For Mom

UPDATE: You can now download this pattern here

Mother's Day is approaching and my mother already has her gift in hand.

It's a sun hat!  Well, really it is a sun and rain hat (a quick spray with Scotch-guard makes it water resistant).


And it has just the right amount of floppy to easily fold up into a small travel pouch so that it can go anywhere!


I made it so that she could use it while gardening and take it on vacation, and always have head protection.

I've always been a hat person, but I hate how most hats cannot travel well, and that was what motivated this hat.  It was an easy pattern to make, a fun test of my geometry skills, a rewarding product.

I liked it so much, that I made myself one too!

I am a nerd...

...and my new laptop case proves it!


I just got a new 11" macbook air to help with all my sewing design efforts, and it desperately needed a case.  I have made a lot of laptop cases (we have 5 laptops between my husband and I), but this one needed to be special.  It needed to reflect my inner being.

It needed to spell my name in binary and define my laptop's composition.

Well, it defines the composition of air.  and it is a macbook AIR.

and it needed to look like something other than a laptop case.  so how about a school notebook from the 80's?  One with graph paper?  and a pocket that resembles an old school pencil case?


it also needed to have humor built into the bottom.


and it needed to stay in place to disguise my laptop even when in use.


and easily close around my laptop when not in use.


and so my laptop case was born, as a cozy accessory that will hopefully get to live on my new computer forever.  I am still testing it to make sure my laptop won't overheat (it can pop right out of the case if need be).


but it is a good representation of the nerdiest laptop case ever made, envisioned by a pretty big nerd of an engineer.

HELLO WORLD!

These are famous first words for anyone who has ever taken a computer class.

CNC toast...I know...nerdy

I've taken plenty of them...after all, I am an engineer.  But I used to want to be a fashion designer.  At least, that is what one of my sisters always reminds me.  I sewed a lot of Barbie clothes when I was little and designed clothes on paper as a teenager.  But then reality got the best of me.  And I wanted to be an architect.  But I only wanted to design my house, and not everyone else's.  So I switched to engineering.  And then I worked in the pharma industry.  And now I find myself doing research in the field of biological engineering and not completely satisfied.

The most difficult part of working in the medical industry is the amount of time between researching an idea and having it reach clinical practice (which takes 10 years minimum with all the FDA regulations).  I want to be able to see projects to completion. To succeed in creating things that can make a tangible difference.  Even a small one.  Even just to me.

So this is the beginning of a journey for me, into a world which to this point I have been too afraid of failure to venture into... a creative world.

let's see how it goes...