My Story, My Life

I miss my friends

This month marks the first year that we have moved to the south. Along with this change comes the ultimate sacrifice, being away from my peers. I miss my friends. I miss cooking for them every now and then. All the sudden calls for a dinner night, or a movie. I miss going out and hanging out with them.

UP Barkada on my wedding day

UP Barkada on my wedding day

These dudes and dudettes are my first friends in college. They helped me cope up with the shocking culture change, helped me appreciate myself more, taught me how to love and be loved.

We were never the tight knitted type of friends, but every once in a while when there is a chance, we meet. This once in a while meet up became more scarce when we moved to the south. Where we can no longer just be available on a thursday night, or can we invite them for a friday dinner.

My friends

My inner circle

These dudettes consists of my closests friends. I miss them the most. Before, they are literally just a doorstep away. We spent the rest of the college years together since we are all Physics majors, two of them is taking their Phd’s and one successfully finished her dissertation just recently.

These are the people I am most comfortable with.

I miss my friends.

I miss forcing them to come to our house and have a look at my latest creations and choke a comment or two.

If they were just nearby, they could have seen how I literally struggle to finish the dress I am crocheting for over three weeks now.

Current Progress

Current Progress

Struggling to finish this because, I chose the skirt to be blooming as the length goes longer. And currently it’s more than two feet in diameter. The dress actually looks like a blouse now with it’s current length:

Dress or Blouse?

Dress or Blouse?

If they were just nearby, they would urge me to finish this, though most will just shrug in amusement. And I can even hear another say, she will borrow it as soon as I finish it.

I miss my friends. I hope they can visit me anytime soon.

Buy one – take two for free

One of the few things that popular media has injected in our state of mind is that in-laws are meddling people that can potentially ruin your relationship with your better-half. Luckily for me, this is not the case. I consider myself very fortunate to having acquired a second set of parents. It’s like buying one (Mike) and getting two additional goodies, for free! I also find it funny that we share some common similarities. Both of us were classmates during college and got married in mid-20’s. His mother is very artsy-craftsy like me, and his father is very serious and scientific like Mike.

I am telling this because I want to share the wedding dress my ‘nanay’ made. Actually, she made the gowns of all my bridesmaids and flower girls and even my mom’s! Isn’t that amazing???

My wedding dress made by my mother in law

My wedding dress made by my mother in law

Nanay made my wedding dress (back)

Nanay made my wedding dress (back)

She also made my graduation dress (and the list goes on…)

Now, I am actually targeting to be as good as her when it comes to making dresses. And as you know, from my previous post, I have tried a few times. I may not be using the sewing machine she gave as much as I want to, because of the hectic work I have and because my toddler loves to mess up with my craft, but I am seriously considering entering a dressmaking class.

Since I have hooked up again in crocheting, one of my current goals is to finish this dress that is taking forever to make! But I am making very very good progress so far.. and I am itching to crochet all the way til my hands burn out.

dress in the making

dress in the making

Effort is nothing without good results

Effort is nothing without good results

College taught me this.

I remember a time during college when I entered a Crystallography course and spent a lot of sleepless nights over assignments just to be turned down at a mere glance. Maybe you would say that the professor is snubbed and not easily pleased and with little regards to how much effort I have put in my assignments. Maybe you are right. But it just emphasized the reality to me, that no matter how much effort you have put into something, if it is not right, it is not. Until you learn how to do things properly, that is when your effort will amount to something.

Mind you, I love that professor.  So much, I used him as a subject to learn calligraphy brush tool in inkscape. [He he]

Studying calligraphy brush tool in inkscape

Studying calligraphy brush tool in inkscape

Same thing is true with my job. Colleagues often tease me on how overworking I can be, but I do not just want to work. I want to achieve my goal. I would not want to see wasting my 8 hours just delivering ‘work’ and not results. This is not even being hard on myself, actually this is me – seeing value on what I do and what I can do.

I work 24-7, including the nights I spent refactoring my codes in my dreams, and during coffee time with my husband, on suddenly realizing what the logic should be. I am not just a coder. I take pride that I do not just write codes but build them, from pieces of logic into stringing these pieces into a framework, where each object maybe re-used for the same purpose.

I do not think that it is too much to ask the same thing to other people. Anyway, we are not paid to just stay and deliver effort. We are paid to produce results.

This is why crafting is my stress reliever, and I stopped producing projects to be paid. With this, I fully enjoy the benefits of crafting without additional burden of producing the result expected by the client, or beating the deadline.

And I enjoy each time I produced good results with me as its very own beneficiary.

Fitting the dress

Fitting the dress

I love crafting. I really do.

Stop right now.

Current progress

Current progress

Stop right, now.

I can’t. I keep telling myself to stop, your hands are hurting. Stop, you need to sleep. Stop. procrastinate. delay.

I cannot.

