Designblog

Londonna & the End of Europe

2010-06-29T11:39:00.000-05:00

It just occurred to me I never posted about London, the place I was looking forward to visiting the most. I didn't have internet there (not for lack of wifi, but because my iphone stopped seeing wireless, which is a major pain when it's the only connection to home) so I couldn't post except from Bill's computer, which I did once. The countryside was lovely, we visited castles and had fish & chips and bubble & squeak (it's a real thing! Granny Joan laughed at me when I exclaimed that while looking at the menu) and while walking down the lane one evening we passed a horse pasture, and while we were standing there one of the horses came across the yard to say hello. We pet its nose and I fed it a clover and it licked my hand, and I was giggling like a child all the while. The epitome of English country living.

We took the train friday morning into London, and went to the Tate, which I liked, except that they seem to have crammed all their content (which is excellent) into about half the space (which is a refurbed factory or something) so there are paintings all over the walls, some of which are too high up to even see easily. We walked a lot just like in olden times (the beginning of our trip) and went to all the tourist places, including the London bridge (rather unimpressive), the tower of london (crown jewels!), and that bridge in harry potter that the dementors fly over. I've never been unafraid of walking over bridges for some reason, and tristan repeatedly telling me the dementors were coming to shake people off the bridge, and that they have to close it sometimes IRL for high winds didn't help any. We took a double decker bus, one of the old-school ones, which apparently are only for spanish-speaking (shouting, really) tourists.

We stayed at tristan's other uncle Crispin's house, with his wife & ADORABLE baby kitten Kato. Kato chased bugs and ran around like crazy the whole time, but if you pick him up he goes limp and you can flop him upside down and rub his belly. I've never met a cat that liked being upside down or loved belly rubs so much as this one. Our last night abroad Crispin suggested this Parisian steak restaurant that had a branch in london, so we decided to go despite the 20£ per person price tag. We waited in line when they opened (restaurants in london tended to have a 'siesta' hour or two between lunch & dinner) which was already around the corner. We were seated, and the waitress came over and asked if we were ready to order. We told her we hadn't got menus yet, to which she replied "well we only have one thing... it's steak and chips." Uh... okay, I guess we're ready to order. Like tristan said, she should have come over and said "It is now time to order!" We got mediums (no medium-rare or medium-well, even though they only make one thing) and house wine, which was pretty good. We didn't eat lunch in preparation for this night, which was a good thing. After the first smallish portion the couple at the table next to us got seconds, which we did too shortly after, and let me tell you I ate every bite. This was the absolute best steak I have ever had, thanks to their amazing secret sauce, which I swear they should bottle and sell, because I would buy it by the case. This meal made me only one tiny smidgen below how happy I was after I ate that belgian waffle, and that's saying something. Best. Meal. Ever. And guess what, they have one in new york!!

While I'm sitting here writing this and deciding what to have for lunch (cereal or yogurt? all I have is dairy evidently) it's probably about 83 degrees in here, and all I want is to be back in London eating one of those steaks. While I'm sad my trips over, vacation's not over yet because I'm going home tomorrow for a week for my dad's birthday, and to spend some family time on martha's vineyard. I'm glad to be back :)

NYC - home sweet home, and hotter'n hell

2010-06-28T14:06:00.003-05:00

Back in the US of A. It's hot. 92 degrees outside, and probably close to that in this top-floor apartment. The weather was actually better in London, warm and sunny without being too hot. And it didn't rain once! I miss traveling already, and I know the more I travel the more I will want to travel. The goal for now though is to find a job & a place to live, if only so I can save up until my next journey.

I went through the first 4 gigs of pictures (I've got 2 more gb to go through still) and started posting them to Flickr. Until I figure out how to get flickr to post them here, or until I have the time to post some of the 1500 pics I took to facebook, you'll have to make due with a few here, and a link to my new flickr account, where you can see almost all of them.

Flickr: Click here! (flickr.com/allegra-design)

Teasers!

Nyhavn houses

Apartment bedroom window & courtyard

Boats on the canal in Christianshavn

England - Finally! (chapter four of eurotour)

2010-06-22T10:39:00.000-05:00

Well, we finally started the last chapter of our euro-journey. We made it to the land of Harry Potter and the Spice Girls (yes, that's why I'm here, let's not kid ourselves) yesterday evening. The flight from Marseille was iffy, on the most low-budget airline I've ever experienced. Worse then El-Al, which is saying something. Ryanair (feel free to groan and facepalm, those of you who happen to know it) even had commercials over the intercom in-flight to advertise their buy one get one free baggies (that's what they were called, baggies, although they were more like packets) of booze. Gin, vodka, whiskey or rum, I believe. In a packet, with a plastic cup if you wanted it. And everyone on that flight should have had one, because the flight was so low-key we walked across the tarmac to get on the plane. Walking across the tarmac and up the staircar to a plane is something I've always wanted to experience, but in more of a get-on-my-private-jet-while-being-photographed setting than a carry-my-own-bags-up-a-flight-of-stairs-to-a-plane-with-no-assigned-seats-for-the-screaming-babies-and-smelly-french-men type of setting.

Anyhow, Tristan's uncle Bill picked us up from the airport, despite our being an hour late for having had to stand in line to go through border control because the passport stampers were severely understaffed, and drove us about an hour to Tristan's Granny Joan's house in Suffolk county in East Anglia. I wish I could post pictures at this point, but as my phone's wireless is totally broken, you'll have to deal with the 3 I got on facebook yesterday, and one that Tristan posted. It's basically everything I could ever want in a tiny town of under 300 people in the English countryside.

I'm not being sarcastic, it's wonderful here, even the weather. There's a horse and a pony in a field just behind Granny's yard, and she made us dinner and tea last night and breakfast this morning in her lovely breakfast sunroom, and we went to Bury St. Edmund today to see the old abbey and the cathedral there. They even drive on the other side of the street and everything! We're going out for fish & chips tonight, and I don't care what mixed reviews the locals give this place, I'm sure I will find it amazing. I hope they serve it on newspaper in a basket, too!

The plan is to visit a castle somewhere nearby tomorrow, and then move on to Tristan's other uncle Crispin's on friday morning. That gives us Friday afternoon and all day saturday to cram in a whole city, just like with Paris. We're expert at this now, if a week out of practice (and out of shape, I might say) and it should be a great time!

That's all for now, if my phone worked I could post more often, but as it is I have to use Bill's computer here at GJ's house to get online. >:O

PS- I counted 25 bunnies on the side of the road before we even got on the highway, which confirmed what I've heard about England, although tristan was shocked I saw that many, since he didn't see any as I managed to keep it to myself because his uncle was driving us. 25 bunnies!!

En France

2010-06-19T10:32:00.000-05:00

In short: paris was better than i thought it would be, and bigger than i thought it would be. a lot like new york, but in french and with nicer buildings.

We're now in the south of france in Paguignan (pawg-een-YONH) and we were supposed to move up to Fontaine du Valcluse today, except that Tristan's mom got a teensy bit of something with shellfish in her dinner last night and so was out of commission all day today (she's highly allergic, if you couldn't guess). Bummer for her! Hopefully there will be more accessible wireless at the new place, I'll update again when I get a chance!

The Land of Chocolate! (Er, Chocolat!)

2010-06-13T12:19:00.000-05:00

Brussels, baby! I had a feeling I would love this city, and I was right. It's reputation is for gorgeous architecture & amazing food. What's not to love?? The minute we stepped off the train it smelled like waffles (no joke) and it was sunny, and easy to navigate. Especially after Amsterdam this city is way easier to move through, even though the subway system is a little depressing looking and has poor graphic design. [side note: I can't help but notice the trash bin/recycling systems in every city, particularly at the train stations. I'm also That Person who can't leave their job at home, and I've been taking pictures of them all.)

Our hostel was right by the botanic gardens, le botanique. Oh, also everyhing here is bilingual: French and Dutch. Great for Tristan, who gets to practice his French. Not so great for practicing my Spanish/Danish knowledge, but it feels like were really in Europe now. I've been eased into mainland Europe, from Danish to Dutch, to Dutch/French, and now on to Paris. Anyway, this hostel was much older than the stayokay in Amsterdam, amd was way more "hostel-y" with no lockers in the rooms, and community bathrooms on each floor. Tris and I were lucky enough to recieve a room with only 4 beds, instead of 6, and the hostel I guess was underbooked because we had the room to ourselves the whole night. It was quiet, no clog-unwrapping, stumbling-in-drunk rookies this time!

Since our hostel was at the top of the city, and it was a gorgeous day, when we got there we walked through the gardens down to the comic strip museum. Tristan was all about it, and turned into a child the minute we entered the doors. It was all in French and Dutch, and although I had a packet with the info in English, I was more content just to wander the building which was all glass and gorgeousness, a little like the Stacks at pratt, but lighter and not in disrepair. We didn't have enough time to go to the Magritte museum afterwards (my only regret thus far, but then I didn't really have any specific expectations for Brussels other than food, and there's never time for everyhing)

We walked down past the royal palace and through the park there, where we sat by the fountain for a while and admired the day. The city is on a hill, so everywhere you look is a breathtaking view of gothic & regency castles, churches and spires, it's incredibly beautiful. While we were by the fountain there was a 2-person crew filming something, and Tristan goes, NEWS FLASH: this was the best day... EVER! And the weather WAS really perfect, especially after the almost nonstop rain in Amsterdam.

We also found this little chocolate shop off one of the cute little squares with a million restaurants and lovely buildings. It was family run, and the man who ran it was very nice, and helpful, and gave us tastes of lots of the truffles and things we looked at. We got a box of 30 (I know, I know, but I'm sharing it!) for 18€, which is an amazing deal since the dollar to euro ratio is like 1.2:1 or something like that. Amazing! We went back to the hostel after that for a nap, and then went out for dinner, which we splurged a little bit on since the restaurants there were all a little bit (or a lot, for many of them) above student prices. We got Italian food and a glass of wine, and it was SOO good, and not just because we were starving. We meandered aroundthe city looking for a bar where we could get Belgian beer (it's really cheap here, by the way) and comtemplating how content we were. It may have been partially to the credit of the wine at dinner, but I was more happy & content than I ever remember being, and that's saying a lot since I'm generally a pretty happy person. Amd then we passed a store with (fake but realistic) baby bunnies in the window, and all was well with the world, at least in Belgium. We had our beer, and watched the Uruguay-France world cup game, and then went in searh of waffles. The map we got at the hostel had lots of suggestions from local students on it, which was awesome, except that they said almost all the waffle places are the same. Now, I don't mean to undermine the culinary expertise of Belgians, but I find that hard to believe. But since I'm not a waffle connoseur, but I do love a good waffle, I made it my goal just to find one that was fresh offthe press. That's exactly what we found, and the lone street-front shop attendant relied to my request of a waffle with vanilla ice cream (no Belgian spice flavor for me this time) with strawberries amd chocolate with an enthusiastic "of course!". Let me tell you, this thing looked fantastic, and I think I fell head over heels in love the instant he put it on the counter and our eyes met (me & the food, not the server, duh!). I got into exitement-mode where I have tunnel vision, and had eyes only for my one true love (the waffle). We managed to stop cramming in tiny bites with the tiny fork long enough to find a on which to sit amd devour this baby. Which we did with great relish, you can bet! The sugar rush hit me just before what I am now going to start calling a happy brussles coma. I was SO. HAPPY. If you're reading this then you probably know how happy good food & chocolate can make me, and this effect was 100 times better than any other series of eating events in recent memory. In short: I. LOVE. BRUSSELS. I am definitely, DEFINITELY going to come back here for longer some day, and hopefully they won't have to roll me home like the blueberry girl from Willy Wonka.

We're on the train to Paris now, which I guess I should be excited for, but I'm still have a chocolatey afterglow from Brussels, not to mention a whole box of Belgian chocolates peering up at me out of my new marimekko bag. Paris should be fun, but what I'm really looking forward to is the south of France, when I can spread out (and wash my clothes) and really relax. What a life I lead that I can enjoy a box of Belgian chocolates in the sun on the french riviera!

Amsterdam!

2010-06-11T08:07:00.000-05:00

Amsterdam. What an experience. It feels like wenwere there for like 5 days, partially because we walked so much. (I need to stop here and just point out that it's a good thing cities are so walkable, because we are eating SO MUCH food. I'd be fat as a dumpling by the end of the first week otherwise.)

When we first got into the city, it was raining. We had about four hours of sleep on that hot as hell sleeper train which was otherwise pretty cool (more on that later), no mapexcept the general one in our guidebook, no grasp of the dutch language, and our luggage. Tristan had found our hostel on the guidebook map, the little house symbol with a 14 in it. So we go southeast of station amsterdam centraal, and end up smack dab in the middle of the redlight district. Where we then preceded to wander for about an hour and a half. We asked a few people if they'd heard of our hostel's street, including this big gay American dude who said "just have a space cake honey, and you won't even care!" Welcome to Amsterdam, huh? Eventually this lady told me the vondelpark was in the south part of the city, which we knew, but figured our hostel name, stayokay vondelpark, was just a name. As it turns out our wandering among the shady alleys of the red light district were in vain, because the guide book has 2 little houses with 14's in them. And the other one, the real one, as I quickly discovered, was next to the entrance to vondelpark. Go figure. We figured out roughly how to take the tram, and hopped aboard to watch the stores and restaurants get ritzier and ritzier, as we headed south. By the time we got off at the park and walked the lovely shaded street to the hostel along the park, we were relieved beyond all words to be staying in a gorgeous, high-class, and above all safe & quiet neighborhood. But we were also soaked, exhausted, dirty, and still in sweatpants from the train. In other words, pissed off and hating Amsterdam already.

