Last year, when Jill of DapperToad was planning for her summer knitting camp, she was a bit worried that the kids would give up on knitting the first time they got frustrated, and wanted to create a couple whimsical and inspirational pieces to keep them motivated. That's when she dreamed up Sir Reginald Wiggly:
The camp I work at promotes autodidact-ism by allowing the kids choose exactly what they want to do with their time. I keep thinking of kids coming in to learn how to knit, getting frustrated, and abandoning it mid-lesson. One way I've thought to preemptively combat this is to fill my studio with cute stuff that hopefully will spark some interest in knitting and crochet. Enter Sir Reginald Wiggly. He has recently been hired to be my spokesoctopuss. He's self-taught and loves to impress people with his multi-stranded technique and his tiny stitches.
I'm currently enamored with Jade Boylan's website, and find myself just hovering over the image links to see them in color. I couldn't decide which of her items I loved the best, and what to share here. Then I saw them. Bonnie and Sienna, the handmade dolls. They're both so cute in their different outfits. Here's Bonnie playing at being a pirate:
I was cruising around Tumblr and came across Pardalote's Jupiter embroidery. She created it using several images from the Hubble telescope.
I used this sequence of images from NASA as the basis for the work, but I reinterpreted the sequence a little so that I could do the squiggliness I wanted.
I wanted my stitching to demonstrate that the jovian bands are fluid, moving around the planet and swirling it up a storm at region boundaries.
I love these little crochet hearts from ZoomyYummy. They're sweet and simple, and could be used as favors or Valentines or sachets.
DIY Batman tights? How cool is that? And just think of what else you can do with this technique!
For a fun party celebrating the attendees for the recent ALTSummit, the folks at CreativeBug designed this huge wall of string art:
Courtney wanted to make a BIG splash and design the main art feature in our assigned party room. She came up with a 20′x8′ free standing wall (WALL!) that spelled out the theme “Crush On You” in retro modern string art. The drawings and sketches she came up with did the final piece zero justice. This was a massive undertaking, and one we were very proud to share with everyone who attended.
"All the hardships taught me something, and they taught me how to cope. So, I was prepared to fight back. If it had all been good, I wouldn’t have known how to fight."
Ellen Dorrit Hoffleit was born on March 12, 1907, in Florence, Alabama, but the family soon moved to Newcastle, Pennsylvania.
Her interest in astronomy started quite early, when she watched the Perseid meteor shower with her family.
"My mother and brother and I used to sit in the backyard, especially during the Perseid meteor showers, and look for meteors," she said. "What impressed me was the sheer beauty of the event."
The family moved to Cambridge, Mass., so that her brother could attend Harvard College. She graduated from Radcliffe College but never seriously considered astronomy until she got a job in 1929 working for noted astronomer Harlow Shapley at the Harvard College Observatory.
Hoffleit described herself as no better than an average undergraduate, but she showed a zeal for examining Harvard's vast collection of photographic plates of the skies. In her spare time, she wrote a paper on meteors and dropped it on Shapley's desk. Shapley was so impressed that he encouraged her to pursue a Ph.D.
"I have never been as happy as that day," she said. (source: Hartford Courant)
During World War II, she went to work at the Aberdeen Proving Ground ballistics laboratory in Maryland. Not unlike many women working for the war effort, she was forced to take a position below her status while she watched men who had less experience take higher level jobs. Frustrated that women weren't getting the training they needed and the promotions they deserved because of a fear that they would "run off and get married," she complained to a visiting inspector general, who helped improve the situation and get them the professional ratings they were entitled to.
She returned to the Harvard Observatory but didn't stay long. When Harlow Shapley retired, he was replaced with someone who did not appreciate her research, and even went so far as to have one-third of the photographic plates destroyed. It broke her heart to leave, but she could not stay under those conditions.
Dorrit went job hunting, and, when the dust had finally settled, she was ensconced in two positions that she would occupy officially for the next twenty years (and unofficially long beyond that). It was in those two contexts that most of us came to know her. Hoffleit became, half-and-half, both director of the Maria Mitchell Observatory from 1957 to 1978 and a research astronomer at Yale (1956 to official 1975 retirement) under its long-term director Dirk Brouwer, where her primary task was to be preparation of astrometric catalogs.
(source: Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society)
In 1956, she took a position at Yale, and in 1957 began spending the summers on Nantucket, teaching programs at the Maria Mitchell Observatory, named after the first female American astronomer Maria Mitchell. Over the years she taught there, she worked with young students, mostly women who became known as the "Girls."
