Yet another hobby that will invade the blog...

So lately I have been playing a lot of ukulele. It seems like if I ever have a good chunk of time off I drive my butt to the lake and sit out at the Pavilion and just play until the sun goes down...

There is more cuteness on my flickr, here.

On Monday I had the day off and it was mad hot here, so I decided that the shade of the trees by the lake would be much better than my sweltering apartment. I had to do laundry anyhow, so I walked halfway around the lake to a different place than usual, and sat there in the shade on a bench by the water for at least 2 or 3 hours and played through every song I knew by heart. Then I stopped for lunch and went over to my usual spot just to sit, but a man came up to me and said he saw me playing earlier and was wondering if I had a tuner. Turns out his friends were just across the park playing guitar. So I wandered over and they invited me to sit and jam with them. I felt really awkward because they were in a band, and they played beautiful improvised reggae versions of classic songs. But they were super duper nice and just gave me chord cues so I could follow along and I ended up jamming with them for quite a while. They are there pretty often so maybe I will get some pointers as time goes on.

So anywho, the reason I am on this subject is because I am a self-taught ukulele player and I just use tabs and chords I find online to learn new songs. But I find that some of them are either wrong, poorly edited/written, or even just nonexistent for some of the more obscure songs I would like to learn. So I am going to start posting the tabs I use to play with on here, for the people out there who are struggling to find good tabs for these songs. Just a heads up, more to come soon!

Ooh, and in other news, a woman who has a great little blog called Muffins and More featured my crocheted mug cozy pattern in her tea lovers roundup. She has some super cute tea-related crafts on there, so go check it out!

Hipster McPatchy-Pants

Alrighty, I have another item to cross off the list of unfinished projects, granted it is not a very exciting one. I have had a few pairs of jeans that have needed holes patched up for a while now. Funny thing is, I have already repaired two of these pairs multiple times:

The holes keep happening in the same place on these jeans, which I bought at target about a year or two ago only a couple months apart. The butts of these pairs seem to be disintegrating slowly, causing little and big rips all over. I blame it on something in the manufacturing of this brand at the time, and hopefully not on my righteous booty. I really don't know why I keep patching them, since I have been losing weight they are waaaay too big on me now and I probably look like a hobo with a big cluster of patches on my butt, but the thrifty hippy in me still sees them as useful. I suppose I will just use them for around the house/ gardening. Anywho, here they are with the new round of patches installed:

Now this third pair of jeans has succumbed to the dreaded inner thigh wear that almost all jeans eventually die from:

But this was my favorite pair of jeans and even though I ran out and bought an identical replacement pair I was not about to let them go without a fight. (They were from the Gap and therefore expensive!) My patch solution for these was an idea my roommate gave me. She patched similar holes on a pair of grey work pants, and instead of just doing whatever shape would cover the holes, she did hearts! I thought it was hilarious and adorable and quite cheeky so I did mine like that too!

I used a slightly stretchy heavy plaid and on the inside there is a layer of super-soft t-shirt material as a stabilizer. I am hoping this will give me about 6 months more from these jeans and if anyone happens to notice the hearts I'm sure it will give them a laugh.

In other news, I never got around to sharing pictures of the adorable shift dress that I won from Zoe over at So, Zo... back during Me Made May. I love it so much! The construction is flippin' amazing and it fits like it was made just for me, plus I always get tons of compliments on it. I love wearing it to work because it makes me feel like a cute little kid, especially with the addition of pigtails. Thanks Zo!

Next on the list of projects to finish is another baby quilt. I was going to take pictures of the top today but I'm just feeling so lazy! Oh well, you'll see it soon hopefully. Off to do laundry, have a great week!

*If you would like to sign up for the Finish It challenge, you can e-mail me at ohthecuteness@hotmail.com or go to this post and leave a comment, and be sure to read all the rules. Be sure to include a link to your blog if you have one, and go join the flickr group here. The list of participants and links to their own unfinished objects is here. And my ongoing list can be found here.

Fresh!

Hello everyone, miss me? I missed you too! I actually finished something, want to see? Here she is:

I must say this is my favorite project yet, and it took me forever to finish it! The quilt top came pieced as you see it, making this another cheater's quilt. I bought a yard of the top fabric at Britex, and it is shirting weight so I must assume it was meant for apparel. I had the backing and binding fabrics in my stash already and it was an easy match. I did "shadow quilting" for this one, where I quilted inside of every square 1/4 inch from the edges. I absolutely love the way it looks on the back side. I am definitely going to do the same quilting method for my next quilt, one that is super-girlie and actually pieced together by me! The binding took a long time too, just because it is hand-sewing and I am not very quick at it still, but I'll get there some day! It feels so good to be able to cross this bigger project off of the list, let's hope I can keep crossing them off a bit faster now.

In other news, Dennis went on a road trip with his buddies to a Magic the Gathering tournament in Portland a few days ago and is coming home this evening, so while he was away I gave myself a mini-makeover of sorts:

I got may hair cut at Seven Salon over on the Oakland side of College Avenue, then I dyed it black at home. And I got my nose pierced finally, over at Zebra in Berkeley! I have been wanting to do it since, I don't know, middle school, and I don't know why I put it off for so long. Probably because I have never had anything pierced, not even my ears, so I was scared. But it didn't hurt at all really, which was weird, it was just a very strange sensation of, "Oh, they just punched a hole in my face." I absolutely love it and I am so glad I did it. Now I just need to start getting my tattoos... All in good time. (Also, no, I am not a hipster yet, but those glasses are putting me dangerously close, I know. They're sunglasses I found in the city for 10 bucks, not prescription.)

Oh! And the sugar cleanse was a complete success and I have not been craving sugar all the time like I used to. And from the beginning of last month till now I have lost 15 pounds, putting me back down to 175, which is the smallest I can ever remember being. I haven't looked this good since freshman year of college! Yay!

*If you would like to sign up for the Finish It challenge, you can e-mail me at ohthecuteness@hotmail.com or go to this post and leave a comment, and be sure to read all the rules. Be sure to include a link to your blog if you have one, and go join the flickr group here. The list of participants and links to their own unfinished objects is here. And my ongoing list can be found here.