I am a little bit excited [I guess more than just a little] on how my ‘dress project’ would come out. Though I am not really sure of how each part would progress. Every time I cut my yarn to proceed to the next step, I hesitate but I cannot just stop. I am not even thinking, I am not even counting. My hands are moving on their own. I am hooked.

Today, I am able to progress a bit. The right side already has ‘sleeves’ with dainty picots to adorn the armhole. The picots were unplanned too, as well as the horizontal strip of lace I crocheted as back part and base of the sleeves.

(I originally intended it for a ribbon (perhaps?) or the band below the bust line, then it ended as the back part).

This is what I call, crocheting as I go. No concrete design, just a goal, a quick learning curve, and eagerness to please myself.

And delightfully, today, I already have chiffon to line the dress. The color is in nude, to match the cream wool blended yarn I am using. I have three yards of this, to allow room for mistakes, since I am not a hustler in cutting fabric, and from experience, I have messed up too many times.

Imagining the dress to have a skirt

Imagining the dress to have a skirt

Now, I am imagining how my project will look like if I am able to finish the skirt. Doesn’t it look nice?

On the same note, I just recently rediscovered an old video of me and my friends singing the song: Stop, by Spice Girls – here’s the link: http://lcdazo.multiply.com/video/item/5/stop-mtv-by-mgs.mpg

 

 

Sleepless nights

I remember a poem I wrote a while back about having sleepless nights. Usually when I cannot sleep, the right side of my brain is working nonchalantly. And I have to give in or suffer a terrible insomnia. During these times, creativity should be expressed and writing poems is one of my outlets:

A poem I wrote during one of the sleepless nights after going home from work:

ONE CUP OF COFFEE == ONE SLEEPLESS NIGHT

One cup of coffee=one sleepless night.
A single semicolon leaves my xml unparsed.
Piling up my headers are scripts and css
Adding to a kilobyte of additional requests.

One sleepless night means waking up so late
Leading to many buggy user interface.
Straighten up. Move thy mouse, Kindly check the logs.
Precautions are necessary. Prepare from being hacked.

Waking up so late gives a whole day of migraine
And a single paracetamol may not ease the pain.
Open up the terminal.  sudo ssh.
Repositories are out-of-date. make an apt-update

Headaches, submitted bugs then a meeting with my boss.
One-on-one analysis, another lunch break lost.
Onclick.submit() does not render $this->form().
Firebug console throws a lot of exception.

One cup of coffee = one sleepless night.
Thank you mighty google, for shedding up some light.
Overdosed on caffeine. A mid-afternoon nap.
Caught by my supervisor. A memo from above.

One cup of coffee? Maybe some other time.
My code throws an error on line 209.
One cup of coffeee? I think, this time i’ll pass.
There’s a missing parameter, i still need to CAST().

---------------------------------

Last night was not an exception, It is nothing related about work but due to my obsession on creating a dress. I honestly admit now that I have no idea what my next step would be and since logic mind ain’t working and my brain cells are still hyperactive I just grab my hook again and start crocheting, which to my utter amazement, resulted in something I really find pretty.

Current progress of the dress - inclusion of a lace collar

Current progress of the dress – inclusion of a lace collar

And though it was really dark when I grabbed my camera and took a picture (and just hoped that the flash would help capture the image) I finally was able to force myself to sleep.

connecting the lace collar

connecting the lace collar

Dressing up

I like making clothes and dressing up.

I dreamt of becoming a fashion model when I was young, but because of my very short stature, I shifted the dream to become a fashion designer or a fashion consultant. Amongst our circle, I usually give advice which clothes to wear or which accessories to use for an event. Sometimes, I even make them their own accessories on the fly. I really miss these times.

One of my favorite customer was a friend in college who loves dressing up too. She sometimes seeks my help to create the look she wants, but that was long ago.

My friend, Cris on a tribal inspired bling bling she asked me to make

My friend, Cris on a tribal inspired bling bling she asked me to make

I miss dressing people up, or helping them get dressed. Sometimes out of whim, we will parade on different clothes and make faces.

Then this year, I got lucky, nanay gave me a sewing machine to help me learn how to sew. I never really got the hang of it, but I’ll go there. It’s just not easy to insert sewing on my everyday tasks because sewing takes so much time and energy and concentration, and I am not an expert. But despite that, I was able to create three decent dresses, each differing on style:

The dress I was able to make :)

The dresses I was able to make :)

I am really fortunate for having an extended family like nanay and tatay, for always supporting me and believing in what I can do.

Now, I am targeting to finish a crocheted dress, and I think, I am getting there…

Dress - work in progress, finishing the halter top

Dress – work in progress, finishing the halter top

I am hooking up a crochet-as-you-go dress created from a lace weight yarn, I recently bought from a Turkey online store: http://yarn-paradise.com, during one of their promotions. The yarn is incredibly thin and light, perfect for a flowing halter dress I am imagining. Hopefully, I can create the dress I have been picturing in my mind.