While at Yale, Hoffleit taught the most basic course on Astronomy to Undergraduates. Her passion for the subject was inspiring to these young men and women who were probably only in the class to fulfill a GE requirement. She retired from teaching in1975, but continued to work until her death in 2007, at the age of 100.
Most notably, she was the author and editor of several editions of the Bright Star Catalogue, an extensive compilation that lists all the stars visible with the naked eye from Earth. She also co-authored The General Catalogue of Trigonometric Stellar Parallaxes, which contains precise distance measurements to nearly 9000 stars, information critical to understanding the history and workings of our solar region.
In 1988, she was awarded the George Van Biesbroeck Prize by the American Astronomical Society for her lifelong contributions to astronomy. In 1993, she was the second astronomer to receive AAS-Annenberg Prize for science education. The first recipient was Carl Sagan.
Among her many other awards and recognitions, she served as a past president of the American Association of Variable Star Observers; a Hoffleit Assistantship was established at the Mitchell Observatory; and asteroid 3416 Dorrit was named after her.
Happy Birthday, Dorrit!
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Beatrice Muriel Hill Tinsley was born January 27, 1941, in Chester, England. Her father was a minister, and her mother was a cellist and writer. After World War II, her family moved to New Zealand, where she and her sisters attended the all girls district schools. Beatrice showed an early affinity for learning, and did quite well in her studies. She was one of those children who would read the encyclopedia for fun, and dreamed about becoming a scholar some day.
When she was only 14, she announced that she would be an astrophysicist. Her teacher at the time, Joyce Jarold remembered it clearly:
"Beatrice asked me if she could borrow some physics books, 7th form reference books. I was skeptical at first although I knew she was bright. When you teach, you're mostly trying to din something in. Very occasionally you realise that you are dealing with a great mind that is infinitely superior to your own. Beatrice came into that category."
At the age of 16, she received a Junior University Scholarship, and left school to attend Canterbury University College, where she continued to excel -- earning her Bachelors of Science in 1961, and a Masters in Physics in 1963.
She gained an MSc with first class honours in 1961, winning every prize open to her. She did not write for student publications or play sport, although delighting in weekend excursions to Steeds Hut, but she was an outstanding violinist (a member of the National Youth Orchestra) and particularly enjoyed the meetings and discussions of the Socratic Society, or Soc Soc. (source: NZine)
While working on her Masters, she also taught Physics at a local girls high school, as well as offering private instruction for college students. It was at this time she married fellow post-graduate student, Brian Tinsley. When Brian was given a position teaching at the Southwest Center for Advanced Studies (SCAS), in Dallas, Texas, they moved to a small apartment, and Beatrice sought an academic position for herself.
Sadly, the standard practice for universities at the time was to refuse positions for spouses of current faculty. This meant that wherever her husband was able to find a job, she would not. This frustrated her deeply. But, in July of 1964, she was accepted to the University of Texas, Austin, to study for her Ph.D. in Astronomy.
Though some judged Tinsley as a mere Dallas housewife with no experience in astronomy, her top-notch academic record convinced the head of the astronomy department at the University of Texas, Austin, to take a chance on admitting her, even with the added burden of her commuting the 200 miles from Dallas to Austin.
Initially Tinsley planned to take part in the longstanding cosmological pursuit of deciding whether the universe was open or closed. But as she examined all the servables in this line of work—the diameters of clusters of galaxies, galaxy magnitudes, galaxy sizes—one question kept diverting her: how were the galaxies changing over time? How were they evolving? That information was crucial to finding an answer to the universe’s fate. At that point she chose the problem that became her dissertation: actually simulating the evolution of a galaxy. Setting up a numerical model, she would track its changes in color and brightness over billions of years as the stars within it are born, fiercely radiate, and then inevitably die. It was an ambitious task, as numerical simulations were grueling in this primordial era of computing.
(source: Natural History Magazine)
In typical over-achiever fashion, she finished her Ph.D. studies in a remarkable two years. This, while also caring for their first child. Unfortunately, after receiving her degree, she was unable to find a suitable position, again because of the rule against hiring the spouses of faculty. Instead, she had to cobble together her own funding for research from grants and scholarships, and was given a "fictitious" position as a visiting scientist. As a consequence, she did very little actual cosmology study during this time.
