It's an Attack!

Of seasonal felt mice!

I started making these quite a while ago before I decided to go with the vastly superior quilled snowflakes, but now I'm rather inundated with them and am not quite sure where they should be re-homed. At least they add a bit holiday-cheer to my desk-lamp.

Happy thanksgiving!

Sewing Club Takes on Social Justice

As a non-denominational-winter-giving-celebration, Sewing club is making pillowcases for Conkerr Cancer. I hope that in the spring we can make a project Linus quilt, but these pillowcases are a really great project for now since we're slightly pressed for time. The construction is really fairly simple, and I think two meetings should be enough time for everyone to make at least one. It was the most fun fabric shopping ever-- I bought a lot of really cool red-tag quilters stuff from Jo-Anns in fun prints I almost never get to use otherwise.

Christmas Crafting

I finished my first legit Christmas gift yesterday, at the expense of some much more important activites (i.e. my homework.) Her name is for Celia and she's for a friend who likes dolls. Or possibly I'll find something else to do with her, I can't quite make up her mind. The pattern is mostly from the book Wee Wonderfuls, which I impulse bought on Amazon and am not entirely impressed with, but I am really happy with this doll.

I'm also making a couple of quilled snowflake ornaments in addition to my usual felt ones. I think they look quite elegant, but they take a somewhat ridiculous amount of time, and have resulted in my floor being coated in a fine layer of paper strips and glitter. Also, I possibly have some spray adhesive on my sheets, but these are the perils of dorm crafting I suppose.






As a counter-measure for the Christmas cheer, I'll leave you with the slightly disturbing creature that looked up at me from my bookshelf untill I gave her limbs yesterday.


















Peace out, girl scout!

How I Got Into Teach For America

I promised myself that if I was accepted into Teach for America that I would write an entry and publish it somewhere in the blogosphere detailing how I had done it. I felt that I owed it to applicants who came after me, because I spent an absolutely ridiculous amount of time googling phrases like "How I got Into TFA" or "TFA Acceptance" or "Secret to TFA." Every time I found a blog post with that title, of course, I was disappointed. Nothing gave me any new information, and I ended up feeling more lost than when I'd started, mostly because of the time wasted.

But here's the thing. I know you, prospective applicant heck-bent on addressing educational inequality in this country, don't want to hear this. I know everyone says it, but it's true: you already know everything you need to get in. I got in by displaying some combination of the following traits, as listed on TeachForAmerica.org:

• Demonstrated past leadership and achievement: achieving ambitious, measurable results in academic, professional, extracurricular, or volunteer settings
• Perseverance and sustained focus in the face of challenges
• Strong critical thinking skills: making accurate linkages between cause and effect and generating relevant solutions to problems
• Superior organizational ability: planning well, meeting deadlines, and working efficiently
• Respect for individuals’ diverse experiences and effectively working with people from a variety of backgrounds
• Superior interpersonal skills to motivate and lead others
• Thorough understanding of and desire to work relentlessly in pursuit of our vision

The only remotely helpful thing I did in my preparation was to go through this list and jot down ways I exemplified these qualities,but when I got down to it I forgot all of them and don't think I covered half of the points I had hit in my interview practicing. But something went right somewhere, somehow, and if it's meant to be for you it will go right too.

But just so I don't end on that vague abstraction, I will tell you some things that probably(maybe) helped me. I had one or two leadership positions, but nothing ridiculous. I founded Sewing Club and kept it running for three years, I worked as Arts Director at a teeny Girl Scout camp and helped expand the program there, I designed some costumes for my old high school theater department, I was a member of a design league, and I work at a costume shop at school.

I know how nerve-wracking it is: I know how bad you want to do it and how scary the whole process is, but in the end no amount of googling is going to help you... and if any prospectives are actually reading this, the best advice I can give you is just to stop googling.

The Start of my Relentless Pursuit

This time next year I'll be in the trenches, working to level the appalling achievement gap in this country! Specifically, I'll be teaching elementary school in Chicago. Which when you get right down to it is not all that specific, and could end up being anything from K-8, but it's as good as I'm getting for now and it's all that I wanted.

Little Hands, Relatively Small Open Flame

I haven't been writing much (obviously) but I've decided to rectify that. Since I'm back at Cornell, I've started up Sewing Club again, which leaves me bursting full of cool kid crafting that I ought to be recording.

Sewing Club is my little Ithaca attempt to level the achievement gap. Once a week I walk up to a local low income apartment housing complex, toting a heavy bag full of fabric and markers and patterns, and teach a small group of girls and boys ages 8-14 basic sewing skills. I've made a lot of really cool progress with my kids over the time I've been there, and since this is my last year there I'm really trying to go out with a bang, mostly by trying to make our time together as exciting and multidisciplinary as possible.

In an attempt to make this cool and awesome lasting impact, last week I brought in my first ever Sewing Club science experiment, and it went really well. Or, it went really well in terms of the kids liked it and were able to complete the mini lab I had set up, but not really well in terms of the kerfuffle I caused. See, I brought a really simple but awesome fiber science experiment: we took different types of fiber (cotton, polyester, wool, silk, acrylic and some kevlar and steel a professor gave me) and burned them in a tiny tea light, and made notes of the different effect the flame had on each of them. The kids L-O-V-E-D it, and only one teensy burn was sustained. They were even able to identify the tricky mystery fiber I brought! (cotton poly blend.)



Only one bitty issue. I had checked with the program director who said it was fine to do the experiement, but I guess she didn't check her higherups, and apparently (this was news to me) we are under constant video surveillance! Anyway, the people who review the tape called my supervisor in to say open flame was a no-no, and I turned six shades of red when she told me... but its over now, and the kids had a great time.