Living the Creative Life

I realized I haven't really been posting about school lately. Mainly that's because I've been so busy!! Lol. It's been really fun though, and the first term is almost over. Here's a glance at my final project for Digital Illustration. I have to re-create the poster on the left, largely by using the pen tool in Illustrator. That tool lets you create complex objects by creating a series of lines and arcs. It's a pretty powerful tool, but this project is still going to take forever !!

I found the most amazing strawberry jello dessert recipe this weekend. We had a pre-Thanksgiving potluck at church, so this was my contribution. It was such a good recipe that I think I'll have to make it for my family's Thanksgiving meal this coming week! Strawberry Jello Dessert 8 ozs strawberry gelatin 2 cups boiling water 16 ozs pineapple (crushed) 20 ozs strawberries (frozen, thawed) 2 cups miniature marshmallows 8 ozs whipped topping (dairy) 4 ozs cream cheese (softened) 1/2 cup nuts 1/2 cup maraschino cherry 1.  Put gelatin into a 9x13 inch pan. 2.  Pour boiling water into the gelatin. Stir until dissolved. 3.  Add pineapple (w/ juice) and thawed strawberries. Stir. 4.  Sprinkle marshmallows on top until they cover the gelatin. 5. Refrigerate until set.

Whoa! I just figured out something weird. Did you know that Firefox can override the way you see a font on a website? I couldn't figure out why my blog's header font looked awesome on Safari and totally bland in Firefox. I figured it was just a weird quirk of the blog site I'm using, so I shrugged it off. Then I discovered this article , which led me to delve a little deeper into Firefox's preferences. Go to Tools --> Options --> Content. Then under the Fonts & Colors sections, click on Advanced. There should be box about halfway down that says, "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above." Make sure that box is checked! That tells the browser to override it's default font when a site designer (like me) has specifically chosen to use a different font. Once I checked that, my site magically loaded the correct font again! Yeah!!

I've been reading The Tipping Point recently and it's been really fascinating. He's basically exploring the phenomenon of epidemics, i.e.: when something suddenly goes from being practically nonexistent to being a REALLY BIG DEAL over-night. One section that was particularly interesting to me was when he looked into the " Six Degrees of Separation " theory. He says that it's not really the number of people that connect you to someone else that matters, but rather that certain people making up those connections are really, really influentia l, much more than some of the other connections might be. We all know people who seem to know everyone. Those are the types of people who can cause the popularity of something to suddenly tip towards the positive or negative. While you or I might tell 3 people about a fun, new restaurant we've encountered, for example, these connector types might tell 30 or 40 or 100 people. This is how epidemics are born. Anyway,

With the fall weather looming in nicely, I've been having fun inventing new hats for my shop ! Blustery, rainy weather always puts me in the mood to knit. ;P I've got some fun cuffed hats (brimmed? not sure which is the right terminology) and also some slouchy ones added to my shop now. It's fun to see the different shapes and styles emering from my needles! Especially now that I'm offering FREE shipping for the Christmas season, I'm hoping my shop will start gaining some presence and popularity! While I do love knitting for knitting's sake, it's always fun when other people like your stuff too! I've had quite a few custom orders this past month too, which is fun. I just sent a custom order off a couple weeks ago for a lady sending a care package to soldiers in Afghanistan! Talk about making a difference with my knitting! :) I love it when people have an idea for what they want in a hat and I can help make their wish a reality!

Founds some cute angles the other day. Can you guess where this is?

I've been working on some long beanies to add to my shop ! A couple requests have come in from people wanting the brim to be long enough to roll up, so I got to work ammending my patterns. Here's what I've come up with so far. What do you think?

I guess I am learning something after all! I took a Photoshop mid-term today and did pretty well, if I do say so myself. ;P This first photo is the orginal that we were given. The second is my correction, with objects removed or resized. Can you find everything that I did to it?