Who said Recycling was easy?

So, unfortunately I didn't get to travel this past weekend. So I decided to do something a little less exciting (to everyone else that is). I decided to frog a sweater.

For all you non-crafters out there, "frogging" is a way we yarn crafters recycle. You take an old knit item, such as a sweater, and you pull out to the yarn to reuse it. There are businesses dedicated to this. So I shuffled through those old sweaters in the unused side of my closet and finally found a reasonable candidate:



Let me say, I have thoroughly learned my lesson. I went into this thinking it would be a piece of cake, and I'd get some yarn out of the deal. "Yea! This sweater would be enough to make a baby blanket! Awesome!" Oh no... I had NO IDEA.

I feel even stupider because I know how sweaters are constructed: there's a little thread that makes seams that aren't surged (surged seams are hopeless), but in all my research these masterful craftspeople were just tearing through sweater with a pair of scissors and getting skeins upon skeins of yarn. So, instead of trusting that little voice in the back of my head saying "Use the seam ripper! SEEEEAM RIPPPPPER!!!!" I just dove right in with my scissors, and I cut the seams! This gave me only 10 inch, unusable strips of yarn.



Note the computer and How to Train Your Dragon Oreos. The upside is, though I ruined most of the sweater, one sleeve is still unscathed. So, when I trust that little voice in the back of my head, I'll hopefully have enough yarn for a hat. Moral of the story is "Slow and steady wins the race" or "Don't recycle yarn, buy instead." You pick.

P.S. I also got to see a new movie, Dreamworks How to Train Your Dragon. May I say, it was AMAZING (hence the Oreos). It had a really sweet story and the most bad ass pets ever! I would recommend it to everyone!

Sometimes you have to take a step backward before you can take a step forward

I got to travel again this weekend, but this trip was not to a modern museum. I got to go with my mother and aunt to Jamesport, Missouri: a VERY SMALL town (the town had ONE four way stop...) in the middle of Amish country.



It was a touristy niche, the city hall advertised maps and public restrooms and there was a speaker system through-out the ENTIRE TOWN that blared blue grass, but it was still a lot of fun. Amish people make some pretty killer food and crafts, two of my favorite things. There will also tons of antique shops run by not-Amish people... I went in one were Mom found some crochet hooks in the jewelry display case. The lady pulled them out claiming they were all hand carved bone. However, true masters of the craft can definitely feel a difference between bone and PLASTIC, so I was really only interested in two of them: one small, old hook with a pretty carved handle and one smaller and older hook that I was terrified would break if anyone actually attempted to crochet with it. The later was like SERIOUSLY ancient: it was "double hooked" as in both ends of the hook WERE hooks. People worked with hooks like that to make lace before people started crocheting with yarn (1960s...). The woman further proved her lack of knowledge with these hooks by describing it as unique, as if hooks like that weren't used ALL THE TIME when the lace craft was around. I was ready to leave, but Mom got the price down to an offer I couldn't refuse. I took the newer one with a handle, though, cause if I get a crochet hook dammit I'm gonna use it.

After a great, "home cooked" lunch from a kitchy little restaurant that served you your drink out of a glass jar, we headed home. Another day trip, but I still had a lot of fun. The best part was I saw someone jog through town with her ipod in and I saw a buggy drive by with dice in the mirror. Glad to know some things never change :)

As a kind of added bonus, I got to see the world premiere of "Green Whales" at the Unicorn Theatre, and my I say it was AWESOME. Granted, a little weird, but I really enjoyed it! If you have a chance this week to go see it, I would highly recommend it!

Let's throw that map out the window

This was one for the bucket list: to throw a dart at a map blindfolded and go where it landed. Granted, what I had in mind was a world map or a map of the United States, but for a rainy weekend on spring break, a map of the Greater Kansas City area would do just fine. I got to do this with two good friends of mine: Brynn and AJ.



So after a few attempts with the blindfold, we thought better of it...
After a couple more times, a location was determined!



At the edge of Prairie Village and Mission Hills: The Indian Hills Country Club. Needless to say, it wasn't too fascinating. So we spent our time viewing the lovely homes of Mission Hills, including our dream home:



Coolest house EVER!

Pretty houses reminded us that the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art was right around the corner, so there we went! This also could have counted as a new experience because I couldn't remember the one time I went in 6th grade. This was also before the Bloch Building was ever around which is where we ended up spending most of our time.



We also finished a long heated debate of whether it was the filming location of the Sprint commercial aired during the Oscars.



Despite the fact that we took our dart location and just kind of ran with it, this mini-adventure was way too fun. In fact, I'm sure it was because we decided to beat off the dart-specified path that we had so much fun. Brynn even suggested a random road trip this summer with a US map (I'll have to work on my dart throwing skills...) and I definitely want to do it with a world map when I have the means. And who's to say we won't have detours on those trips.

FIRST things first...

I'm very excited to start this deal with something I had been looking forward to for weeks. This weekend, I got to attend the FIRST Robotics Greater Kansas City Regional. When I say "attend" I mean I got to run around juggling two different cameras with a badge on my neck that said "Press Team 1777" (the press badge made my three days actually :D). Even so, this experience was very exciting, fun, and more than worth the time I had put into it (and it was a lot of hours).

For those of you who don't know of FIRST, it's a program where students in high school try to build a robot to compete in a game. The catch is it's pretty out there and wacky, so there's a lot of problem solving and it's really fun to see what people can come up with. This year's game was called Breakaway:



The idea is basically soccor, except there are two massive bumps and towers deviding the feild into three sections.



Robots needed to try to go over the bump or go under the tower. You could score points by getting balls in the goals. Another way to get point was if the bot could suspend itself from the tower.



There was so much more to the game than that, little rules which made it really interesting. These teams themselves were interesting as in they weren't always what yo expected. Yes, the majority of them were aspiring engineers, but you had programmers and public relations specialists (like myself) as well. Everyone had their own story, which was great fun to follow. There was also this great idea from FIRST about "Gracious Professionalisim." I heard this phrase hundreds of times, but even through it's somewhat annoying persistance, the idea was great for these teams to work together and compete at the same time.

The competition was interesting because all of the teams really cared about the game and wanted to do well. At the same time, none of these students were afraid to make fools of themselves. There was always blaring music playing everything from swing jazz to ninties hits and R&B of today. People in the stands would get up and dance and there were mascots running around. You went to different teams pits and try to get as many buttons as you could. In short: it was a total nerd fest and it was too much fun! I actually asked our Senior Project Manager if there had ever been a movie made about one of these teams. He said there had, but it wasn't very good. Maybe I can make a good one someday.

As a final Shout-out to Viking Robotics Team 1777: You guys were awesome. Thank you so much for this great opportunity!