But it gets better! Once we settled in and relaxed for a bit I thought it might be a good idea to spend the rest of the rainy afternoon in the van gogh museum. We ate somehing other than snack food for the first time in about 20 hours or more, and I finally got my salad (fresh buffalo mozzerella and balsamic - so good I even ate all the tomatoes!). I've never seen anyone eat a turkey club as fast as Tristan ate his.

The van gogh museum was pretty good, lots of paintings I've only seen books or art history lectures. I've realized that I don't hate painting museums if I know the history and the stories behind everything, and the van gogh had just the right amount of info to keep me interested in the story of his life through his art without feeling like homework.

We spent the rest of the evening walking around and seeing the city which feels smaller than Copenhagen area-wise. It has a very different feel from Copenhagen too, it's much more clustered amd bustling, with lots of alley ways and shopping stores, and dudes offering me cocaine on the street (no thanks) and lots more chain stores. Seriously the main shopping street is like strøget times 100, the stores actually repeat 2 or 3 times because it's so long and has so many stores.

And the city itself! I have been trying to figure out how to describe accurately how it made us feel. I don't think words will suffice, so just know that everything I am about to say is not exaggerating our opinion at all, and just try to imagine what it was like for the two of us. It seems as though whoever was in charge of designing the transit/pedestrian system for the city tasked out separate people to design each of the bike, side walk, tram, and car areas, and those people weren't allowed to talk to each other before they turned in their plans. A typical street crossing experience went like this:

Look for the color change in the brick to indicate start of bike lane. Look both ways 4 times for bikers. Cross quickly to the first island, press pedestrian crossing button. Wait til the first walk light goes on. Check for cars, run across street. Check for trams in both directions. Sprint across tram tracks to next island. Wait for next walk light to change, run across road to final median island. Remember to check for bikes again, this isn't the side walk! Run across final bike lane, make sure you're actually on the sidewalk, and then stop and take a breather while you figure out where you've ended up as you rub your neck which is now experiencing a minor case of whiplash from all the checking left and right you just had to do. Complain to travel buddy about how incredibly FRUSTRATING this city is.

More often than not that's how it went, and we absolutely hated tha aspect of the city, especially coming from Copenhagen where they've got a system that works smoothly without question, and without requiring an adderol first and a neckbrace after.

Having said all that, we did like Amsterdam. It's a very prety city, TONS of canals that make hundreds of little island blocks, and all the houseboats tristan could ever want. We went on a canal tour our first morning there, at heather's suggestion, and we got to see the whole city and all the gorgeous townhouses and bridges, plus some architecture and city history. We got to do the rest of the things on our agenda for the city, which consisted of the heineken brewery, fries, and cheese. So far so good on the beer-cheese-chocolate tour. (By the time we left Copenhagen I had had so much cocio I couldn't even finish it all, and Tristan was inclined to comment more than once "I can't even comprehend the amount of chocolate you've ingested, I've never seen anything like it!")

We were looking for something to do when we happened to run into the two swedish guys from our car on the overnight train, who we'd decided were funny and more our style to hang out with than the two 17 year old girls from Finland. They were on their way to the anne frank house, which we weren't plannig to go to because it's depressing, but we went along anyway because it made sense. I'm really glad we did go, because it was amazing to hear the frank family story, and see the actual places they hid out. At the end they had an area with short videos describing various modern day descriminations, and then they would electronically poll the visitors with buttons on the seats. It then showed the results in a pie chart and compared them with all visitors' results. It was really interesting, and a great point in my opinion, to juxtapose historical descriminations with modern day ones, and to point out the fact that, like Otto frank said, (anne's father,) people need to remember that there are horrible things like this going on even today, and that because we know it happened once doesn't mean it can't happen again.

Last night after the anne frank museum we hung out with oskar and pete in the city, and then headed home because we had to get up early this morning (REALLY early thanks to the bleach-blond girl in our room who sounded like she packed everything in cellophane and spent at least 30 minutes in the early hours cramming about 20 wooden clogs (klompen!) into one of her 3 suitcases.

Well, writing this on my phone has taken the entire 2 hour train ride, I'll post it when I find internet in Brussels.

Vi ses, københavn!

2010-06-10T11:58:00.000-05:00

[NOTE: I wrote this post two days ago, on the night train to Amsterdam. Were leaving Amsterdam tomorrow morning for brussels, where hopefully I can have free Internet and post about Amsterdam... But for now, there's this!]

We spent the last few days in wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen walking around (in the rain) shopping and sightseeing, and this morning we went to malmö. Malmö is small and there isn't that much to di compared to Copenhagen, but it's still sweden. There were a whole bunch of what looked like high school graduates in sailor costumes with bull horns and whistles making quite a spectacle of themselves, but we had a good time despite their noise and took some nice pics.

Last night we went to lars's house for dinner, he made this amazing curry dish with lamb and olives and couscous. It was sooo good! But every day I have more meat and sugary food the more I crave a salad.... hopefully I'll be able to find something healthy soon.

Tonight is really weird; Gry brought us to the central train station, and now we're on a night train to Amsterdam, where I'm writing this to post later when I have internet. It's so bizarre! There was a gorgeous countryside sunset in the south of Denmark just before we crossed the border into Germany, where we are now. There are 6 people to a room, which is teeny and has fold down beds like on the Viking cruise last year. We've got a cabin with two finish girls who are 17, and a swedish guy and a finish guy who are 22. Everyone is nice, but it's hard not to be wary of sharing a room with anyone else espeially when they warn us about pickpockets in the train station and even on the train.

This is the beginning of the second chapter of our trip as far as I am concerned. Copenhagen was so familiar and so friendly, I really have no idea what to expect from the rest of out trip. I am so sad to say goodbye to Copenhagen again, but I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of new places as well. I made a promise to myself that I'm going to try to make it back to Copenhagen every year for the rest of my life, if only for a little while. I would love to spend 6 months or a war there, and going back confirmed how much I like it there.

But for now, I'm looking forward to tomorrow morning, when I'll wake up in a country I've never been to before. It's exciting! This is why were here, and it's time to enjoy it while I have his opportunity!

We're in Europe!

2010-06-06T09:48:00.005-05:00

In case you missed it, I've been posting to tumblr rather than blogger, since it's easier on my phone. So if you want to read about my adventures in Europe so far, they show up on the top of my blog page in the yellow box, or at allegradesign.tumblr.com. I'll try to post to my blog too, but the tumblr app makes it way easier to do that. Or just read the posts when they show up on facebook!

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Today tris & I spent the morning with Gry, who made us eggs and bacon and sausage and we got some A-M-A-Z-I-N-G pastries from Lagkagehuset baggery down the street, (with the best strawberry whipped cream cake in europe,) and then we just hung out on the dock in the canal by the opera house. I was going to go in, but that water is COLD! And icky, with small critters and plants and things. We just stopped at netto and i got sugar pretzels & cocio, the breakfast of DIS champions. It was nice to take the day off our usual-until-now walking for miles and miles, and just relax. Weøre probably going to go into town to get sunblock at Tiger, and hopefully our train tickets, and maybe see if one of the castles is open for tours still, even though it's almost 5 now. I'm already sad to be leaving København so soon, and we still have 2 days left!

Professional in the Field!

2010-05-20T22:50:00.002-05:00

Officially graduated from Pratt, and updated my Coroflot:

view my portfolio:
coroflot.com/Allegra-Design

I'm glad to be done with school, but still looking for employment. I don't have any real job offers yet, but I do have an offer to have my Tree of Life table displayed in the lobby of the new Pratt building for a year (!) starting in August, which is great!

And I'm VERY excited to go to europe for a month in less than two weeks!!!

Schedule for the next few weeks/months

2010-04-09T19:19:00.002-05:00

gettin through this weekend; GLEE comes back; some other stuff happens; GRADUATION/PRATT SHOW; some time off; i move; going to EUROPE for a month!; then..... real life starts. I need a job.

The official unveiling of my new website!

2010-04-02T11:37:00.001-05:00

I made this in about a day and a half, so it's not done yet, but have a look and tell me what you think! :)

allegra-design.us

So much to do! And it's great!

2010-02-28T13:02:00.006-05:00

It's been a while since I wrote a real blog post, but I'm really busy now (you'll see in a sec) so I'm going to try to keep this short.

What's been going on at CSDS in the last few weeks is that our original recycling-for-starbucks project morphed into designing a recycling bin/system for corporate and school cafeterias. We're now at the phase where we're making sketch models for flat-pack bins, and looking at the possibility of it being something people can download the plans for and cut out their own retrofit bin system for elementary schools and the like who want to adapt our system.

Last friday there was a HUGE design jam (my first one!) with UNESCO and Deb Johnson's design incubator about designing an HIV toolkit for specialists in social communities (UN/UNESCO workers) to educate people about HIV and AIDS. It's sort of like the medical book we did last year, only this focuses on HIV specifically and is a toolkit rather than a book. We (the lucky CSDS interns who were picked to work on this project and do less of the starbucks thing) are going to be designing this toolkit with Smart Design, which is SUCH an amazing opportunity to work with a great design firm in the city... and might lead to future projects with Smart, if you catch my drift.... hopefully :)

In the middle of the design jam I had to step out for a few hours to head into the city, through all the CRAZY snow we got, to the Wedgewood showroom. We were introduced to their lines of dinnerware, their formal and casual divisions, and got a packet of information about the histories of each of the companies within the umbrella company, of which Wedgewood is only one of maybe 6 or 7. The competition is to design 4 pieces that we, as a young new york living demographic, would find necessary when having/serving dinner. There's a separate division between designing 3D forms and designing 2D graphics, and there are separate (and quite hefty) prizes in each category, plus the potential for Wedgewood to pick up and produce your design if they like it, even if you don't win. I'm going to be working with Jenny on this competition, since we have pretty much the exact same taste in these, as with most, things, and I'm really excited for that too! As she said, "I don't think we'll disagree on anything." And our designs will be the best and we'll win. (Hopefully!)

So despite only having class basically twice a week, I have plenty to do and spend my days off working hard, trying to finish my portfolio and website so I can get a job, and working on all the above projects as well. I'm so happy to be working on all this stuff, and it gets me excited (rather than frightened) to graduate so that I can do this type of stuff all the time, and not have homework on top of it. And get paid for it. It reaffirms that I'm in the right major and the right place, and I couldn't be happier about that.

Oh, and for my final design project I'm doing an exhibit design of Dr. Seuss and his life and works, so there's that too.

-A

We've Expanded! Well...

2010-02-18T11:23:00.006-05:00

...sort of. I made a Tumblr, which I heard about from Jeremy at iwasbombed.com. Tumblr is a great hybrid between twitter and a blog (like this one) but its function is definitely more than the sum of its parts. I'm going to try to make my tumblr posts show up here, because these posts, plus my twitter feed, show up on tumblr, which shows up on facebook... but I'm not sure it'll work right, so besure to check it out if you want to keep reading my blog posts, which, I might add, are vastly more frequent than my posts here on blogger. Which is the point of tumbler, which is awesome.

Check it out!

**EDIT** As you might notice, if you go to my blog from the actual website and not on an RSS feed, I've created a Tumblr widget (thanks to this article) that now appears above the blog posts. We're all connected, now! Although, I'm pretty sure sidebar & other apps don't show up on the RSS, so be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed from the actual tumblr page if you still want updates. Let me know if you need help with this (lookin at you, Mom...)

A:D

2010-01-03T22:34:00.003-05:00

I'm going to ISRAEL tomorrow!! So stay tuned for pics and updates from overseas :) I'm bringing my phone, but not my computer, so updates won't be too wordy but will hopefully be fairly frequent (once a day maybe?).

Also, I am so prepared to get out of the cold for a week and a half it's not even funny. The weather at the dead sea is supposed to be in the 80's, and I can't wait!!

-A

It's November!

2009-11-02T14:10:00.004-05:00

One week from today (tonight actually) is the opening of the gallery show of all of our furniture and textiles that we made in Copenhagen this summer!! It's hard to believe we got there just over 4 months ago, it's still so fresh in everyone's minds, but on the other hand it does feel like forever since I saw the friends I made there.

Anyway, the point of this post is to invite everyone to the opening reception on November 9th, from 8 to 10 PM on the Second Floor Gallery in the Design building at Pratt!

(Click the title of this post to see the Facebook event page for more details!)

DIS Chair!

2009-10-07T11:06:00.009-05:00

Hi readers, I know it's been a while since I've updated, but school and work have been running full force, and the semester is well underway. Several projects are going on, but first let me start with the professionally-taken photographs of my chair that I made in Copenhagen!

I still haven't seen it back in NYC yet, they're here somewhere, but apparently going through customs takes longer than shipping from CPH to NYC by boat. Eventually there will be a DIS show here at Pratt for furniture & textiles from this summer, so keep a look out for that too.

I finished my first jewelry project since high school! Surprise surprise, it's tree-shaped, just like everything else I seem to be making these days. Sustainability is kind of taking over my brain. Anyway here it is, in all its hours-of-sewn-on-paper-leaves glory!

