It started with Rich encouraging me to take a beginner’s sewing class that another girl in our ward was taking. As he put it, “You need to start hanging out with girls who aren’t 15.” In other words, start making more “adult” friends instead of just doing stuff with the girls I work with in the LDS Young Women’s program. My fantastic mother-in-law had taught me a few things, and I’d made some pajama pants over the Christmas break and I’d made a few simple skirts before, but I definitely still needed a basics class.

The class was 3 weeks, about 2 hours each week, and the class promise was that by the end, we’d have an Amy Butler reversible bag! The class was given at Fabric Crush, and when I had walked in to buy my fabric for the bag, I was a little overwhelmed with all the fabric! Don’t get me wrong, I LOVED their fabric, but I was nervous about having flowers and stuff on my fabric for my bag. What if it turned out with half-flowers all over the place? But I decided to dare and got some cute fabric – purple for the outside and brown for the inside, to match the two colors I seem to wear most these days.

During the course of the class, I learned a lot! For example, not all sewing machines weigh 20 pounds. Not all sewing machines sound like a sewing factory (cured when my mother-in-law helped me oil it later). And I LOVE how simple my sewing machine is. Sure, it only has 6 stitches, and the tension and stitch length are changed with dials, but I love it. I didn’t have to keep pressing buttons on the machine to finally find where the straight 2.5 stitch was; and the needle on my machine stayed put when I unplugged it (my friend’s would go back to the default location, throwing her seam size off every time). I also didn’t realize how much about sewing I didn’t know. The funny part (for my hubby) was watching me helping my friend along with her bag. As my friend put it, it was the legally blind leading the truly blind.

However, during the blind-leading-blind time together, my friend had made one of the bag handles a little too narrow. She commented what a cute headband it would make. The next time we were working on our projects together, I took her headband, and, with my husband’s help (“Couldn’t you just put the elastic from end to end instead of threading it all the way through?”), we created a reversible headband to match her bag! I got jealous of her headband and made one for myself. Ta-da! Coordinating headband and bag…CHECK!

After the project was over, I started itching for more. I had bought a number of patterns for skirts and tops that I hadn’t quite tackled yet. I had tackled one that called for knit as a fabric option, and my mother-in-law had helped me learn how to read it and cut my fabric, but I had even more information now! I wanted to apply it! So…I decided to take out another one of the skirt patterns, buy the fabric required, and start a new project.

And voila – a new skirt made from a cute rayon print! WOOHOO! The fabric was tough to work with; I learned how to increase my stitch tension so the thread wouldn’t keep skipping stitches. There was a LOT of ripping seams for this one. I finally decided I’d just hand-hem the bottom. Of course, that hasn’t been done yet…but it’ll get done eventually. (Okay, so my sister-in-law and cousin-in-law have influenced me on this one…nobody will notice and it looks just fine as-is, why bother?)

After that skirt came a visit from my in-laws and my mother-in-law taught me how to bind a quilt. I haven’t quite finished it yet, but once I do, I’ll post a picture. My sister-in-law pieced the quilt, my mother-in-law quilted the quilt and helped me bind it. I hope to have it completely bound in the next week or so.

This last weekend, rather than work on binding the quilt, I decided to inventory all of my fabric I’d purchased in years past and done nothing with. I was a good girl and washed all the fabric I was intending to use. I found some red velvet type of fabric that looked like it was enough for a skirt. I couldn’t remember where I’d gotten it from, though. I decided I’d try out another new pattern that was a simple 4-panel skirt with a yoke. I learned to read the pattern through FIRST, BEFORE cutting the fabric. After cutting the first two panels, I decided to look at the pattern and realized…I only had enough fabric left for a third panel! OOPS! I put my new-found knowledge to the test, though, and, in the end, had a cute 3-panel skirt with yoke. (NOTE: I realized tonight as I was taking pictures that my seam for the yoke did NOT actually match up with the back seam as intended…oh well, I don’t tuck my tops in anyway.)

In addition to the skirt, I made another 3 reversible headbands (only to realize when I was done that I don’t have much yellow in my closet!) and two ribbon headbands (my friend shared this awesome link with me that gave instructions on how to make them).

Next up…my first try at making a top and an introductory embroidery class!! I’m loving this!

Genetics. Deoxyribonucleic acid. The thing that makes us individual…unless you’re an identical twin, in which case, it makes you exactly the same as one other person.

I was listening to information about genetics, chromosomes, DNA, assays, and alleles today, and it renewed my sense of wonder for the world of genetics. Genetics is one of the majors I’d considered after high school. When I was in AP Biology as a junior in high school, to me, nothing was as interesting as the section on genetics. That stuff was SO intriguing. At the time, the Human Genome Project was still fairly new, and I thought it would be so cool to be a researcher on the project. My grand plan was to major in genetics and music. Only one school in Washington offered genetics as a major, though – Evergreen State College. Somewhere along the line, my mother had heard that the field of Genetics wasn’t going to grow much after the Human Genome Project was done. For some reason, I didn’t consider the idea that the Human Genome Project would just be a starting point in many senses, and that there would be a vast array of applications for the study of DNA and genes.

I remember making grids to map out potential traits that could carry over into children, depending on the parents’ genotype. I had a BLAST doing that mapping.

In college, I took a microbiology course (because the description of the course said it would include a section on genetics) and one of the labs was analyzing our own DNA. We got a photo paper with our genetic markers showing…I honestly kept that thing for YEARS. I don’t remember why I finally tossed it; I think I looked at it one day and thought it was a little silly to be carrying around this picture of my DNA. But, I kid you not, I thought it would be useful to someone if they found my body somewhere and needed to do some DNA testing. I thought it was a better form of identification than my drivers’ license.

I don’t know why I felt the urge to post this, other than to walk down memory lane a bit and publish my ultra-geekiness to the world. Some day, I plan on going back to school to take genetics classes, just for fun.

Yes, I’m definitely a GEEK.