Pieces of Anna

Back in March, I mentioned that I would be starting a woodworking class in May. Well, that class is almost over, and I got something to show for it! The class I was taking was the Basic Woodworking class at the Eliot School . The Eliot School is located in a quaint old building in Jamaica Plain, and they offer all kinds of interesting hands-on classes, like woodworking, upholstery (!), sewing and drawing. Inspired by my bentwood chair makeover , I decided to sign up for a woodworking class. The project in the class was to make a box modeled on the Amish candle box. This type of box has a sliding lid and was originally meant to store candles away from bees. In class, we learned about different ways to saw wood, different kinds of wood, and how to use various cool power tools. We used a planer and a jointer to create smooth, parallel surfaces on a rough piece of lumber. We then used a chop saw to make some rough cuts in this six-foot-long piece of lumber. Between classes, we stacke...

There are many ideas, plans, doubts, and fears swimming around in my head right now about taking the next step, and making a big change in my life. It is when the fears overshadow the dreams that I look to these words to keep me going:   Images from here , here , here , and here .

Let me just preface by saying that I am not a theoretical physicist. In fact, I am not any kind of physicist. Physics was my most hated science in school, mostly because I did not get it. I still don't. Ask me to define voltage, and I might burst into tears. Which makes me wonder how I ever became an engineer. But I digress. I recently read an excellent article in the New Yorker about quantum computing. The way I see it (which has nothing to do with reality), quantum computing is some sort of a holy grail for physicists. Imagine a computer that could do a bazillion calculations at once - just picture what such a machine would be capable of. Hacking encryption codes based on multiplication of two large prime numbers would be a piece of cake. And um... well there must be a host of other significant problems that this computer would be able to solve. Maybe it will make "buffering" an obsolete word. Who knows. It sounds pretty great anyway. Except for one little detail. ...

For my first real DIY (Do-it-yourself) project, I decided to start slow and simple. Oh wait, slow and simple is not my style. Well then, I decided to jump right in and make over a bentwood chair. At this point, I had zero experience with sanding, priming, or painting any piece of furniture. I've also never reupholstered anything before. And I had absolutely no supplies. What could possibly go wrong? It's like Beauty and the Beast, right? The end result doesn't look so bad after all. What you don't see in this picture are the many days months that this project of mine occupied our balcony, living room, and second bedroom. Also not pictured is D's cursing of the day I bought this chair loving support for my first adventure into the land of DIY. And now, for the gory details. The first thing I did was remove the chair seat. Which turned out to be a total pain in the a**. See, I was under the impression that most chair seats are attached to the base by means of s...

About a month ago, I discovered the most addictive awesome website for organizing ideas and inspiration, and I've been hooked on Pinterest ever since. For an organization-obsessed freak like me, this website is so perfect to keep all the random stuff I find all over the internet in one place. No more bookmarking on one computer, and being frustrated over not having the link on another computer. No more emailing myself links or saving them in a disorganized google doc. Those days are over, baby! (Yes, I am really that excited over Pinterest. Or it might be the massive amount of caffeine I ingested today. You decide.) Anyway, the way Pinterest works is it allows you to create multiple "boards" to pin your ideas on. For example, you can have a board for interior decorating, a board for your favorite quotes, or a board for cute kitty pictures (no one will judge you). To "pin" something to your boards, you install a "Pin It" marklet in the bookmark sect...

When we recently returned from a ten-day trip to England, I discovered that I took approximately 560 photos while on vacation. Because, you know, it was absolutely essential that I really capture that church door in the best light possible. And that requires approximately fifteen photos per door. Obviously. What the camera did not capture is how I almost got run over by the British drivers, who insisted on driving on the wrong side of the road. For bright tourists like myself, the kind people of England wrote signs in huge letters that told me which way to look. Upon arriving at an intersection, I promptly proceeded to ignore these signs while trying to figure out which of the beautiful buildings before me is Westminster Abbey. But that came later. First, the bf (from now on known as D) and I took a subway, a bus, a plane, another plane, another subway, and a train in order to get to Harrogate, UK. Harrogate was one of the four cities that we visited in England. Actually, it's no...

Ok, here we go. My first blog post. Since I started this blog to keep track of my sprouting interests and potential hobbies, I think it makes sense to start off with a list of things that have been keeping me busy lately. Did I mention I love lists? Anyway, in the past year or so, I have dabbled in Photoshop, photography (with a fancy dSLR camera, no less), yoga, interior decorating (and re-decorating, apparently), organizing (closets, bookshelves, rooms, sometimes even my brain), furniture refinishing, and cooking. Ok well, I didn't just dabble in cooking, I actually cook. A girl's gotta eat, right? But I like to pretend that I'm getting better at it. But to be perfectly honest, so far the only things I've actually kept up with are organizing, decorating, and to some extent, yoga. Organizing is easy - I love finding the right place for everything, so it's just something that I do all the time. I find a box full of random hardware fittings (true story), and I ge...