In other news, CSDS is taking on a project through a green organization in NYC to work with starbucks about a paper cup uptake container, which will connect with an effort here at pratt to use paper cups and make styrofoam a thing of the past. After all, paper is only truly better when it's being used and disposed of correctly.

I'm also in the middle of working out a connection between CSDS and Sift, the new Pratt Sustainability newsletter. I'm not sure at this point if I'll be writing full-fledged articles, CSDS blurb updates, or what, but I'm now the go-between gal for these two wonderful efforts.

Etsy.com people came to Pratt yesterday and did a presentation about what Etsy is for, how it works, etc. and it got me (and I'm sure others) pumped to put up work and sell some things on Etsy. It really plays into the whole local-as-sustainability thing, as well as supporting green efforts. I'll probably set up an Etsy account next semester when I have more time to make things, such as my recycled plastic bag laptop sleeves.

Finally, I'm working on a sustainable, tree-based (in many ways) coffee table in furniture this semester. I don't have any pictures of that to upload just yet, though, so let me leave it at that for now.

How to Get Things Done with Bank of America/Visa:: The Saga Continues

2009-09-03T17:16:00.002-05:00

Before you begin:
Bring your bank of america debit card to Denmark. Find out when you try to purchase lunch that your card doesn't work. Spend hours on the phone talking to visa and bank of america, and find out that your card was cancelled. But why would they tell you this? It's not like you're a customer of theirs or anything, and need to use your money.... Have visa send you a once-yearly available emergency international debit card, which is gold and looks like you printed it yourself with stick-on letters telling everyone that this is, in fact, a VISA GOLD CHECK CARD. Use this one until you get back to the US, whereupon you use it once or twice, and then it gets rejected from more stores than Gary Coleman's credit card. From this point on, follow the steps below.

Step 1
Call Visa. Talk to an unhelpful man who tells you nothing but "we don't know why it doesn't work" and to call your bank.

Step 2
Call the bank. Bank of america usually has pretty good customer service, but see if you can locate the most incompetent employee in their entire office of customer service reps. This way you are ensured the proper response of "your card isn't cancelled. It should work. They just had a server error." Ask them to be sure that it isn't because the card was issued in a foreign land, and then used here and shut off by other morons (whom you previously told, twice, for both the old card and this new china town-quality card, the dates you'd be away from and returning to the US), and Mr. Customer Support Genius will tell you "no, that's not it." Well, at least one of you is looking for reasons why your card doesn't work.

Step 3
Go try your card. Mr. Genius told you your card wasn't shut off, and that it'll work-- right? Wrong. It still doesn't work.

Step 4
Head home and call the bank. Again. Talk to Terell this time, who thinks it is in fact NOT normal for your card to work on some purchases and randomly deny others. Terell takes the step above and beyond Mr. Genius' wildest dreams of employee competence and, WOW, looks for a pattern in the failures. He finds (after mere seconds of pondering at the level achievable by most chimpanzees-- no offence to Terell, in all fairness he didn't have to ponder long) that the card works as a debit- when a PIN is entered, and fails when used as a credit card. SO. He asks me if I'm still at the store (I'm not) or if I have to make any online purchases (I don't) and that he usually likes to help people while they're still in the store (the man likes immediate results!) so he can see if it works, but he'll reset my card and that I should try it at another location once again, everything should be fine, but even if it doesn't work it will still work at ATMs and at places where I can use my PIN.

I have yet to try this last part, but I trust Terell, who seems to be the only employee at Bank of America showing signs of sentient life. Other than Georgia, that is, at the Bank of America headquarters for international issues in Atlanta (I know.... Atlanta... Georgia.... it's like she was born to be there. To assist me.) who helped me for over an hour on the phone while I was in Denmark, nearly in tears at being overseas and having zero access to my money, being thousands of miles from a bank I knew, and having no friends who had enough resources of their own to lend me any serious amount of money. She took pity on me and wished me, with much honesty, the best of luck with Visa and with getting a new card in Copenhagen. Georgia must be a magic witch doctor, because I had my new (canal-street-looking) visa card in hand, via private courier to our Copenhagen apartment, within 18 hours. I wonder if she knows Terell.

day 2 of classes.... and the 'to do' list grows.

2009-09-01T16:12:00.003-05:00

I'd just like to say that as I write this, i am exhausted, i have a head ache, its stuffy in my room, and the jerks who live in teh building behind us are blasting heavy metal head banging (perhaps against a wall?) outside music and smoking, making it impossible for me to open my windows and take a nap. Gee, how I love new york.

I had jewelry this morning, with the most cheerful woman i've ever met. She is friendly and open to us doing more complicated projects if we have experience (i do) which is good. I'm going to have to spend a lot of money on supplies this semester, it seems, between furniture, jewelry and silk screen which I'll get to next. Our first project in jewelry is to do a cuff bracelet that involves no soldering. we can use rivets, we can use ribbon, cloth, etc, to attach things, but it has to be a cuff with no solder involved. She showed us slide of earlier students' work and a lot of them were really good. I've got some planning to do before i go out and buy my materials and tools though because I don't want to waste any money. Which is sitting in the bank with me unable to retrieve it because god damn bank of america/visa cancelled my BACKUP card since it was issued to me in DENMARK, which I only had to get anyway because they cancelled my REGULAR card while i was overseas. I'm going to call visa tomorrow and give them a piece of my mind.

Anyway. Silk screen seems like it'll be a lot of work, he said it's more like a 4 credit class than the 2 it really is. But i'm not a print sutdent, I don't really do 2D, i'm not looking to make works of art. I'm just looking to learn the technique and use it in my other projects, like on my furniture. I also have no idea what I would print pictures of, like I said I don't really do that sort of thing, so we'll have to see. Luckily Carolina has screens and tools she said I can use, so I don't have to drop too much more money on that stuff.

It looks like I'm going to be suuuuper busy this semester, and i's only tuesday! Tomorrow I have abnormal psych, which I'm really really looking forward to (even if we have lots of reading for that class, it'll be interesting to me!) and then thursday I normally have design again, but we're going to see the felt show at the MoMA, and then it's the WEEKEND!! and I can spend lots of money on supplies and buy lots of groceries!! Because right now all I own are spices, flour, and the chicken i made for lunch.

Lots to do.

Back at the grind...

2009-08-31T17:49:00.003-05:00

Not only am I back at school, but I've jumped right into the deep end. This year is the first time i'll have 3 classes in one day, with design studio in the morning (aka furniture!!) and then portfolio after lunch, and shakespeare right afterwards. The thing that makes it all more bearable is that I have all 3 classes with Jenny, whom I missed very much over the summer.

Studio is going to be really awesome, we can make pretty much whatever we want, and it doesn't have to be seating. It can be tables, beds, lighting, anything with which you could decorate a room. There's also a competition with a laminate company where the winner gets money and maaad publicity, and I'm really excited about that too since, duh, I spent the whole summer making a laminate chair.

Portfolio is with the teacher everyone says is overly tough and makes people cry, but he seems dedicated to helping us find our story and how to defend our own work, so if any class will be a challenge, it'll be this one, but, hopefully, worth it.

Shakespeare is with an awesome older man who loves shakespeare, clearly, but loves getting students to love it too, by giving us historical context and having us act out scenes from each play, etc. I'm looking forward to this class as one of my remaining liberal arts electives.

The rest of the week from here on out will be easier, with jewelry (with jenny!) tomorrow morning, silk screen (with no one i know!) at 2, abnormal psych on wednesday afternoon, and studio again (although its a trip to see the felt exhibit at the cooper hewitt) on thursday. And then it's the weekend. Yay! My apartment is also really awesome, and I'm really glad to see all my friends I've missed over the past months again, even if I do miss copenhagen a lot still. I'll post pictures of it soon!

DIS summer design exhibition 2009

2009-08-18T13:45:00.014-05:00

I've already posted with my thoughts on leaving Copenhagen, so I won't go through all that again. Suffice to say that despite the heat and my jetlag, i am glad to be home, although I already do miss Scandinavia very very much, and I know I will continue to want to return there for a very long time.

Instead I'm going to dedicate this post to the final work of the DIS summer 2009 arch. & design kids, a very talented group, many of whom I will miss very much when we won't get to spend every waking minute of every day together in the studio or out on the town or on a coach bus in the Danish countryside. At the right you can see my chair, in the show space.

Here's a glimpse of the overall space the show was in, with the textiles hanging, architecture models on tables, and chairs grouped on the floor. (The furniture kids blew the rest of 'em out of the water, if I do say so myself. The textiles were fantastic as well, although there were less than 10 of them, and the arch kids needed descriptions of their projects to be more engaging. But after all, scandinavia is all about the furniture!)

Here are a couple of other snapshots from the opening. This is Kim's chair, to the right, and below are Dobie and Natalie, who is sitting in my chair, with her print hanging in the background.

With a lot of the chairs it's pretty evident how the study time in Scandinavia has impacted it's design (if you know what to look for), but with a lot of them it's not so evident, and I think mine could be included in the latter category. If you look at the details, though, you'll see how the (custom-fabricated) steel stretcher bars were made not to hide the chair's weakness, which is that it wants to splay out when you sit in it, hence the steel bars, but to showcase how it all works.

The fact that the washers on the ends have holes in them, visible to show how it was screwed together, and the way they are straight, and not curved, in order to leave the spotlight on the veneer shapes are indicative of scandinavian design. I know I'm not a scandinavian designer, but I have learned so much about chairs, of course, and scandinavian lifestyles in general that I like to think I have a solid idea of not only how people think here, but also why it has been (and will be) a foundation and a leader of design in many different areas.

Goodbye, Copenhagen!

2009-08-16T09:24:00.003-05:00

I've done my souvenir shopping, I'm selling my bike tonight, and I'm starting to pack. It's hard to believe this whole trip is over, I've met so many people and learned so much I feel like I've been here forever. Don't get me wrong, I'll be really glad to go home. But there are so many things I'll miss about this city, I already can't wait to come back. The food, the people, the weather, the bikes, all the museums and restaurants I missed, this apartment. Being here has made me want to see more of the world, even though I'd be happy just to come back to Iceland and here once again. Time to start planning my return!

After I get home it's time to turn my thoughts back to New York and school once again, and to moving in to my new apartment with heather, which is exciting! New York is no Copenhagen, but then again Copenhagen is no New York. I'm just going to say to both cities that I'll be back.

P.S. happy birthday mike :)

an update... finally!

2009-08-05T15:23:00.004-05:00

Okay so before I talk about the rest of the study tour, let me tell you about my morning, and the weeks since i got back.

so a few days ago (last thursday) i went to the Carlsberg brewery with my friend Christian, which is literally down the street from my apartment. it was really cool, and they had some really good beer (i don't even like beer!) but when we went to the gift shop the guy told me my card had a bank error.... uh oh. i chalked it up to a danish pin-needing credit card or something (they've all sorts of weird pin credit cards here) but no. This i found out this morning, when i went riding in the sun and heat across the city to a hardware store to pick up nuts & washers for my chair (the guy gave them to me for free, which was nice-- about the only good thing that happened today) and then afterwords i found a Baresso (the coffee chain here-- like starbucks, but more expensive (hey, it's copenhagen!) and way better) because i decided i deserved an iced latte (Iced coffee is soooo hard to come by in this city!!) and a sandwich for later, when i'd be at the studio 2:30-10 pm. well, i finally make it to the front of the line (let me tell you, Nyhavn (street) on the canal + sunny day = tourists galore) and i order my stuff, and, no surprise, my card doesn't work. So the girl tells me to go to the ATM outside and skip the line when i come back, but when I go outside to find the ATM and I think I'm about to get cash, the machine goes, "sooooo ummm, yeah.... your card? it's bad. we're gonna keep it. KTHXBAI!" and im like WTF?? So i go back inside to tell the girl i don't have cash on me (where does my money goooo??) and that it ate my card, and she just gives me a pitiful look and wishes me luck. I was going to go home and get cash, but instead since i was closer I just went to the studio. Where i spent the entire day doing not one single thing on my chair except draw a line where my teacher needs to cut it for me. that's it. in 7.5 hours i did only that, and i got a bacon cheese burger in Christiania. that's it. Why? because ever since my chair came off the mold yesterday morning, i've been shoved to the back of the line since i'm way closer to being done than anyone else in veneer, which I guess is a good thing.

Anyway, so, i called the bank back again, after i couldn't get in touch last time, and they told my mom nothing when she went to the bank looking for info, and the guy connected me through to bank of america headquarters, where a nice woman named Georgia explained to me the BoA Emergency Card Dispersal Procedure, which is limited to once a year per customer if you qualify (and I was like, i freakin qualify, you shut my card off!!) and basically it boils down to them private courier-ing (courieing?) my card to me tomorrow by noon. I must have sounded so relieved by the end of my 20 minutes on the phone with Georgia she actually laughed at how many times I thanked her for helping me. So as long as i manage to wake up and hear the door buzzer ring tomorrow morning, I won't be in a foreign country without any money or any means of providing for myself. Phew.

Kay so that happened. That, and, i woke up with the skin of a sunburned 85 year old lady on my face. I'm not going to get into details, but i'll just say that something about the combination of wind, sun, exercise, and probably something I eat all combine to create an all-out war of epic proportions against eczema on most of my extremities.