In 1971, she landed part-time work for the National Science Foundation, and was able to attend the American Astronomical Society meeting at Amherst. In 1972, she took a leave of absence from her "fictitious" position at the University of Texas, and took her now two children with her to visit the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena to work at Mount Palomar's Hale Observatory. Here, she was inspired by her fellow astrophysicists and dreamed of someday being able to do observation work, once her children were older.
In 1973, she accepted a temporary lectureship at the University of Maryland, which was nearby where Brian was also teach, in Washington, D.C. While her position was not "profitable financially" is was a "great boost professionally." She finally felt like she was "an accepted member of the community of cosmologists and astrophysicists," as had been her life-long dream. "The work is a pleasure to me!"
In 1974, she was awarded the Annie J. Canon award, and was given an all-expenses-paid trip to Institute of Theoretical Astronomy, Cambridge, England. While the travel and experience was invigorating and intellectually stimulating, it was only temporary, and every time she returned to the University of Texas, she was demoralized further. As she wrote in a letter home, her time there:
"...has reduced me to a state of mental anguish. Hard to explain! I am a good scientist, and among my peers treated like a full and respectable person and feel of worth. UTD has kept me at the nearest possible level to nothing and there is no one who knows enough about astronomy to care in the least for my work, Austin has helped, but it is second rate job (underpaid, half-time) at a department much worse than I'm worth. This isn't supposed to be boasting. To be rejected and undervalued intellectually is a gut problem to me and I've lived with it most of the time we've been here, apart from extended visits to Caltech and Maryland and shorter trips and meetings and so on." (source: RootsWeb)
It was during this time that she received Assistant Professorship offers from both Yale and the University of Chicago, as well as a three year teaching position at Cambridge. Still trying to find a position closer to home, she applied to head the Astronomy Department at the University of Texas, Dallas, which she herself had designed and worked so hard for over the previous years since moving to Dallas. Based on the previous treatment she had received, it is probably no real shock to learn that her application was not taken seriously. In fact, she received no reply at all. It wasn't until she attended a faculty party where she cornered the man who was to have reviewed and responded to her application that she learned exactly how little respect they had for her. When pressed, the man said, "I have a letter from you, don't I, that I must answer some time." Beatrice happily replied, "You needn't bother now. I'm choosing between Chicago and Yale!"
In light of her incredible groundbreaking achievements, she effectively had her career shut down due to her gender. It was at this point Beatrice made a decision that I hope will become one that no woman in science ever need make again. She chose between her husband and staying in Texas and continuing her scientific career.
She chose science. She divorced her husband. The least socially acceptable choices she could make. The courage it took to make them can not have been easy. (source: Catherine Q)
In 1975, she and Brian divorced, with Brian retaining full custody of the children. This enabled Beatrice to take the position at Yale, and pursue her dreams of true scholarship. She traveled from observatory to observatory, gaining respect from her peers and broadening her personal goals. When Yale created a committee to improve the status of women at the university, Beatrice joined immediately.
In 1978, she was made a full professor at Yale. Tragically, that same year, she discovered a lump on her leg that turned out to be melanoma. She continued to lecture and write while she was treated, but there was little hope for a full recovery. The type of cancer she had carried at best a 50/50 chance of survival.
In the final stages, she was cared for at the Yale Infirmary, where she continued to write. When she lost the function of her right hand, she taught herself to write with her left. Her drive and determination never slowed. Her final scientific paper, submitted just ten days before her death, in 1981, at the age of 40, was published by the Astrophysical Journal posthumously, without revision. In her short, and often thwarted, career, she accomplished a great deal, and left a legacy of research that is still being felt today.
Before Beatrice began her research, little was known about life cycles of galaxies and the stars within them. She pioneered the study of interacting galaxies and the idea that galaxies change over short timescales compared with age of the Universe, which inspired astronomers to study distant galaxies for clues to galaxy evolution. In particular Beatrice studied how different groups of stars age and what observable effects those changes have on a galaxy. Her work was significant in determining the size of the Universe and its rate of expansion. It was also assumed that galaxies of the same type - spiral, elliptical or lenticular - would be a similar size, shape and luminosity.