Aja! Aja!

I love my mom

I love my mom.

She is not the doting kind. She would seldom praise you nor compliment your work. But she is the type that perserveres no matter how much difficult it is for her. Amidst all our financial troubles during the early years, though we had an almost incomplete family and literally negative savings, she stood up and brought us to what we are today.

She could have not, of course. She could have just let us be. And yet even with meager resources, I say that she was able to compensate everything with just pure hardwork and support. Though she may always disagree with me, I know she is just testing my will and disposition. We always do not agree on a lot of things, because of different point of views in life, but she stays beside me and I owe her a lot for that.

I could never tell in just pure words how thankful I am that she was able to bear it all and raise us like this. But I know she already knows.

I love my mom.

My mom - very patient with crocheting a big blanket for my baby boy

My mom – very patient with crocheting a big blanket for my baby boy
[Yarns courtesy by my friends Liz, Danny and Mylein]

Sunday is Family Day

Sunday is family day for us.

Actually all weekends or every night after working hours if time and energy still permits, if not, my husband and I compensate during the weekends.

We are always busy during the weekdays, sometimes even through the night and a bit of Saturdays if we have pending problems to solve. So every Sundays, we go out and play with our baby.

Our baby loves to play and we take him everywhere.

Sunday is Family Day

Every weekend, we spend the day with our baby.

The village we currently live in has a number of playgrounds and a big swimming pool. He loves to be there, best. So, today as promised, we went swimming:

Sunday is Family Day

Sunday is Family Day

He really loves the water and he is not afraid to go down to the deep:

Brave Boy!

Brave Boy!

So our morning was well spent. We went home before lunch and our baby was really tired. This gave me sometime to sneak and grab my hook and continue my lacework…

Sunday Lacework

Sunday Lacework

Today is a tiring day again but well worth it. We also went out to buy our first Christmas Tree as a family.

Our very first christmas tree!!!!

Our very first christmas tree!!!!

I hope you also had a nice weekend :) Hook up!

A surprise for today.

I promised to write down the last part of the crocheted shorts instructions. Though I obliged, I never actually wished for a reward and yet I got one today and the reward came from Turkey!

MY YARNS from ice yarns came today! :) HAPPY!

Last last week, my husband agreed of this purchase, though I originally planned to buy yarns from Indonesia, a fellow crocheter, introduced this yarn shop to our group in ravely. So I tried one day during their yarn sale last Tuesday, and ordered. Here they are:

ICE Yarns

ICE Yarns

Today, work is overwhelming

Today, work is overwhelming.

I have complained too much for the slow progress of our project. Complaining is too exhausting.  I do not want to put negative vibes to my team, early this week, but frustrations should be vent out and expectations should be cleared out, too. And before actually expressing all the frustrations, I have to filter out as much subjective insinuations there are and be able to clarify where the frustrations are actually coming from.  Good thing there are considerate colleagues to rely on, and are willing to listen, lest I could have exploded in one negative blast of emotions. As frustrated as I am to some people, I do still want to know where we could be more objective in achieving goals and meeting deadlines. I feel pressured already that I have work to do and problems keep sprouting here and there, as if a wild wind blew all the seeds in my direction, and around me is a land fertile for  nourishing troubles.

Crocheting keeps me calm. It soothes my nerves (though not those around my fingers) and composes my restless mind. So amidst all the anxiety that work brings me, I find serenity in creating laces and textures.

I am not complaining about the work load. Believe me or not, I find comfort that I have work to do and problems to solve. I complain about the drag of certain loads, where some milestones seem to be far from being reached. It’s like a forever work-in-progress (wip) which could turned into un(wanted) finished objects (ufo). In my world, wip’s should have constant progress. Ufo’s are not even considered. Hence, if there are any obstacles that hinder us from moving forward, I feel that it is my responsibility to shake the grounds and drag my team mates out of their comfort zones, literally drag them out and tell them directly

THIS IS NOT RIGHT. THIS IS NOT WHAT IS EXPECTED.

Without exclaiming overly attached statements like –

YOU PROMISED ME!

Happily, before the am shift ends, we were able to cheer a little bit by online solutions like www.shakeyspizza.ph where I could send pizza’s to my workmates around the country.

(Just as a background, I have people working with me in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.) [Minor exception to the sole person working in North Cotabato, where  electricity supply is not even reliable, Pizza parlors that offer online buying by a third person may seem out of the question. So, I just had to think of another better way to cheer him up)

Before the day ends, I am happy to tell that I have moved an inch up towards finishing this ridiculous synching method I have automated. Testing is dragging so a crochet hook is within arm’s reach. I am finishing the crocheted lace shorts as promised, to finally be able to provide a decent documentation on how I hacked AngieHeart’s crocheted lace shorts.

WIP - AngieHeart's Crocheted Lace Shorts

WIP – AngieHeart’s Crocheted Lace Shorts