I know what you're thinking, today was a blast, right? You're jealous you're not in Denmark, with eczema, no credit card, and no help on your chair. But I do love it here, every minute in this city! I'm not taking any of my time for granted, and I finally feel like I belong here, and it's sad to think i'll be leaving in 2 weeks!!

As for the rest of the study tour, well after Stockholm we went to the Ikea factory in sweden, which was pretty boring because everyone except for 2 people were on holiday (everyone here is on holiday!) and it was pretty much like any other furniture factory we've seen (you've seen one, you've seen em all, except for PP Møbler, which was pretty fantastic. Our teachers call them the best furnuture makers in denmark, and i believe it!) except for their super amazing gigantic RP machines. (That's rapid prototype for all you non-ID people out there... it prints computer models from Solidworks or other programs in 3D from liquid plastic. Hot stuff.) Only one that they had prints in 14 kinds of plastic, from really hard to really soft, and it can print joints and moving parts somehow, instead of just solid pieces, which is AMAZING. They had a plastic bike chain, which they had printed from a computer model, and it moved and worked and stuff. It's really cool, especially if you're an ID dork like we all are. That's the thing I learned the most from this study tour; how quickly 30 kids can bond with just a bus and a week and a few awesome teachers, and the common interest of being interested in how everything works. It's great, and we were just talking last night about how that fact that we're all design-based means we can all make really good friends in a short amount of time, since we all have the same base interests.

Since we got back from the study tour we've been in the studio every day (including both days last weekend) for at least 6 horus a day (last week we were there 7 am -2:30 pm and B team was there 2:30-10, and this week it's switched.... our poor teachers get no breaks) busting our butts to get our chairs done. Mine is closed to being finished, making one really difficult mold was definitely faster than several easy ones like most people are doing, and I'm really excited to see it finished! I'm going to post process pictures and final pictures on facebook eventually, but believe it or not I actually have a test tomorrow (on our process and on the study tour info- don't worry, it's "open sketchbook"!) so I should be going to re-read our study tour guidebook, I suppose. And I've got to get up early to make sure I don't miss the courier tomorrow!

More soon!

2009-07-19T18:41:00.001-05:00

I promise, there's a blog post coming soon about the study tour! I just posted a bunch of stockholm pictures to facebook, so check those out if you want a sneak peek. I have to do them in batches or else i'll be totally overwhelmed and it'll never happen. Also I had a paper to write (I know.) about a chair and some place called "Scandinavia" whatever that is. so there's that.

Like i said, stay tuned people!

Stockholm/Helsinki

2009-07-13T16:17:00.003-05:00

Where do I even begin?? Yesterday we were in Stockholm, where I managed to find both Anna and Jenny who I haven't seen in months, which was great. Stockholm is a gorgeous city, I can't wait to post pictures of the buildings and streets. It kind of reminds me of the north end of boston, with cobblestones and colonial-style architecture. Helsinki is very 30's modernist style, because it's a newer city (finland wasn't even its own country til it broke from sweden like a hundred years ago or something) but mixed in with cobblestone streets (KILLING our shoes!) and old stone buildings. All 3 capitals so far have been very different from one another in terms of the way the city looks and feels, but they're all similar in how nice the people are. They're not outgoingly friendly, but even our waitress, who was alone in the large tex-mex restaurant we ate dinner in tonight (I tell you, it felt soooo good to eat american food and listen to johnny cash and not feel so foreign,) was smiley and kept thanking us every time we ordered or asked for something.

Tonight we're in a real hotel, instead of a hostel or on the cruise ship which we took overnight from stockholm to here, and to which we're returning tomorrow night. OMG that ship had a sauna, which consisted of an amazing steam room, a not-so-hot tub (for cooling off) and a sauna in each locker room. it was soooo nice, it's the first chance we really had to relax since starting the study tour (we've been getting up at 6:30 and 7 every morning, and bussing and walking around nonstop looking at more chairs than my brain can handle all day, until we finally pass out around midnight or later after staying up with everyone, because that's the only free time we have. Like i said, tomorrow we're back on the cruise ship, which is basically a floating casino (our room was so dark and small that we thought it was 3 am when the alarm went off). I wish i had more energy to post about the Swedish national museum, Alvar Aalto's house & studio and all the other things we've seen in the past couple of days, but honestly it's all blurring together right now, so I'll have to do it later when I have my pictures uploaded and sorted. We're getting up at 6:15 tomorrow morning for yet another full day (our second to last one of the study tour! :( the last day is the Ikea factory though!!) I've been eating so much food though that it's more than cancelling out the energy i've been expending staying awake this long, (despite the nap we all accidentally took before walking around Helsinki looking for somewhere open for dinner) but when we get back to copenhagen it's back to bikes, walking, and having to pay to feed myself. But right now, all I can think about is how glad I will be to take a shower in a bathroom with a tub instead of a phone booth. And i'm really really REALLY excited to go to bed, so, goodnight!

Quick update!

2009-07-09T17:51:00.002-05:00

I'm on my iPhone in the cold ouside a hostel in the very north of denmark right now. We've been bussing around all over the place, visiting churches, factories, museums, etc. Tonight in aalberg we told the British bartender we don't like beer, so guess what he gave us. PINK RASPBERRY FLAVOR BEER!!!!!! it was awesome. Tomorrow were getting up early to catch the ferry to Stockholm, where we have two nights. Were meeting up with the other group (b-team) AND I get to see Anna and Jenny, my long lost exchange buddies!! I'm really excited to see Sweden! I'll have TONS of pictures to post when I get back to CPK next week, so stay tuned!

"Home isn't a place, it's a feeling."

2009-07-07T10:05:00.006-05:00

Here are a couple pictures of our apartment in Copenhagen, and then one of my wonderful pink bike :)
I've been biking a total of at least an hour every single day, if not more, and it's always windy (hard) and bridge-y (also hard) especially when you've got a basket with a heavy bag in it!

My bike!! It's called the Belleview, and it's fancy and pink and european and has a basket and a bell and 2 lights (one shaped like a flower!) and i LOVE it!! and it was 1000 DKK (danish kroner) which is about 185 USD. Woo hoo! I'm going to want to ship this thing home, even if i only ride it infrequently, simply because of how adorable it is and how attached to it I have become already.

our balcony:

view from the living room: you can see the mall in the distance, we ride this way to the studios every morning.
living room; there's a daybed to the right where you can't see
hallway: bathroom, kitchen, my room on the left, cody on hte end, livingroom on the right which leads to natalie's room
this is literally the entire bathroom. it could in its entirety fit in a phonebooth. Let me tell you, it's no fun taking a shower in a shower where you bump your elbows washing your hair, and where the water nozzle doesn't even point down enough; it points at the back wall, over my head....

View from my window (onto the courtyard/garden)

This is how the windows stay open; i love it!!
courtyard seen from the kitchen
my bedroom (smallest, but not street-facing!)
the kitchen!

Day 3 in Copenhagen: study tours & bikes!

2009-07-02T12:32:00.004-05:00

Today we had a 'study tour' as they love to call them, where they bus us around to a million different places. We're supposed to be drawing all sorts of specific things and taking notes at every place we go, because they then grade us on it later, but I only had my camera so i took a LOOOT of pictures. We went first to a big furniture store, I think it was just seating and tables, very knoll-like. They hire outside designers, etc., only they didn't mention sustainability once and their whole facility is automated and wastes a lot of material (Knoll is REALLY REALLY good at being sustainable, and even moreso for being a HUGE company.) The second furniture manufacturer was all wood, mostly hand-made, concentrated on quality over quantity, and even uses soap instead of lacquer to finish their pieces. The guy ( the 3rd generation owner) mention Cradle to Cradle like 4 or 5 times, which, if you don't know what that is, it's basically the bible of sustainability. That place was fantastic, and I love their chairs (it's at ppdk.com i think). Back to the first furniture place for lunch (we were divided into groups A and B from yesterday, alternating who went to which furniture place first). Then we went to a church that had a ceiling shaped like andy goldsworthy designed it, and it was all white and blue and looked like it belonged in Greece somewhere. The next church (more like a cathedral) was HUUUUUUUUUUGE and all made of brick. It was really impressive, and for some reason i really like ultra high vaulted ceilings, so I got some really nice pics there too. THEN we went to a huge showroom that had nearly every furniture item we'd ever seen in history of design last year, plus a million more things. it reminded me of Moma, except with way more, and really expensive. By the end of this trip it was 4:00 and we took the buses back to DIS again. Me, Cody, Brekke, Doby and a few others not from pratt walked around looking for a bike shop for a little while before we split up to head home. Cody and I stopped at a few bike places on the way home. The first one didn't have any used bikes, but the second one had a whole slew of them locked up outside. (The deal in Copenhagen is that people mostly don't steal bikes, and if there's any sort of lock at all, unless its made of gold and diamonds no one's going to steal it no matter how shoddy the lock is.) Guess what, we each got one!! Cody got a bike for 800 dkk, and I found one for 1000 dkk that's girly with the really low center bar thing and high handlebars (so you're sitting upright-- european style-- EVERYONE has those here! All the girls anyway.) That's a great deal, a lot of used bikes sell for 1600 dkk, but 1000 is less than 200 dollars. It's pink and has a basket and a wheel lock and everything! I'm so happy to have a bike! Especially since we have to make our own way to the studio tomorrow for the first time, and although it's not too far there's no train or bus that goes directly there from here, so we'd have to leave early to rent the free city bikes. Now it'll only take us like 10 minutes to get to DIS and probably about 1/2 and hour to get to the studio. I'm glad it gets dark here only around like 11 so that when we're there late it won't be dark or scary. not that this city is ever scary, it's very clean and there are always people out and about. The thing I have to get used to now is a. riding without a helmet (like most people) unless I buy one, and b. riding in the bike lanes. The bikes have their own raised sidewalk type thing between the street and the sidewalk for most streets (except tiny ones) and htey have traffic signals to obey just like the cars and everything. It's going to be really great once we get used to it, and then we can explore the city even more, and in true Danish fashion!

Oh, and happy birthday dad!

Copenhagen! -- the first few days.

2009-07-01T14:29:00.003-05:00

So it feels like i've been gone FOR.E.VER. And it's only been like 3.5 days. Yesterday (WAS THAT ONLY YESTERDAY?!?) when we got off the plane, we were all super duper exhausted, and we had to do all this check-in orientation stuff when we got off the bus (DIS loves bringing us places by bus, it's great). Cody met us there when we got off the bus, and after we got our schedules and stuff like that we had the extremely arduous task of bringing our luggage back to the apartment. We also happened to arrive the week Denmark was having unusually hot weather, like in the 80's rather than in the 70's like it's supposed to be. And our apartment is like a 1/2 hr. away, walking at not a slow pace. But we had been dragging these bags around for like 3 days nonstop, with no food or sleep in days, and let me just say these Danes LOVE their cobblestone streets and sidewalks. Yeah, fun. It took us about 45 minutes to get back to the hotel, and then we had to bring our stuff up 3 flights of stairs (because, here we are in europe, where the 2nd floor is 3 floors up). We then had to walk alll the way back to school, for the info session, and then back to the apartment. Natalie met her friend from home who was getting in to visit for a few days, and I walked around the area with Cody, who was here since sunday night (monday morning denmark time). Then when we got home I was really hungry, and REALLY tired, and it made me really homesick, and I skyped with mom (I miss you guys!). I fell asleep while Natalie & Maria (her friend) cooked pasta for dinner, and cody woke me up when it was ready to see if I was ok. I felt better after sleeping only 1/2 and hour and some food, and then we watched danish discovery channel, on which they take american shows and either re-dub them in british with danish subtitles, or in danish depending on the show, and then the futurama dvds I have.

We had to get up early today to take a bus to our studio ( which is a little farther than city center from here, but I really need a bike because it's easier and cheaper than taking a bus. They showed us around, including the mini scandinavian (and famous originals) chair museum at the Royal College, where the studios are, and then made us sit in a very hot auditorium and watch an hour and a half lecture about the history of copenhagen & it's growth from medival times through present day. It might have been interesting if they hadn't shown it at the absolute worst time for us, and hadn't we all been dozing off because of our exhaustion & heat & hunger. They gave us lunch (we furniture people didn't get to go to the "canteen", we worked through lunch... on the first day) which were FANTASTICALLY DELICIOUS deli sandwiches. We got assigned to sections for hte materials we'll be using to make our chairs: Steel rod (the one I got), steel tube (would have liked), wood veneer laminate (the one i traded brekke for) and solid wood (the one i really wanted). Brekke and I traded, and we're both very happy with that decision. We also got assigned to group A or B, which alternates the times we have studio shop use, so when we're working on our chairs later on for a week we get to use it in the morning, and the next week we have to use it in the afternoon. It also decides our study tour schedule, because group A goes around scandinavia (western denmark, stockholm, helsinki and oslo) one way, and group B goes the other way. Brekke, Doby and I all got group A, and Cody got group B. Natalie is in textiles, so her tour is different anyway. We all also have different materials for the chairs we're making, they really did a good job of splitting us up.