By comparing the size and luminosity of distant galaxies to nearby galaxies whose distance was already known, it was thought that an accurate distance could be obtained. But her thesis, "Evolution of Galaxies and its Significance for Cosmology" showed that determining distances based on morphology alone was unreliable. Factors such as the abundances of chemical elements, the mass of the galaxy and the rate of starbirth were all important parameters in determining the distance and age of the galaxy and, by inference, the size and age of the universe. Tinsley's work formed the basis for contemporary studies of galactic evolution. She also contributed to research to find out whether the universe is an open or closed system. (source: She Is An Astronomer)
In her honor, the American Astronomical Society established the Beatrice M. Tinsley Prize in 1986, to recognize "an outstanding research contribution to astronomy or astrophysics, of an exceptionally creative or innovative character, " and the University of Texas at Austin created the Beatrice M. Tinsley Visiting Professorship in Astronomy. And, fittingly, asteroid 3087 Beatrice Tinsley is named after her as well. The Beatrice Tinsley Institute for New Zealand Astronomy and Astrophysics is a world class research facility, named for her in her home country.
Let me be like Bach, creating fugues,
Till suddenly the pen will move no more.
Let all my themes within - of ancient light,
Of origins and change and human worth-
Let all their melodies still intertwine,
Evolve and merge with ever growing unity,
Ever without fading,
Ever without a final chord… Till suddenly my mind can hear no more.
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On January 23, 1848, Elizabeth Blackwell was awarded her M.D. by the Geneva Medical College of Geneva, New York, becoming the United States' first female doctor.
You can read more about her remarkable life and work in my three-part series from the 2012 Women's History Month series:
This series has been in the top five posts on this blog since they were first published. I imagine it's because she is such an inspirational figure, these many years later.
How something can be at once both a little creepy and a whole lot beautiful is pretty much the nature of ... well... Nature. Especially when it comes to stuff inside of us. But these histology dessert plates are just too beautiful to focus on the icky.
Medical illustrator and artist, Emily Evans, made these gorgeous plates from original slides of various human tissues provided by Michelle Spear, Clinical Anatomist at Cambridge University. The plates were then fired by ceramic artist, Emma Smith.
If the physical sciences aren't really to your liking as dinner decorations, maybe these inkblot placemats will help you figure out what your subconscious is trying to tell you.
I know Christmas is the most common time for making and enjoying gingerbread houses, but there's no rule that says we can't make them year round, right? Like this wonderful version of the magical, homey Weasleys Burrow, crafted by Michelle Jamieson. I don't know about you all, but I have always had a fond spot for the Weasleys and their home has always felt like a place I could easily make myself at home in.
I love it because it has an amazing DIY feel to it. Much like myself, they are on a close budget, they have to make do with things that are not perfect or they make it work somehow. Mrs. Weasley makes her family home knit sweaters for Christmas and they reuse books and clothing, just like me! In my mind that house is kept together with magic, duct tape and love.
And now, for something completely different, bizarre, and sometimes even a teensy bit brutal, check out Brutal Knitting, showcasing the sometimes amazing, and always a bit disturbing knitted projects by Tracy Widdess.
There are an increasing number of opportunities for girls interesting in pursuing a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) career. Over the last year or so, I have read about dozens of fascinating summer camps, extracurricular programs, weekend schools, and the like. One of the most intriguing has been the Women's Health Science Program.
The Women’s Health Science Program for High School Girls and Beyond (WHSP) was created by the Institute for Women’s Health Research to prepare and empower a diverse population of high school girls to successfully become the next generation of women leaders in science and medicine.
Girls enrolled in the Women's Health Science Program.
Photo source: WHSP Facebook page
Founded in 2006 by Teresa K. Woodruff, Ph.D. and Megan E. Farout, MEd, the Women's Health Science Program is an innovative program which brings together high school and college students interested in the field science and medicine and places them within a community-based program, with the goals of increasing science mentorships and improving advocacy, improving authentic science and health learning opportunities, and exposing promising students to the available academic programs leading to careers in science and medicine. It was designed to introduce college-level instructors, programs and resources to high school students.
Currently the program offers several different academies, ranging from the general study of physical science to the specific study of oncofertility, each of which with an emphasis on women's health concerns to make it relevant to the girls' lives.
In each program, the girls get plenty of laboratory time, learning how to use equipment and procedures, simulating working with samples and performing dissections. They also get plenty of clinical experience, learning how to work with patients, doing research, observing surgeries, and discussing current health issues facing young women.
