Filed under: baking, food, holiday, nutella, photography, self-portrait, silliness by ramune

Kisses – People Can Do The Most Amazing Things

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Welcome to another World Nutella Day! This is my third year celebrating World Nutella Day (check out 2009 and 2010) and I think I overdid it a wee bit. I started off by baking extra pizza dough, that I made earlier in the week, into sweet/salty breadsticks (or Nutella Dunkers™) and dunked them into a freshly opened jar of Nutella.

This evening, while at a fancy(pants) restaurant, I slyly wrapped two delicious buns in nakpins and put them in my bag to have for dessert at home . . . with Nutella of course! So delicious.

How did you celebrate World Nutella Day?

Ms Adventures in Italy
Bleeding Espresso

Filed under: favorites, knitting, music, photography, self-portrait by ramune

Me, Shawl by Siga R., Hat by Vasare R.

Cold and Colder seems to be the theme as of late. It has been cold outside (and still no snow), I am cold inside and I have been listening to Colder . . . a lot. So today I bring you a self-portrait in my favorite cold weather bundle up gear and a song.

Let’s start with the song: “Wrong Baby” by Colder.
This is one of my favorite Colder songs and has been stuck in my head for a while now. It suits my mood lately and is off the album called Heat (yes please). If you are going to watch the video I recommend listening to the song first. The video is great if you want to see Marc’s sweet French dance moves, but his voice is not quite as good as on the album.

Now back to my project. Since it’s been so cold lately, I have been wrapping myself up in a fantastic shawl my mother knit for me. It’s a whoppin’ 7.5′ x 2′ and is super cozy (my sister has one as well). Along with the shawl I am wearing a hat my sister made when we had our wee business (Pilkasiulas).

Stay warm and drink hot cocoa!

Filed under: doodle, favorites, self-portrait by ramune

Cold.

It’s been chilly the past couple days, supposedly chillier than it’s been in five years (brrrrr). On one of these chilly afternoons I decided to work from a coffee shop. Unfortunately this coffee shop gets incredibly crowded, so I had to sit in what I call the “quiet” or “overflow” room. The overflow room has no speakers, a horrible wifi connection and as far as I could tell, no heat. I froze for a good two hours and while my interwebs connection was crapping out I decided to draw (it’s been a while my sweet Moleskine). The only thing on my mind was that I was cold, so I figured why not draw me being cold. I sketched it at the coffee shop, scanned it when I got home and then worked on it in Illustrator. It isn’t supposed to be photo realistic.

Filed under: favorites, knitting, self-portrait by ramune

My first pattern! Knit gauntlets

Years ago my sister gave me a lovely pair of gauntlets for Christmas. They were fantastic in every way . . . and then I lost one. The following year she gave me a new pair of gauntlets by the same designer and again, they were fantastic in every way . . . and then I lost one.

This year I decided to “throw down the gauntlet” and knit myself a pair. I looked online for a pattern but didn’t find anything I was particularly excited about. Either they looked way too complicated for a first try or they looked boring. I decided to go through some stitch pattern ideas to see what I could work into a gauntlet pattern (no, not the Medieval pieces of armor) . The chevron pattern jumped out at me as a good first simple/interesting design. The yarn is super comfy/warm/soft and I can’t wait to put them to use! I also look forward to making other gauntlets with different knit patterns.

Silly attempt at modeling my new gauntlets

Filed under: costumes, favorites, friends, holiday, photography, self-portrait by ramune

“A is for Amy who fell down the stairs”
Amazing cut out of Amy falling down the stairs by Karissa

This past weekend was one of the best weekends of 2008 (so far). My great friend Rasa has a catering company in Philly that does a variety of tasting parties. This weekend’s was an Edward Gorey themed tasting party (kicking myself for not having thought of that one sooner!). The invite went like this:

Edward Gorey has been one of my greatest inspirations/influences since I was a wee tot (maybe I wasn’t that wee . . . but still young) and my sister introduced me to The Gashlycrumb Tinies. She even got me a personally addressed and signed copy of one of his last books The Haunted Tea-Cosy: A Dispirited and Distasteful Diversion for Christmas. Two years later he died on the day of my senior prom (not really relevant, but still). All of this is to say that I was ecstatic when I received the invite in my email. I pulled together a few black and white options, got the ol’ bowler hat I bought some five or six years ago out of the closet (and fancied it up) and managed to convince our other great friend, Vaiva, to come down for less than 24 hours from NYC.

Rasa’s team did an amazing job with decorations, food and a great game of Murder. I happened to pick the piece of paper with an “X” on it for the first round, and thus was the chosen murderer. Unfortunately I only managed to kill maybe four or five of the ten people I intended to kill (you don’t hear that every day). It is an interesting exercise to intentionally make eye contact with complete strangers and wink at them without them thinking you are hitting on them or feeling rather creepy yourself. Several people definitely looked at me like I was being weird when I winked at them with my twitchy Gorey eyes.

The second round was much more exciting since there were two killers and they were on a spree! I was one of the victims and managed to win the prize for best death. I am convinced that it was rigged so that the guest staying at the house the longest would win and share the chocolate (and M&M) covered pretzels with everyone else.

The party was a great success and I think I got a few good photos from it. Below are some of my favorites from the night. As usual, the rest can be seen here on my Flickr site.

“They Got Themselves Up Killingly”

Rasa, before the guests arrived

All Gorey’d Up (without hat)

Vaiva and me all Gorey’d up (with hat). Photo by Adrienne R.

Adrienne was my first victim and she managed to die without spilling any wine!

Gintautas (Rasa’s brother) modeling one of many hats that evening

Filed under: favorites, paper, self-portrait by ramune

This past week I have been quite busy working on my resume and my website. Although working on my resume has involved creativity, I doubt anyone wants to see it (unless you are looking to hire me . . . wink wink, nudge nudge, know what I mean). If you do want to see it, it will be up on my portfolio site once it is all polished up.

Back to this week’s creative project! Ever since I saw the paper dolls at Readymech, I have wanted to create my own. After spending some time trying to come up with a character, I decided to do a self portrait of sorts. I have included some photos as well as a pdf so you can print out and build your own little me (if you really want a small boxy version of me staring at you). Unfortunately my printer is not that great and colors tend to look better on screen, so the colors are a bit off in the constructed version. Also, I won’t be offended if you cut my thumbs off, they can be a bit of a pain to cut around.