After all that studio stuff we took a boat tour of the city by canal, with an architect/teacher as our guide, and it was FAN. TASTIC. I loved it. It woke us all up, and we met a bunch of U of Cincinati kids (apparently they have like twice the 16 kids pratt sent to copenhagen... who knew?) who are in the arch program, and very nice and funny. We walked around that area once we got off the boats, it's the main downtown area with really old buildings and shops you'd find in soho. The first real danish food I got here was the Belgiske Vaffel with Soft Ice (belgian waffle with soft serve) and it was sooo good but I couldn't eat the whole thing! Cody and Doby both got what I like to call tube hot dogs, which heather actually told me about in amsterdam. Basically the bun is solid but has a hole in it, the condiments are squirted in and the hot dog slides in and sticks out hte ends. It's really really bizarre looking, and hilarious!

We managed to purchase train tickets which they didn't check (there's a stop between the mall and our apartment, very close!) and spend about 20 minutes trying to read the maps with numbers and letters and color codes and danish words which were all very confusing, even though all the trains stop at our stop, but there were no labels for which way the trains were going! But we worked it out and guessed right. The trains are very modern looking with glass doors blocking the exit areas and cushy seats with ugly upholstery, but a very smooth ride.

All in all, I am much happier with the city today, even though our apartment is kinda far from where we'll need to be most of the time. But it would be like that if we were in the dorms too, just not as far. I do wish I got to meet more people though from living in the dorms, but we've got all the other dis people in our classes, and I'm sure we'll explore the city and meet Danes. I'm definitely glad to be living with my friends, htough. I like this city much better now that I had a great time today, and I can't wait to see all the sights and go shopping and do lots of danish stuff! (And natalie and I promised we'd never leave each other behind when in the city because we don't want to get lost (cody is our guide, we're so lost and confused right now. all the streets look the same!!) or pick pocketed at night by people targeting tourists. So I'm happy about that, too!

Oh, and I posted pictures from iceland on my facebook tonight!!

COdy is bugging me to watch pushing daisies (he actually fell asleep while i was writing this, haha!) so i'm gonna leave it at that for now. I miss all of you, and keep in touch!! (and comment on my blog!!)

Reykjavik!

2009-06-29T19:02:00.003-05:00

I can't write much, because it's already midnight here, which means I have to wake up in 4 hours (again). BUT! I went to the blue lagoon today, the hot springs, it was FAN. TASTIC. I loved it. I could have stayed in much much longer than the 2+ hours we were in there, except that it made my hair exceedingly difficult to brush afterwards. Natalie was sick, so just Brekke and I went, until Natalie showed up right as we had changed and were about to leave! We hung out on a dock with her though for a while so she could go in, and then we ate and let her have more time. Let me tell you, except for my icky hair texture (i coudn't even get a barrette in after I showered at the hotel and brushed it) I feel great. It made my skin really soft, and the pumace/sandy floor exfoliates your feet, and they have boxes scattered about where you can scoop up silica/moisturizer mud mask that you leave on 5-10 minutes and then just wash off in the water. It's so excellent!! (too bad it's REALLY expensive in the gift shop.) The water, brekke said, is used to power 90% of the country, and then filtered and sent into the pool and mixed with ocean water, so it's really clean and really white! You can't even see 5" deep. The sand on the floor was actually mostly black, or b&w in some parts, but the water's so blue-white that we couldn't convince our brains it wasn't white sand on the bottom. It was great, and exhausting, and I think I got a wee little bit of a sunburn. My only gripe is that I stepped into a deep hole while we were walking, and my camera got splashed and stopped working so i never got my picture of me in the steamy rock pools that I wanted!!! RRR :'(

After we got back, the 3 of us walked around Reykjavik for a while (like, 4 pm -10 pm) and I am TIRED. There's a hill to the main street we're on, and I must have walked at LEAST 10 miles today. The only time we weren't walking was when we had coffee (BEST. COFFEE. EVER.) and then later when we had dinner at a vegetarian restaurant Brekke found (go figure). I didn't buy too much, until we stopped at the 24 hour grocery store during broad daylight at around 10:00 pm to get yogurt for breakfast tomorrow (they have SO MUCH icelandic yogurt! I love it!!).

And then I found the chocolate aisle.

I ended up choosing 2 bars of the same brand of my favorite chocolate from home (which is icelandic) without realizing it, and then I found the icelandic version of that, and all was lost and I ended up with essentially 4 bars of chocolate. It cost me I think 1026 icelandic kroner, or about 8 or 9 dollars. Good deal!! I love that the currency exchange is such that I spend in the thousands and it cost me only in the single dollars. And it helps that everything is comparatively cheap, too.

I took sooo many pictures of the city today (with my nice camera) and I'm going to post some from yesterday and today when I get to Copenhagen sometime. Speaking of which, I have to get up in approximately 4 hours from now to catch the flybus back to Keflavik airport, so I better get to bed now. I really hope we have as little luggage & turbulence issues as we did on the way here, but the flight's only 3 hours to copenhagen so we should be okay. I'll write more tomorrow once I'm at the apartment in Copenhagen!! Goodnight!

p.s. it looks like it's about 7:00 outside, judging from the light, and it's after midnight here. This country is wack, it's like a different planet. And I love it!!

I made it!!

2009-06-28T21:16:00.005-05:00

Leg one of my journey: complete! I'm in the hotel (Room with a View) in Reyjkavik now, and I just got the wifi to work. This hotel is soo nice, and it's not even one of the pricier ones! It's only about 150 a night, and it's got a HUGE bathroom, a great looking kitching with microwave, fridge, etc., a giant flatscreen tv, red leather couch, and everything's all brand new looking, with glass and metal table tops and fixtures, tile and wood floors, etc. I'll post with pictures later, when I've unpacked all my stuff in Copenhagen maybe.

The bus ride was amazing. Not in any particular way, just that it was so light out (it looked like 4 am light, or like manhattan at night). That was the first thing I noticed. Cody's first comment was "welcome to maine!" and that really is what it looked like. On the plane when we were nearing Iceland, the sun in the plane looked like it was maybe 6 or 7 pm, not 11:45! The whole thing felt like a dream, I went through security (they check AGAIN when you get off, make you stand in line, take your shoes off, that whole thing) and then made my way out of the airport and onto the bus. When we left keflavik we drove on the highway (i guess, it was only like 40 or 50 mph) and the clouds lightened a little. I gotta tell ya, this landscape is amazing. I was just so fascinated staring out the window, everyone kept turning left and right so as not to miss a single image. The busses have nice huge windows, so you can take everything in. The land was pretty flat, but rocky and volcanic-y looking, with moss over everything. It's just so different from anywhere I've seen! It reminded me of when we drove into Moab, Utah, and you just want to soak every single sight in and notice every detail, and everything is just so foreign you don't even have time to stop and think how far from home you are. It also kind of felt a little bit like driving up to Canada this winter, the trees in Reykjavik look a little similar, and it's got this foreign-old world-modern vibe and everything is just so cute and quaint. I love it!

<<
Rewind!

My flight was good, there was a minor issue when Cody's seat was not where it was supposed to be, but we waited till the new passengers (there were transfer passengers coming also) were seated and then they switched him back to next to me. The flight was good, my nerves settled down once we got in the air. There was very little turbulence, which is almost unusual (but very lucky!) according to the lady next to us, who said the wind around iceland makes it very rough sometimes, so all the pilots are really good pilots because they have to deal with crazy wind most of the time. Cody and I first watched the movie they were playing, some sappy movie about this nyc boy who has a giant crush on this girl, and the whole thing is like him second guessing what to say to her. Then watched my new pushing daisies dvds, and the lady (same lady) next to him (I was at the window) points at the screen and was like, oh, that actress? Kristin Chenoweth? I went to high school with her, we like grew up together. NO. EFFING. WAY. but it's totally true! They weren't like best friends, but they were both drama kids at Broken Arrow High School, and she's known her since middle school. Cody and I ended up switching seats when I got up to use the bathroom, and this woman (who was extremely nice) and I (and cody somewhat, amidst his snickering) got to talking about Kristin and looking at the old pictures in her book (which of course I have) for maybe a solid half hour? at least. I'm sure cody will tell you it felt like an hour and a half. She had lots of little cute memories about what "Kristi" was like, and we both shared our joy at finding fellow Cheno fans. Cody just laughed at me the whole time. It was like in Cat's Cradle, when he talks about the people you meet who are part of your "group" and you just know, well I had a feeling something interesting would happen with someone I met on this flight, and I was right! Ohh, Kristin, I just love you! I know I'll never hear the end of this from Cody (who already made fun of how nervous I was during takeoff), he got a full glimpse of how much I am a fan of hers and how much I know (and will talk about) her to someone who shares my interest.

Now, it's already close to 3 am here, so I have to go to bed! Natalie gets in in only about 3 or 4 hours, and then we have a bus at 9:30 to the blue lagoon (!!!). I'll post more tomorrow, I am taking lots of pictures and I'll post them soon, like I said probably from Copenhagen.

TWO DAYS!!

2009-06-26T11:46:00.002-05:00

I can't belieeeeve it! I really cannot. Two days from now I will be at Logan airport, and two days and 2 hours from this very moment I will be boarding the plane to Iceland. AAHHH!!!! I just called Iceland Air to see if they could seat me and cody together, because we're on the same flight (he called and said they said no, I didn't trust that he tried hard enough) and it's a good thing i called, because now Nina from Iceland Air customer service is my new best friend. She moved me up 4 rows and kept my window seat, and now im next to cody! yaaay! and she changed the flight home too so i never have to fly alone!! (Natalie and I are flying together to and from copenhagen-iceland together) I love Nina. And now I have a person to call, MOM, if something goes wrong with my booking. Which it won't, because this isn't the 70's, but still. Now I have a name to drop, feel better?

I have my list of every item I have to pack, and the measurements of my giant pink suitcase are juuust under the limit, i just hope it weighs under 50 lbs.

EEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The next time I post will be from Iceland!!! IN TWO DAYS!!! AHHH!!!!

Departure in T- 5.... 4....

2009-06-24T21:26:00.003-05:00

FOUR DAYS till I leave, folks!! It still doesn't feel like it's really happening, mostly because I know the images I have in my head will be nothing like what it actually looks like. Details like being on the plane, the taxi ride to the hotel in Reykjavik, things like that make it unreal in my mind. I do have waves of realization where i remember that I'm going to EUROPE for the summer. In four days!! Seven weeks is not really that long, it's only half a Pratt semester, time-wise, but it is pretty much all of summer vacation. Especially since it's rained every day here, non-stop, for ohhh about 3.9 years now. I haven't seen the sun in weeks.

In other news, I went to Ikea today with the parentals, came back with very cute (and nice looking!) furnitures for my apartment back in new york. I'm very excited to move in, with Heather, and it'll make going back to school less depressing. So will the notion that come second semester, I'll only have class once, maybe twice a week. That means getting a REAL job, so I don't actually know that that's less depressing, but having fewer classes is definitely exciting!

So, in wrapping up the last few odds and ends here (and waiting for the DVDs I order to hopefully arrive in time for me to have them on the plane ride!!) I'm starting to actually believe that I'm going. To EUROPE. I believe it, I just don't feel it.

P.S. I'm actually forcing myself to work on getting my website up & running enough so that people can actually see a working layout, even if it does need a LOT of additions (like gallerys of my work, for example) but at least it's not a blank page. It'll be functional enough by the end of you tonight that I can direct all of your attention to http://allegra-design.us! Hooray!

Apartment in Copenhagen!

2009-05-19T21:38:00.005-05:00

We've got our apartment in Vesterbro all lined up, all that's left is for me, natalie and cody to go over the paperwork and pay for it. Not really sure how that works overseas, but Astrid, the owner, is really nice and really helpful. Vesterbro is supposed to be one of the nicest neighborhoods of copenhagen (which is already a really nice city!) and it's only about 15 minutes from DIS by bike. Super excited!!

Here is what she told me about it:

"The apartment is on third floor, has three separate bedrooms and a livingroom, free wi-fi, tv (CNN and a few other American channels), washing machine, dishwasher, balcony and a great gardens place. The apartment is approx. 1,000 square feet. The building is from 1907 with stucco ceilings and wooden floors, typical Scandinavian style.

It's located on Vesterbro, the most hip and cosy neighborhood in Copenhagen, with lots of local food stores, designer clothes, coffee bars, restuarants etc. The night life is great too - with lots of bars, clubs and concerts.

Within 10 minutes walk is a supermarket (with lots of organic food if you're into that) and a shopping mall with everything you'll possibly need. In the summer time you can swim in the harbour right by the shopping mall - Copenhagen has some of the cleanest water in the world.

Five minutes walk to the local train station (and 15 minutes to Copenhagen main train station) and 25 minute walk to DIS, 15 minutes if you rent bikes or take the bus.

It's a safe neighborhood 24/7. My spouse and I have lived here for two years and we really love it. "

Here are some pictures, for your viewing pleasure:

Garden view:

living room:

kitchen (with dishwasher & washing machine! they air-dry their clothes!):

bedroom:

livingroom with other bedroom:

Travel Plans & Plane Tickets!

2009-04-27T10:28:00.003-05:00

[All times listed are local to the host cities to which they reference.]

Yesterday morning Cody's mom got him his tickets for Copenhagen, only she didn't leave him any time (well, an hour and a half) to stay in Raykjavik (where there's a free multi-day layover if you want it, when going on IcelandAir to Europe) so I didn't immediately buy my tickets to match his. Brekke already had hers and is staying for like 3 days in iceland before heading over to Copenhagen. Natalie hadn't bought hers yet though, and so we met last night and in about an hour and a half had finally worked out which flights we were taking. I ended up being able to take cody's flights (last seat! so they said!) to iceland and then the whole way back from copenhagen.