"We think girls need more opportunity to see what the possibility is for them in their lives and sometimes girls think of themselves in other careers, but not as scientists," said Woodruff. "We have them interfacing with scientists, clinicians, nurses, physical assistants and really ask them to involve themselves in the discovery process of science that then translates into human health."
(Quote source: ABC12)
The more I read about it the more I'm convinced it really is a remarkable program. I hope if you're in the Chicogo area, you'll check it out.
Geek Mom has a post about a great new CD for science geeks: Science Fair.
The songs of Science Fair are all performed by women and girls, including some kids’ music greats like Frances England, Elizabeth Mitchell, Lunch Money, Renee & Jeremy, and Ashley Albert of The Jimmies. The musical styles represented are as diverse as the science topics, from hip hop to rock to folk, phytoplankton to fossils to outer space. The album name drops Feynman, Heisenberg, Einstein, Bohr, Newton, Schrödinger, with a terrific ukelele-filled song dedicated to Marie Curie.
Speaking of women in science, the Elsevier Foundation, The Academy of Sciences for the Developing worls (TWAS) and the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD) have launched an awards program for women scientists in developing countries.
Valerie Weiss has an excellent post on indiewire.com about the problems of portraying science in the media: Women, Science and Film.
1. Girls are not dumb. They have interests outside of the world of Abercrombie or Forever 21. They are actually just as discerning as you and me and can tell when they’re fed dumbed-down messages.
2. Science can actually be cool. Why else would there be news reports on the search for dark energy and why else would we care about the race to find a cure for cancer? Why else would people actually study it?
In this Word & Film interview, the fabulous Kristen Scott Thomas dishes about being an older woman in Hollywood and why she prefers to make movies in Europe these days.
“The Hollywood film industry nourishes everything else because that’s the mother hand, but it’s true: The movies I’m making in Europe are more exciting to me than the things I’ve been asked to do recently coming out of America. That doesn’t mean to say I don’t want to do them anymore, but when you have even a much smaller part, it’s so exciting. And in Europe, they’re interested in women of my age. I don’t think that here they are.”
But, more importantly, like Barr used to do, Moran invests her consciousness-raising confessions with an all-too-rare working-class worldview.
The Colorado Shakespeare Festival is presenting a five-part piece called Women of Will, created by Tina Packer, which will explore the female roles in Shakespeare's plays.
Packer's theory is that Shakespeare's changing approach to women over the years illustrates his own ever-evolving complexity of thought and understanding. Women in his time, she points out, were necessarily shrewd observers, analysts of the power structure and their own place within it.
The Comic's Journal has a review of a new publication of Flannery O'Connor's lineoleum cut cartoons she made while in high school and college.
I think the significance of O’Connor’s cartoons lies not in their connection to her fiction but the gap between them. That they stand so puny and so far from her writing speaks to the wonder of the creative process. They attest to the mind’s capacity to access and master dangerous and potentially self-devouring material in ways that can not be foreseen, for which logic can construct no model for others to follow.
I've seen some photos of awesome swag people are bringing home from San Diego Comic-Con, but I'm pretty that Mercedes Becerra has them all beat. She scored a ticket to space!
"It was interesting to see how a male society functioned," she says. "It was kind of rough sometimes, too. It was a culture that I don't think they were thinking 'there is one woman, we should modify our behavior for her sake' ... I grew a thicker skin."
Meet Missy Franklin, who will soon become the first US woman to swim in seven events in one Olympic Games. She's definitely someone to watch. According to Teri McKeever, the head coach of the US Olympic women's swimming team.
"Missy is definitely the marquee female athlete on this Olympic team and probably has the highest expectations. Our job as coaches is to help her manoeuvre those and help her stay true to who she is."
Sabera Talukder, 16 years old, invented an inexpensive and portable water purification sysmter for developing countries, and became a finalist in the Google Science Fair.
On July 16, 1880, Emily Howard Stowe, a life long suffragist and woman's rights activist, became the first female physician to practice in Canada.
Emily Howard Jennings was born in 1831 on a farm in Norwich Township in Upper Canada (now Ontario), the first of six daughters of a Methodist father and a Quaker mother. Emily's mother had been well-educated at an American Quaker seminary and believed in a good education for her daughters. She was so dissatisfied with the local schools that she chose to instruct all her children herself.
At age 15, Emily became a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse in neighbouring Summerville, where she taught for seven years. Her struggle to achieve equal opportunities for women began in 1852 when she applied for admission to Victoria College, in Cobourg, but was refused because she was female. She was, however, accepted by Toronto’s Normal School for Upper Canada, the only advanced school open to women in British North America. She graduated with first-class honors in 1854.
