the whole time. my arm has been jacked for a week now. i finally don't have stabbing pains shooting up and down today, although its just as sore.

as for personal life, that's just as messed up. and it doesn't help that i have about 5 years of pms dumped on me in the past few weeks.....dealing with an ex should go better if it wasn't for me acting so damned erratic. and i would be a total C U Next Tuesday about the other one in my usual style, but shit has hit the fan and i don't know how to touch that.

my computer got erased. that was fun. lost pretty much my whole music library. all 20GB of it.

fuck.

so i've been downloading new music instead of replacing the old. i'm on this big indie eletronica kick for some reason. i guess i would rather enjoy computer made noises and patterns than that of instruments. something about the mathamatical nature of it speaks to me. that and it lends itself to a fashion-ish mindset well. it would be sweet if we got to pick out our own music for senior thesis at fashion columbia like they do at the art institute. i'd find something so absolutely obscure that there'd be one audio freak shitting his pants in the back somewhere.

ugh so tomorrow i have the photo shoot for my DIGITAL PHOTO FOR NON MAJORS class. i get the feeling i'm going to be on my own despite some promises for help. perhaps thats better that way. i'll just fuck it up when i do color correcting. i'd like to think that more than one aspect of my future hangs on what happens exactly tomorrow.

i've been biking a lot, doing all the dog walking. i'm so tired all the time, i think that's why i'm not making any sort of sense.

i'll put up the photos over the weekend. if i get my laptop back soon enough.....

finally found something to connect my camera!

so.....whats up with me....uh......


OH THAT'S RIGHT, I'M AN FGI FINALIST

oh fuck somebody just set off a fucking firework and it scared me out of my chair!

ok, but back to that, but i'm dancin around since i'm one of 5 people in chicago who got into the senior design competition. but i have to wait till like the week before thanksgiving to find out if i win anything. bastards, not really, but i don't want to wait 6 months.


uh....so....photos, its my red dress at fashion columbia, followed by me and my leather coat on display (not me) at Lumen out in the Fulton market, then the leather coat on the model at fashion columbia, and then my pic of me dickin around with my camera.

so....well dog walking is going well, along with all the biking. i'm pretty sure i've lost like 5 pounds already. i rode 120 miles last week, i'm already at like 60 miles in 3 days. i rode from school (south loop) all the way to humbolt park DURING RUSH HOUR in 30 minutes. it was definitely a test of my mental determination. i have a really awful sunburn, just in goofyness scale.


so....well i'm already into the third week of summer school classes. my photo class is really boring, my math class hasn't started since the bookstore fucked up and the book just came in today, and the leather class is cool. i have my whole senior thesis planned out. i've got shit together for once. my medical problems aren't resolved yet and it does kinda worry me, but then at the same time i just ignore it. not the brightest but whatever. i just keep riding that damn bike

i swear i'm not dead.....

seriously....i have comitment issues.....amongst other things. had a bit of a medical scare that's not exactly over with but I had an insane last week of school which involved my evil twin coming to visit after the fashion show, then i moved in a sanford in son style crazy move from the south loop to wicker park. then i spent a large chunk of last week in the hospital being poked and prodded, worked at school, and still haven't unpacked. that's just because of my sheer stubornness. ugh....what else.....well i can't find the media card reader so i cant really upload any of the photos i have of me with my stuff at the one year aniversary party for Lumen out in the fulton market, or my shit on the runway at fashion columbia, or my crazy ass new apartment, or my wacky ass hair cut. uh.....well, since text is boring i won't ramble. i started a second job tonight, dog walking for Paws-N-Effect, which i'm super excited about. I'm going to be the ass with a camera for the next two months taking DIGITAL FOTOGRAPHY FOR NON MAJORS.....god....i really see photography as a nessecary evil i must deal with, but i really would rather leave it to the people who know what they're doing. that's why there's fashion photographers and fashion designers. so i have my leather working class tomorrow. oh, in my photo class between the notes on shutter speed and aperture and ISO and all that gibberish i sketched out most of my senior thesis. i want all my collections to tell a story. my current one i'm making is the representation of italio calvino's Invisible cities, and the story is that the collection is for a member of the post apocalyptic bourgeois who turns leftist radical terrorist. yeah....and senior thesis is for the android assistant of a scandanavian evil scientist. and if i have time in the after summer school before fall semester break, i want to do a marketable one so i can head over to habit on division (I love living in wicker park! so much to do!) and try to sell it. and that one will be for a victorian cosmonaut. lots of overdone princess seams and metallics.


also, i was on the teevee! scroll down just a bit between blue man group and the joffery ballet and its the whole thing about fashion columbia. check me and chad out! and my bad ass haircut which i just cut even shorter today since i've been wearing my helmet when riding to and from every place.....i've been keeping track of how much i ride and its already like 60 miles this week, since sunday....

in the fears of thunderstorms, if not just the rain

well i got this finished after dicking around with it for a week. as usual, it ended up completely different from my original sketch, which slightly concerns me for the collection i plan on doing during the summer because these things tend to get away from me and get overly complicated. and that collection is already complicated and complex. but as for this dress, its completely handsewn. no machine so much as batted an eye at any of this fabric. the green is wool jersey and the black is a little bit of that organic bamboo jersey that i'm in love with that i had leftover from making leggings. the dress has 4 completely different views. its something along the lines of showing someone your best side, depending on the wearer or the mood of the person, a different side could highlight different aspects of a physique or personality. the front is fairly plain and simple, the side with the ruffles can be pulled up to hide the face, the back is a conflict of interests, and the other side is a long cape like extension that opens up and trails behind the body with movement.

busy busy busy

so its the end of the school year, and just when everything gets crazy, i get sick. granted it was worth it, but a week and a half later i'm dragging. dad brought boxes over yesterday and i started packing already. i'm really excited to move to wicker park, i think it will be very condusive to my creative process. river shitty *ahem* city is really getting on my nerves as i have 10 days to go till i get the keys. yes i will miss the fact that when its a -10 windchill in february i won't be able to walk 4 blocks to school, but i definitely will apriciate a wall and a door being between my sleeping space and my kitchen and trash can. i'm itching to start on my summer collection in the studio space that's bigger than my entire appartment right now. i look forward to sitting out on the porch on those hazy july nights with a beer in hand and a book in the other. i look forward to just being able to get out and about and have things to do. last summer i spent my time like rapunzel sitting on my balcony watching the world but not interacting with it. i sat around waiting for my prince charming to come to me. that may be the case this summer as well as that boy frustrates me to no end, but that'll take a back seat to riding my bike around. i don't know how i'll faire in a neighborhood, i've never really lived in a neighborhood. i lived on a farm for 15 years, then was transplanted to a stepford wives subdivision when i was a little goth girl and stayed inside, and then i ran away to tall glass and cement towers where people refused to look each other in the eye. i've never really known what its like to have neighbors. apparently some cute guys from the art institute will be sharing my porch with me. what i'm not looking forward to is the hike it'll be in the winter to get to school, although carli has promised car rides in exchange for making her go to school. i am looking forward to being a skinny thing by the end of the summer from all the bike riding i'll be doing. i'm also not looking forward to what a pain its going to be to get to vogue fabrics, or textile outlet. i suppose that'll cut me back on that

ok, i really need to get to homework and more packing. i'm amazed at the ammount of crap i've accumulated in 2 years

and i find out if any of this shit got accepted to fashion columbia as soon as i get my sunburnt ass out of the house