Natalie, who is flying out of NY rather than BOS was originally going to take a flight which, she discovered, transferred in boston on to OUR flight. But then she also found out her total order was somehow 4,400 dollars. US dollars. I joked that there was a 3500 dollar Boston Fee for new yorkers, but she checked her dates and they were all right, and the only flight that DIDN'T stop in boston was the right price. Somehow. So she's not going to stop in boston, which she didn't want to do anyway, but somehow her flight is 40 minutes shorter than mine will be anyway. The unfortunate thing is that the only ones that didn't stop in boston were redeye flights, so when cody and I get in at midnight (he moves on to copenhagen to get in early morning) natalie will be in at like 6 am. So Basically the only time I will have to be alone in a foreign country will be the 6 hour period in which i will take the shuttle (which they have) from the airport to the hostel or inn or wherever we end up staying, and pass out til natalie gets there. As I pointed out, it will be so light there for so long in the day it doesn't really matter when we sleep or get up, and as she pointed out, our sleep schedules will be so messed up anyway from having been on overnight planes and time differences anyway.

So then natalie and I, after some more sleep, will have the whole day to spend in Raykjavik, which i am SUPER EXCITED about! Although my frame of reference for iceland is hearing about my friend's trip in elementary school, and Lazytown, I have wanted to go there for a long time and I'm glad I'm taking the chance to do it now or else it may be a long time before I really have an opportunity to go there again. It's just enough time to go to the hot springs for a little while, eat, and go to a museum or touristy place, eat again, and walk around the city. They have a horrible economy in iceland, so they ship in foreigners to spend money there, and it's worked with us; as my dad said,"we'll be KINGS!"

Then, early the next morning, we have to get back to the airport for a flight around 7-something, and we'll get into copenhagen by about 12:30 on the 3rd day of our whirlwind European travelcation, and as exhausted as we will inevitably be by then, and our biological clocks so confused the hands will just be reeling around in circles and frantically throwing us into states of narcolepsy, we have to check in to DIS by 2 and then make it out of the orientation information events alive, and then we can spend our first night in Copenhagen.

I'm really excited to have one whole day in Raykjavik, and I look forward to years from now when I can look back on this whole trip and say, "I got to see Iceland for a whole day, too. I'm so glad I did that."

And I can't wait to meet Sportacus.

STUFF STUFF STUFF!!

2009-04-06T19:27:00.003-05:00

I realized I havent' updated in over a month--- and there's SO much to talk about! It's just hard to find time when there's more and more to do week by week. I'll update this weekend from my cousins' house when I have more time (doubtless, countless hours in front of the television are in order). Topics include (but are not limited to):
-Copenhagen
-CSDS work
-Design homework
-Apartment hunting

So you see, this is just a quick update and I will update, probably in a big loooong entry, everything that's been going on. But now I have homework to do tonight (after In Treatment is over, HAH) and then class/work/class/homework allll day tomorrow.

Winnings

2009-02-24T20:08:00.002-05:00

My congrats to Anna and Jenny, who won the shower chair competition for Lumex! The only girls in the competition, they worked together and got chosen from among 4 other (pratt) students (all guys) and have the chance to have their chair produced by Lumex for stores!

In other news, I, who never win any sort of raffles, won an itunes gift card for an undisclosed amount by commenting on the 'mobile mondays' iphone game review on one of the websites i subscribe to (jayisgames.com). woo!

Still swamped!

2009-02-20T17:10:00.004-05:00

So I've been working like crazy, trying to get my tabletop designs in order (I have to have models of all my pieces- 6 or 7- by monday, I'll post a picture then) AND trying to stay on this stupid impossible diet. I am updating quickly just to say a few things.

First, here are pictures of the things I've made in ceramics. The first is the first few things I made on the wheel in like 3 years, the second is a bunch of teeeeny tiny pots i made out of one giant lump of clay, which I'd never done before.

Second, Mom is visiting this weekend! I'm excited to see the show she got tickets for, mainly because William H. Macy is in it. The diet will be hard. Oh well.

And Anna and Jenny are here! For a week! From Sweden!! They're here because they're finalists in a competition they started when they were here last semester, and they're surprising everyone by visiting in person. We're all happy to see them again so soon, we thought it would be months and months!

Also, I applied for Birthright with Tammy & Michelle yesterday/today, which took TWO AND A HALF HOURS to fill out an 8 step application because of the server clogs. But we're almost done with that now, and then we wait to see if we get in.

And I'm applying to the Copenhagen program soon, if we decide we can pay for it. And I need to get tickets to visit Heather soon! So much traveling potential, and I've never even been off this continent before!

A

Busy busy busy!

2009-02-12T01:53:00.002-05:00

Just got finished making bluefoam models for Tabletop tomorrow, don't have time for a real post yet. I took pictures of the stuff I made in ceramics thus far, and i'll post those too this weekend once i don't have such a backlog of homework, and once this medical book project for work is over WHICH WILL BE TOMORROW!!! I know deb ordered like 12 copies of it for us, (theyre only printing 100 to start though...) but so I might get to keep one for my portfolio? That would be cool.

Anyway, more later.
-A

If ever there was a movie to see before you die, this isn't it.

2009-01-29T18:13:00.007-05:00

I don't even know where to begin this ridiculous story it's so unbelievably absurd. Prepare yourself for a terrible tale so long it should really be in chapters of a journey so arduous and painful we really are lucky there weren't any casualties.

In 3D tuesday morning (with my new teacher, NOT with karen) we were instructed for homework to write down on adding machine paper (those white rolls) a list of every single ID item (in other words, ANY item EVER) we come into contact with, including repeat instances, for an entire 24 hours. This is our homework. That, or see a movie they haven't shown in NY since the 1980's (I now know there's a reason for that) and write down every item the main character touches. Three and a half hours of her life, or 24 of my own. We thought the movie was going to be a better idea, even though with cab fare and ridiculous overpriced manhattan movie fare it came to about twenty bucks. Let me just say that again... three and a half hours. The plot of the movie, which is in french (the dialogue would fit on a single sheet of paper. Double spaced. It includes such lines as "I let the potatoes cook too long. I had to throw them out. I could have made mashed potatoes but we're having that tomorrow.") and the full title of which is "Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles"), is as follows: she makes coffee. she peels potatoes. her son comes home. they eat soup. her life is dull. she flips light switches and opens and shuts doors when she enters or exits any room in her flat ever. until she starts "going crazy" which is in quotes because basically it means she forgets to shut a door or check her mail or boils the potatoes too long or any other number of completely horrendous abnormalities of which no other human is capable as long as they are sound of mind. [Sarcasm.]

Here's the official plot from the theater:

(1975) A simply dressed Delphine Seyrig (Last Year at Marienbad, Stolen Kisses) puts something on the stove in her modest apartment, then answers the doorbell to admit an older man. Wordlessly taking his hat and coat, they go to the bedroom; after a time shift represented by a light change, they reemerge, she gives him his hat and coat, he gives her money and leaves. Then she checks what’s cooking on the stove, airs out the bedroom, takes a bath, puts on her clothes, wipes out the tub. The next day, shopping, lunching out, and caring for a baby are added to the routines, plus the afternoon visitor. But on the third day, the routines are interrupted, things go slightly awry, and the shell of habit starts to crack; and when the ultimate change occurs, mortal consequences ensue. Akerman’s breakthrough feature (made when she was 25, in five weeks, for $125,000) achieves a microscopic examination of one woman’s life, and by its intensity, with mostly head-on, long take, real time visuals, and music-less and mostly dialogue-less track, forces us to see those little things in life, in a totally new way. “A Forties story shot by a Seventies camera.” – cinematographer Babette Mangolte. Color; Approx. 201 minutes 1:00, 4:40, 8:20
Did you get through all that?

Did you notice the 201 minutes???

On the movie poster it even says it's a "little noted" film. There's a reason for that. As Cody pointed out, generally you only mention how noted a movie is when the adjective in front of it is 'widely' or the like. "Little noted" is not exactly the most alluring description of a movie, especially one that's three hours long and has exactly 45 seconds of plot. Even the praise on the Film Forum (independent movie house where it's showing) is boring: "A slow-motion thriller!" "Unlike any other film you've seen!" (true, i'll give them that.) "What might have been a film as tedious as the life it depicts is a tight, engrossing and exhilarating experiment" (true, minus those last 3 adjectives... not all experiments end well) "An account of domestic habitats and the people and objects that routinely move through them" "PUTS TIME ON SCREEN AS IT NEVER WAS BEFORE!" That last one is certainly true indeed. They managed to cram what felt like three lifetimes into under four hours. Let me remind you, this film is unbearably more tedious than it even may seem just watching it as a regular movie-goer (do regular movie-goers go to movies like this??) when you have to write down every single item that she comes in contact with.

Our teacher had mentioned that there was one point of real action approximately 7 minutes from the end, for which we all waited eagerly (if 'eagerly' here has the meaning of 'with our eyes barely able to stay open'). I guessed about 10 minutes into this thing what that would be. If you want to know what it is you'll have to go see it yourself. Oh wait, that's right, it's going away forever as of today, and its probably not on DVD since no one watched it since the 60's when they made it except for a couple times in the 80's. I guess humans only have a 20-year memory span of movies that made their heads pop with boredom. Sounds about right for fashion trends too, but that's another story.

So, back to the notes. I had divided up both sides of one page in a sketchbook with boxes in which to write all the items she touches. "How many can there be," I thought, "when there's no plot?" Ohhhh was I mistaken. The 99 boxes on each page (you can't imagine how much this bugged my OCD, that i accidentally made 3 columns of 33 rows..... 198 all together with both pages. Or maybe you can [I'm looking at you, Mom].) were not even close to enough. I took six pages of "notes" (if you can call them that) which got progressively both messier and more general. "light switch" very soon turned into "L.S." and "doorknob. door. doorknob." quickly mutated into just simply "door" for obvious reasons. When you have to look down every other second to scribble down 5 objects this lady just touched, and at the same time this bitch keeps turning her lights on and off compulsively making it very hard to see what you're writing about her, it makes for a HORRIBLE way to watch a HORRIBLE movie. Here's a picture of my notes, (sorry it's dark- it's a phone photo) just for laughs (your laughs, not mine):

If you'll follow me over to the right page, in the second column from the right, about half way down it says BABY WTF. That's to represent the 10 minutes during which Jeanne struggles with lifting a giant, gurgling, cat-noise-making baby of her neighbor's who has been dropped off in what looks like a suitcase for a few minutes for an inexplicable reason. Perhaps so the mother can rest her weary arms and ears. It struck me as so hysterical and genuinely ironic that here we were, having paid for a movie of someone else dealing with issues which, under any other circumstances, are reason to send the stink-eye in the care-taker's direction (for example, oh, I don't know... in a movie theater??? If there were crying babies in any movie you went to, you'd wish horrible things on them.) Alas, the irony was so strong I actually laughed so hard I was crying. Perhaps I was merely crying. After 2 hours of solid thick-as-butter boredom, ANYTHING is funny, and you really do just want to cry.

Did I mention the whole thing is shown in real time, shot with cameras on tripods?? In other words, zero action. Half the movie is us watching her think. Pity me, for I have witnessed a heretofore unknown circle of hell. We left at 8 pm and got back around 12, and then I had design homework to finish (which luckily took me less time than I thought it would, when does that ever happen?). The guy in the deli at which Alex and I stopped afterwards to get dinner (all that food she makes in the movie, meat and potatoes and soup and stuff) thought it was hysterical, how worked up Alex was about going to see this movie and take notes (he gave up about an hour into it). Alex is very easy to piss off, which he is convinced was the sole purpose of having been assigned to do any of this in the first place. (Alex and I have similar personalities.) Oh, and the icing on the cake is that several times throughout the movie there very loud mouse noises coming from behind the piano (why? a piano? really??) we were sitting right next to down in the front rows.

Here is a picture of the ground beef she kneaded for meatloaf for maybe like, i duno, 15 minutes? Basically until Sarah, who is vegetarian, was about to puke:

Moral of the story is, even if someone pays you to go see Jeanne Whateverboringface, don't.

Now, as this is the longest blog, like, ever, and I really need to not talk about this movie anymore (you should have seen us ranting and raving the whole way home and this morning in production methods) for fear of losing what little brain matter didn't melt out my ears last night before I go as crazy as Jeanne. Good times. Jeanne Dielman, you owe me 3.5 hours of my life back.

P.S. I know, mom & dad, you think my blog is just for complaining, more than informing. But really, there's no other way to convey what happened (or rather, what didn't) last night than to include our irrationally brought about and undeserved anger and, probably, post traumatic stress disorder. And Dad, this only took me about 30 minutes to type. I know you were curious.

Today, plus the last first day of class.

2009-01-26T23:01:00.004-05:00

WHOA what a long day. First off, I was out of my room from 11:00 am until about an hour ago, running about with meetings and classes and whatnot. I had a CSDS meeting before my design class at 2, and we got a lot done on the second phase of the health handbook whatever its called project. We have a final meeting on sunday to work out kinks such as what side of the page hole punches will go on, etc. Deb, my boss, bought us lunch (which was extremely nice of her-- falafel from zaytoons!) and pretty much sat there the whole time in case we needed an executive decision made, and let us work iron out the wrinkles of the projects, like heading icons and the like, which is a HUGE change from our first deadline for this, which saw us scrambling to get illustrations in and pages in order, whereas now we're pretty much done a week ahead of time (due feb. 1st at the printers).