She took a teaching position at the Brantford School Board, and quickly moved up to become the first woman principal of a public school in Upper Canada. After she married John Stowe, they moved to Pleasantville and started a family.
Soon after the birth of John and Emily Stowe's third child, John contracted tuberculosis. His illness inspired Emily to explore the field of herbal healing and homeopathic medicine, an area her mother had studied. This, together with what she saw as a serious need for women doctors, led to her decision to become a physician.
In 1865, Emily Stowe applied to the Toronto School of Medicine, but once again, she was denied admission. "The doors of the University are not open to women and I trust they never will be," the University's vice-president told her. Stowe was outraged. She promised herself that she would do everything possible to enable women to have the same opportunities as men. Unable to study in Canada, she moved to the United States and enrolled at the New York Medical College for Women, a homeopathic institution in the city of New York. She obtained her degree in 1867 and returned to Canada and set up a practice in homeopathic medicine on Richmond Street in Toronto, even before obtaining her license. She thus became the first practising female physician in Canada.
Even after she received her degree in the US, she was not allowed to enter the University of Toronto, until 1871. And then only with a special arrangement to allow her and another woman, Jenny Trout, to attend the lectures.
It was a difficult period for both of these women, since students and faculty went out of their way to humiliate them. Dr. Stowe either failed her exams or defiantly refused to sit them and returned to her practice, still without a licence. Jenny Trout passed her exams and became the first licensed female physician in Canada.
Her work to be accepted into the medical profession, reinforced her feminist ideals. She continued to fight for the rights of women throughout her life. In 1877, she helped to found the Toronto Women's Literary Guild, a suffragette group with the aim of improving women's working conditions. The group work hard to open up higher education opportunities for women in Toronto, and they succeeded. In 1883, their name was changed to the Canadian Women's Suffrage Association, and their reach was extended to all of Canada.
Meanwhile, Dr. Stowe continued her medical practice, specializing in women and children and giving lectures on women's health. In 1879, she was charged with performing an abortion on one of her patients. She faced a long and intimidating trial during which her qualifications were scrutinized and members of Toronto's medical establishment were called to bear witness to her character, skill and professional conduct. In the end, she was acquitted.
The next year, she was finally granted her medical licence by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, making her the second licensed female physician in Canada.
She continued to fight for the rights of women to pursue the medical profession. She worked tirelessly to convince the University of Toronto to reverse its policy and allow women into their program. In fact, perhaps her proudest moment in life can in 1883 when her own daughter, Augusta Stowe-Gullen, was the first women doctor to graduate from a Canadian medical school.
The same year that Dr. Stowe's daughter graduated from medical school, a public meeting of the Toronto Women's Suffrage Association, with Dr. Stowe at the forefront, led to the creation of the Ontario Medical College for Women.
In 1888, Dr. Stowe attended an international conference of suffragettes in Washington, D.C. She returned home to revitalize the women's movement in Canada and continued the fight to win the vote for women. Her vehicle was the Dominion Women's Enfranchisement Association, which she founded in 1889. She became its first president and held the position until her death.
Women's history is seldom written as boldly as that of men. Sometimes it
isn't written with ink and paper at all, but with a strand of silk thread on linen.
A while ago, Two Nerdy History Girls wrote about a truly amazing school girl's sampler, and have followed it up with another post, addressing the thought that most of these samplers found at auction come mainly from Northern US cities, and few come from the South.
They also give a shout out to the Quilt Index, which is an iPhone app that catalogs beautiful quilts and makes those images available on the go.
Speaking of iPhones, check out these cool Cross Stitch iPhone covers: I might have to make one of these!
I wish I'd seen this embroidery Geologic Cross Section when I was taking my geology class last semester! My cross sections were just boring old photo copies. How cool would it have been to have made one of these to turn in?
If you're still worried about zombies, you might want to make this Amagurumi Plant:
There have been lots of ideas for using paint swatches to make different decorations. I'm kinda impressed with these cute little gift boxes and may actually play around with this using some of the paint chips I have on hand from different redecorating projects.
And last but not least... Batman pot holders... I know at least one person who would love these:
I love clever decorations. This colorful paper globe light made
from cocktail umbrellas is so cool, I might actually make a couple
of these for our patio!