Design was good, we went over each person's drawings from the MET (I had more than a lot of people in my class, though they're not great since i'm not a fan of sketching and ovals are my nemesis when it comes to drawing) and didn't comment on the q uality of anyone's, only the amount they had if it was insufficient, and what we learned. We all finalized our country to base our "restaurant" on, meaning what we're going to research to use the culture to direct our tabletop designs. I chose Greece, because i like the flowery patterns and shapes of the ancient pottery and the nature motif, and the colors of the cities by the sea how everything there is white and bright turquoise and terra cotta (like in mamma mia!) I think I'm happy with my choice, I wasn't really passionate about any countries in particular, and Greece had been in my head since the beginning.

Astronomy-- Ok, so this class could have gone one of two ways: either super boring and mathy, or super interesting with lots of pictures. My teacher, who is hungarian (shout out to heather! -there's more for you later too- ) but is from Transylvania ("which is a legit place" according to her, lol) decided to take the latter route. Phew! But she is foreign, so she has kind of a heavy accent, but she's really knowledgeable and works at the particle collider out on long island when she's not teaching. She loves showing us pictures, and we watched the universe song from Monty Python too-- did i mention she's got a sense of humor? She also teaches like Chaky did last semester, with a quiz on the reading each class (but its only once a week) but with not much real homework, which is good. I don't really know anyone else in my class today, so i sat in the back next to this nice looking irish girl, and when we had to partner up and find out basic info to present to the class about the other person, we were paired. Turns out her name is Heather too (!) and she knew how to spell my name because she works in the gym with - get this- the one other Allegra at pratt (and probably in all of brooklyn). How weird is that! Heather, this full circle business is getting kind of ridiculous! But she is nice and i'm just glad to have someone to sit next too, and to seem cool because now i know someone who works at the gym when i go there (which reminds me.... i should start going back to the gym.)

After that I headed to my studio to finish up my 3d homework, which i had started before my meeting this morning, again making more gosh darn rectangles out of that god forsaken plasteline, which I HATE. It turns my rings black, smells horrible, gets everywhere, turns mushy when you overwork it, is rock hard if you don't work it enough, is oil based so is impossible to wash off all the way from your hands on the first try-- did i mention how much i HATE this stuff? Anyway, around the end of my astronomy class i heard from Benjamin, yes, the very same from home, and it turns out he was in town today (i remembered him telling me it was thursday) for an interview at the New School, to which he's applying (as a freshman). He said it went really really well, and he's pretty confident he'll get in. He's planning on only staying there a year to take art classes, so he'll have something for a portfolio to apply to transfer to parsons, which he loved. Needless to say, having Ben in the city (and at art school!) would be pretty awesome next year. He stopped by for about an hour (it took him 2 hours to get here-- one hour on the train, one walking from there to Pratt, in the wrong direction mostly) and we caught up and shared a few laughs from way back when (we still have the same sense of humor- it's great) and he's doing pretty well and is (finally) making something of himself. I was just glad to see him so happy.

So that was my day, and now I'm exhausted, but no rest for the weary, as I have tons of design homework for thursday, so i need to clear out the rest of my work and homework due before then. And tomorrow morning I have my new 3D class (which meets in the cafeteria 'because it's a nicer atmosphere'... uh, ok?) so i'll probably update about that too tomorrow. Ta!

Studio space!

2009-01-25T16:58:00.003-05:00

Jenny and I set up our little desk island in the middle of the studio, with our shelf space and extra use desk (if other people get two or three, Jenny and I can share one).

This is the view from the door of our studio as you enter: (you can see my desk in the middle)

In other news, I went to the Met with Jenny on friday for 4 hours taking pictures of 3 cultures for design, from which i now have to do approximately 5 million sketches. I chose Greece, India and Japan, and they're all very different, so it's easy to draw comparisons. I also have indesign work for CSDS due tomorrow, so it's a busy night. Too bad I got nothing else done earlier this weekend.

First Day of Classes (part IIIb)

2009-01-22T17:23:00.003-05:00

I had production methods this morning, we went over our final from last semester (what??? I know. It's weird. there are many new people in the class. whatever.) Enough about that.

Design. It's in the studio, like last semester, only I'm in a different studio in a different building (our old one is now junior furniture-- so there are some repeats but not too many, and the rest of us are generally sad not to be in that room anymore). The room was a total disaster-- old projects and paper and stuff left over from ID view all over the place, nowhere obvious to claim any desks-- but I'll get to that later. My teacher, Lucia, seems very serious about work (and boy do we have lots of it, for the first day of class!) My general feeling is that while I'm going to have tons of work (infinitely more than studio last semester, in which we had virtually none more than one time, not to mention class was only twice a week) in the end it's going to be great both for my work ethic/concentration as well as my porfolio, which, at this point, needs all the help it can get so I can apply for an internship somewhere. Our project for the whole semester is, in a verbose nutshell, to pick a culture of food different from the one we grew up in (does that mean I can't pick Italian? I don't live in Italy??) and design six well-researched pieces (of tableware) for a theoretical restaurant on a hypothetical street corner in manhattan. We're going to be doing a ton of research into their culture and customs surrounding food, looking at culinary norms and folkways (is that the right word?) and designing flatware and silverware based on that. This is so different from any other design project, and it's so open to exploration (and we have no real deadlines other than the end of the semester) I'm very excited (but intimidated). Our homework, as I said, is a lot: we have to go to the met and look at several cultures or empires and their eating utensils, if they have it, and "fill up most of a sketch pad with beautiful drawings that portray the culture, and which you can use in class in explaining the connections you draw between the culture's aesthetic and their utensils". Whoa. A whole sketch pad?? I can only imagine how good I will be at quick ID sketching by May based on how much my teacher emphasized it in what we'll be doing throughout the semester. It seemed to be the only thing she was sure of, that we'd be doing a lot.

The highlight (and majority) of the class was when her son in law came in, who has degrees in both art and food (what's the noun form of the word 'culinary'?) and who has been on TV and radio and is "famous" (according to Lucia) and who has written books (hint hint) on the cultural history of food in different cultures around the world, Michael Krondl. This is mostly of what he talked, about chopsticks, the differences between them from culture to culture, cultures that only eat with their hands, how those people set their tables, the evolution of table settings and courses of food, the time we spend eating here vs. everywhere else, the reasons we eat (which, interestingly, he said are almost never with nutrition/consumption at the top of the hierarchy) the reasons we eat at home vs. in a restaurant, the cultural differences between both options, etc. He was funny and a very good speaker, and very interesting to listen to (except the girl behind me was kicking my stool and shaking her feet on it the entire time he was talking, including right after I asked her to stop, and it was very distracting). But I did take a page and a half of notes on what he was saying! He's the kind of person who if he taught a seminar, I'd sign up for it. All in all, I'm very excited about the work I'll have after this design class is over, it's like a giant design-based research project, only I don't have to write facts on notecards and arrange them into paragraphs and pretend like I didn't write them all the night before the paper was due.

But I digress. The desks. I went in the studio yesterday after finding out the doorcode from my friend Eddie, and since every desk was covered in projects and paper and junk and stuff I just claimed two (one for me, one for my long-time studio buddy Jenny). I came in today and this Korean girl promptly informed me that she had been using the desk all of last semester, and all her junk and stuff was on it, so my territorial notes were null. This forced Jenny and I, after class, as well as like 5 other kids to sort out the desks and remaining furniture for ourselves. One guy never moved his stuff out and had like 6 broken desks in the corner COMPLETELY covered with his stuff*. And these korean girls each had two desks, two sets of metal shelves, and even one extra desk all between the two of them. But Jenny and I found three extra desks, pushed ours face to face, with the extra one alongside both, and with a set of shelves which we cleaned off and claimed for ourselves (from elsewhere in the room) and even put up a piece of homasote along the side of the shelves facing us to make a pseudo-wall on which to pin stuff. It worked out pretty well, and we're even right next to the pole, which has like 8 electrical outlets on it, which is SUCH a change from last semester, because the room had exactly one outlet (with four plugs) for a total of 14 people in a rather large room. We're very excited about it.

*note: i would use a yiddish word for giant mess, but unfortunately I never learned one.

First day of classes (part IIb)

2009-01-21T16:36:00.002-05:00

Solidworks: in short, i LOVE my new teacher (as my friends who had him last semester did, and knew i would too) he's young, but he is very driven to help each student make work they can put in their portfolio, and projects that relate to our design classes this semester. And he's funny, and very helpful. I look forward to filling in the gaps my teacher first semester left in my solidworks knowledge (and they are many).

Ceramics: Well, my teacher is a lady approximately 85 years old, who is hard of hearing and didn't understand the 3 times i tried to tell her i'm taking a tabletop design class. She seems good though, she basically will let you do whatever you want, as long as you know what you're doing, and you do good work. She did ask everyone when easter break was, and as I was sitting the closest she looked at me in particular. I said i didn't know, and she said "oh.... you're not catholic?" "....no...." and she just blinked at me, so i said "I'm jewish..." and she just laughed.... I didn't really see the comedy in it. But whatever, I think I'll be able to make stuff for my tabletop class in ceramics, so it's all good.

Speaking of design, I have it tomorrow at 2, and I'm really excited! I claimed a desk today for myself and for Jenny, but there was still stuff all over almost every single desk in there from ID View last semester. I am hoping 1. that we don't have to clean out their junk and 2. they won't be in that studio (in a different class; there are 2 classes in one studio in this one, not like last semester's studio, which I will miss greatly indeed) and want their desks back, even though I put mine and jenny's name them. We'll see tomorrow, I guess.

P.S. I am enjoying all this free time at the end of the day, as my classes are all once a week, except for design on mondays and thursdays (which is weird, by the way, since it's my last class of the week on thursday afternoons, and first class of the week mondays at 2, meaning i have all weekend to do design hw, and then homework again. No other classes in between. It's also weird because i only had it once a week last semester, which I will also wish I could have again.

Anyway, I'll update tomorrow after design, but for now I'm going to do some CSDS work and enjoy my time off... the Simpsons Movie on HBO is calling my name.

First day of classes (part Ib)

2009-01-20T17:46:00.004-05:00

Spring semester starts today, along with Barack's presidency. One is a significant, important, and exciting new beginning, the other is about as exhilarating as celery. I'll leave you to decide which is which.

In any case, I had two classes today, neither one longer than about 15 minutes, but it's not like I was counting the minutes or anything. The first was 3D, which was supposed to be with Kathryn Filla, who is filling in for Lenny Basich (sp?) who is teaching at the Bauhaus this semester. In any case, we all traipsed downstairs to see why there was a 'meet in the cafeteria' note on the board, and we were informed by our omniscient department head that no, our teacher was not Lenny. Duh. And that Filla was never slated to teach the class, because they were asked to cut down by one class, so Lenny cancelled his class since, y'know, he's in Germany. Except that it said on WebAdvisor that Filla was teaching, but no, she's not, because Lenny cancelled this class. So we all have Karen Stone, the other class which met during the same time, which I chose NOT to sign up for since I've had Karen for the past 3 semesters, and that's quite enough. Not that any of the above is important to anyone, including whoever updates webavisor, because why would we need to know what's going on? So, in any case, we went over the syllabus, which is the same as last semester except for a visit to the Knoll factory which I think is in PA, but which I am still invited to even if i switch out of her class because we didn't go last semester like Karen wanted to. All she could think about was Obama, so after about 15 minutes of trying to figure out what happened to the schedule, and handing out syllabi to her students, all but 3 of whom had had Karen already, she went to go watch the parade on the tv projection in Memorial Hall, and I went to go check my mail.

The one thing that did come out of all of this is that I switched my 3D class to one that meets tuesday mornings, taught by the same teacher as History of Design last semester. I've seen their stuff from last semester, and it was mostly found objects; cut up cleaning supplies and plastic containers, etc. but Sarah said this semester he wants to concentrate on the connection between product design and 3D, which is exactly what Karen says, so it sounds better. But lo, what is their homework this first week?? Yep, rectilinear shapes out of plasticine. Woot. And apparently they spent the class in the parking lot criticizing car tail lights. Hmm....

Sociology was another 10 minutes, again getting a syllabus and info about what we'll be learning, introducing ourselves to the other 4930213995734.08237 students in our fluorescently-lit classroom, and the other first-day-of-class requirements. Basically I learned (from Angeloh, who took it first semester) that this class is nearly no work except for two papers, one of which is 2 pages, and some reading, and our teacher is really skinny and talks very quietly. Maybe it'll be interesting, or maybe I'll stop doing the readings 3 weeks into the course.

Only time will tell.

Back in business!

2008-11-16T18:21:00.002-05:00

The website is back up after being down for a couple of days.

Check it out!

Design Projects

2008-11-12T21:03:00.004-05:00

So the chair project I finished earlier this semester is up on my website, but I haven't posted anything about my latest project. My class as a whole is using the Mountain Creek Water Park in Vernon, NJ site (which we visited) to construct our own rides (or systems to help run their park, like trackable kids lifejackets) which will relate to each other. I'm doing the lazy river, and I just finished plotting on their park map from their website where my ride would go, and here it is:

All you get is a sneak peek, and when the project is done (middle of december) I'll post the rest on my website.

I'm also going to post this weekend when I have more time about the Knoll presentation I did on tuesday, so look for that as well.

Bye for now!
<3 Allegra

Web site/new job!

2008-10-25T00:16:00.003-05:00

I finished a design project recently for my design studio class-- the pictures are uploading to my website as I type this. I'll have 3D work to update too, as soon as I get to taking pictures of everything. On a seamless background. Which is a little involved.... so it might be a while.

I also got a job! I now work for the CSDS, which stands for center for sustainable design studies, whose office is literally accross the hall from my studio. Micah, who's the sort of first-mate of the operation (under Deb Johnson, who also runs the Incubator, among other things) liked my illustrator and graphic stuff, and that's what I've been doing so far. I'm helping finish up a giant manual for doctors to use in the field in Africa to educate people about health and illnesses and such. This project is done by november 1st, and I have to have my stuff in by Wednesday. After that Micah already has a powerpoint for me to redo, so it looks like a steady stream of work so far, although it's not hard and it's on my own computer on my own time, so I log my own hours... it's nice. What the office mostly does is sustainable information and materials for pratt students and whatnot to come and find information, that type of thing, so I guess I'll be doing that too, but right now I don't have office hours or anything.

That's all for now!
I'll post again when my 3D stuff goes up.

First Day of Classes (part V)

2008-09-08T19:53:00.002-05:00

Solidworks: 2.5 hours (it's normally 3) learning how to: a. how to use solid works, especially the dang camera scroll, that mouse action is stupefying. b. how to make a toaster in 3d (i did it! it's even hollow and has a handle! my first ever creation) c. help Cody (my friend who I sat next to) catch up when his parts disappeared. Repeatedly. d. USE THE IRRATIONAL AND AGGRAVATINGLY COUNTERINTUITIVE (especially if your intuition=macOS) WINDOWS OS IT IS HORRIBLE. it was exhausing, sitting in a chair and paying closer attention than i ever have to anything for longer than i ever have to anything, plus craning my neck way back to see the projection of the teacher's monitor 10' high on the wall directly above me.

oh, and the teacher is a toy designer who taught solidworks at FIT, but never at pratt. he seems nice.

History of design: the teacher is awesome, made fun of his 'really bad taol' (thats Pensylvanian for towel, btw), and loves to talk about furniture. I'm so glad I finally get to learn all these important design/ers that I should have learned going into the first year of ID, but whatever, this is Pratt, I don't expect that much from them.

And I filled out my room status whatever form, and pointed out allthe holes and such that were there (including the ones i neglected to own up to on the ceiling from trying to get that stupid curtain to stay up which didn't work) so I won't get charged for them at the end of the year. Here's what I love about Derek (my RA) and that process: There's no way for them/him to know which ones i may have added during the year. Ooooops ;)

New Photo ID card is the Total(ly awesome) ID card.

2008-09-08T19:26:00.008-05:00

So I seized the opportunity of having straightened my hair this morning to (ok, fine, straightened my hair specifically in order to) get my new ID, which was worn and didn't swipe well (I was told). Since you don't get to keep your old one :( i took a picture of it to keep to remember how I looked on the first (second?) day of orientation for all time (woot). I'll let you guess which is which.

I do, indeed, <3 BK. Aw, I'm gona miss that sticker :'(

Also

2008-09-04T15:23:00.003-05:00

Forgot to mention: at the tug-o-war, the rope snapped in about 1 second from when we started pulling. It was hilarious.

Also, last night Heather, Carolina, Angeloh and I all got takeout from Castro's and ate dinner on my balcony with the very appropriate decoration of pepper lights on the floor.

Then we watched Palin's speech at the RNC, she made me physically ill.

First Day of Classes (part IV)

2008-09-04T15:14:00.002-05:00

Thursdays I have design studio (large-scale product design) from 9:30-4:30 with an hour at 12:30 for lunch. John Thayer, who I had last year, is great because he got us once a week studio instead of 3 hours twice a week, and because he's a great teacher, and he's hilarious. For example, today he took a survey of the box cutters people were using, and returned one saying "I think I may have caused this one to break" (he didn't, but it looked like it).

Anyway, our first project is great- for the next 4 weeks we get to develop a chair! Yes!! It has to be cut from 4'x4' 1/2" thick ply wood, and use 4' of 1/2" steel tubing (or less than those measures) and it has to pack flat, no more than 3" high, Ikea style where you put it together yourself. I already have a couple of ideas, but I don't have a lot of homework for next week because we had to make our models to 1/4 scale, which I did from teh start (the point of the class is to make scaled models for very large products, like buses or a class-wide water park project). It should be a good semester for design, and I even like most of my classmates.

First Day of Classes (part III)

2008-09-03T16:38:00.002-05:00

I'm calling these entries "first day of classes" because, even though yesterday was the official first day of classes, each day is the first day of a class (or two) until tuesday rolls around again.

This morning I had Satire, an english elective, and it seems like it's going to be a lot of reading, but a lot of fun. My teacher kind of looks like if Paula Dean from the Food Network and Professor Umbridge from Harry Potter had a love child, but she's got a sense of humor and has a surprising knowledge of pop culture of the 'young people'.

My second class today was Science & Society Seminar, which looks like it's going to be really interesting. My teacher is also funny in this class, and he kind of reminds me of my high school english teachers if they were more nerdy and science teachers. He studied in his career oceanography, geological science, astronomy, chemistry, and like a million other topics, so, like he said, our course is pretty varied. The topics are all things that relate to social or political issues today, like global warming and genetic modification. He did keep us for the whole class today looking at maps of temperature and CO2 trends in groups, but next time we're watching An Inconvenient Truth (will be my second time) and discussing it. He also assigns kind of a lot of reading, but it's all articles online so there's no pile of papers at least. And he's going to quiz us on it every class, so I have to actually read these things. They're going to be from magazines like NatGeo, Science, Wired, etc, mostly magazines my Dad would enjoy.

So there's my academic wednesdays, tomorrow I only have design from 9:30-5, which i'm looking forward to.

First day of classes (part II)

2008-09-02T19:41:00.002-05:00

My second class, Production Methods, which was moved form 5 to 6, was pretty good, as far as potentially boring classes go. The teacher was changed from Tip Sempliner, who I was excited about taking a class with, to Giyhun Cho (yes he's korean) who I had for drawing last year and really liked. So it's ok. They also moved it to 6, but Cho has class in Manhattan until 5:45 or something, so he's moving it to 6:30. Which means I have class 6:30-9(ish). I doubt he'll keep us til 9:30 because he said 6:30-9:something.

Anyway, this class is basically all the stuff we wished we knew last year (unrelated to history of design, which I'm excited for also). It's all technical stuff about materials and how you mold different plastics and what holds up to 8 foot drops and chemical makeup and such. So it has the potensh to be tres boring, but I think Cho will make it interesting, and he also hinted at the fact that he's changing it from total lecture, and he's not going to give us quizzes like Sempliner apparently does. He only found out he even gave quizzes when Matthew Burger came in and gave him Sempliner's old syllabus, which had tests in it. Cho only found out he was even teaching the class like 3 or 4 days ago. Typical pratt organization and communication skills. A similar thing happened with the pain job in Willoughby, which is rather ugly, where they neglected to inform the painters what color they wanted (the painters doubtless inquired many times as to their choice, to no avail) and ended up choosing them themselves or based on one guy in the office's opinion or something. Who knows. Like I said, typical pratt.

First day of classes (part I)

2008-09-02T15:43:00.003-05:00

I had my first class today, at 2:00. It was nice to have the morning off, I saw Heather before her class at 9:30 and got some errands and food shopping done with her when she got out.

My class was 3D III (thats 3d semester 3, of four required) with Karen, who I had last year. The class was pretty much what was to be expected, introductions and course description and syllabus and some first-day-back exercises. At Pratt that means cutting shapes out of chip board, not playing the name game and describing ourselves. I think this class is going to be better than last year because we're going to be developing abstract compositions into products (mostly furniture) to present to the people Karen works with at Knoll, which should be a really awesome experience.

There's also a girl in my class, Rachel, who's a transfer student from Glasgow..... take that how you will. She's very nice and Yoon and I gave her our phone numbers incase she has questions, which I know I would appreciate if I were in a new school on a continent I'd never been to before (but I'm not, and I won't be. But if I were, I'd have someone already that I would know when I got there).

My second class, which would normally start in 10 minutes (at 5) was moved from 5-8 to 6-9 pm, and the teacher changed to my drawing teacher from last year (even though it's production methods) Cho, who was really awesome and I'm glad if it had to change from the one I chose, who I've heard is really good, it changed to a teacher I know I like.

I'll probably post again after my class (which now starts at 6, which I've decided is actually good because it gives me time to clean up from 3D and eat dinner) and after my floor meeting at 9. I just saw Derek, my RA, in the hallway and he said we're playing tug-o-war with the two sides of the hallway. Should be fun, I guess.

Back in Brooklyn

2008-08-31T14:43:00.005-05:00

So I'm back at Pratt, (taking a break from unpacking) and adjusting to being back at school. Classes don't start til tuesday, though, which is good to give me some time to get ready.

I had a nice weekend with my mom, who drove me and all my van-full of stuff down. We stayed at my aunt's house Friday night, then checked in and moved in all my stuff from 9-11 yesterday. My cousin helped and the three of us went to breakfast. Then was my first trip to Ikea (the new one in Brooklyn!) for 3 hours, a little unpacking and then dinner with my aunt and cousin at a restaurant we (my family) had been to near the Mariott at the Brooklyn Bridge. We were going to go to Grimaldi's but the line was longer than I'd ever seen it, probably like an hour and a half wait, at least. And it wasn't even that late. This morning after we got here from my aunt's house again, my mom and I had breakfast from Bergen on my balcony (!) with my new Ikea furniture. We set up my room a little more, and then we were going to go to Grimaldi's (again) but the line was too long (though not AS bad as last night) and there was no parking, and neither of us was really hungry, so we just headed back to Pratt and said goodbye, and my mom headed home to the 'house full of boys'.

I still have lots to unpack, mostly clothes, but I can already tell my room is going to be so nice. I'll post a picture when it's done if I remember. I'm not really looking forward to the work starting up again (it hits you like a wall, if walls could hit) but I'm kind of excited to see what my new classes are going to be like.

Glasgow.....finally

2008-06-22T21:11:00.002-05:00

So, I finally heard from scotland.

here's the email I got:
Dear Allegra,

I am sorry to inform you that the Glasgow School of Art has not selected your application for the Spring 2009. I know you worked very hard on your application. The following is their explanation: ‘Whilst this student is a good student and appropriate for our course, unfortunately we were over subscribed this year and have had to make a difficult decision’

Please let me know if you have any questions or if I can be of assistance to help you in the future.

Kind regards,
Mia

I'm kind of mostly surprised, if not shocked, rather than sad. I mean yeah, I'm sad I don't get to go to scotland and live there and have that experience, but I'm also really (really) relieved I don't have to have nervous anxiety-induced nightmares about going to europe on my own for the first time anymore.

oh well, at least I can stop worrying about it now, even if I do have to spend the whole year at pratt. At least I have a sweet room. And I won't have to spend time posting what I'm doing every day while I'm there.

2008-05-25T16:31:00.004-05:00

So, I did it again. This is my NEW new website, and hopefully it’ll stay for a while. I made it in iWeb, but I'm hosting it on a third party (rather than pay for a .mac account I don't need) and they disabled a few features I really liked, like comments in the blog (duh, I need that, clearly.) So anyway, that's why the blog is on a separate page.

Nothing much has happened since I started my old blog, I’m done with sophomore year, and at home working at the frame shop in Brookline and for my dad (who pays almost twice as much!) I’m still waiting to hear back from Glasgow whether or not I get to spend spring semester (trimester?) there... here’s to hoping!

Back in the swing of things soon!

2007-06-22T22:17:00.000-05:00

Hey there, sorry I've been MIA for a while, I was busy with end of the year stuff and then with trying to find a job and/or internship, but I should be back up and running soon, so stay tuned!

First Semester LCD Work

2007-02-12T14:09:00.000-05:00

(View from bottom of the entry up, although they're not in chronological order.)

The above picture was my first one, done on the first day of class. As you can see, we often take a drawing or painting and use it as a basis for other projects.

These are most of the projects done in my first semester of LCD (light, color, design) class at Pratt Institue (fall 2006).

Recent Drawings

2007-01-27T22:10:00.000-05:00

White chalk on butcher paper. We had to draw white only where the light was hitting the objects.

This is one of my favorite drawings. I absolutely love working with shading and shadow. This was done from a plaster cast, which looked just as it does in my drawing (I didn't change anything or leave anything out in other words).

*More to come later, the uploads aren't working properly right now.*

Pratt Portfolio

2007-01-22T15:02:00.000-05:00

These are the 20 images I sent to pratt as my application portfolio, in reverse order (start at the bottom and work your way up). The sizes and media are at the bottom of each picture, as you can see. Comments are always welcome, although these are all from at least a year ago, some 2 or 3 years.

First Post!

2007-01-21T21:04:00.000-05:00

Welcome to my art blog! This will be a place where I upload art from my deviantART account or other places, as well as discuss my (art-related) goings-on. I hope you all enjoy it!