united hates you
Last time I flew on United, they still served hot food, and it made me throw up for the first and only time since kindergarten.
I learned last week that United still hates people.
1. They try to trick you into paying extra money during online check in. The graphic on the left is what I remember. Very purposefully deceptive.
2. They don't tell you about cancelled flights. Thank goodness Orbitz called me at 2am. United never got in touch.
3. They don't want you to talk to actual people on the phone. I get that it makes a lot of sense to put 2am phone support in India. But I was subjected to an hour of very loud very static-y Rhapsody in Blue. It was punctuated every 10 minutes by a quiet clear voice which ... was a recorded ad.
4. United's outsourced phone support hates you too. After waiting an HOUR with bad music blaring at me, at 3AM, phone support rushed me through flight rerouting in 5 minutes. Every minute or so she tried to get rid of me by reciting "Did I serve all your needs today". I had to ask her about seats, forgot to ask her about confirmation, and learned later she'd given me the wrong flight number.
Moral of the story: United goes out of their way to create a bad user experience and you shouldn't give them any money.
pinyin
Language nerdery ahead that's only relevant to people who know Chinese, pinyin, and zhuyin. :p
Pinyin sometimes makes no sense at all. Most of it is ok. "a" and "d" and "t" all make the sounds you expect them to.
But.. who the heck thought of the x/sh/s mappings? Here's what they are in pinyin and zhuyin (zhuyin is a phoenetic thing only used in Taiwan for little kids or adult idiots like me)
ㄒ= x, ㄕ=sh, ㄙ=s
I would've flipped the mapping for "sh" with "x", since "sh" is an already known sound in English. Then, you could map the random one "x" with the curly-tongue-"sh" sound which doesn't exist in English, since "x" makes no sense to begin with.
I guess the only tricky part then, is figuring out how to represent the other curly-tongue letters in some consistent way like ㄓㄔㄖ (currently "zh" "ch" and "r"). You could add an "r" since that's kind of what your tongue is doing. Then:
ㄓㄔㄕㄖ = "zr" "tzr" "shr" "r" ... um... right. Not so sure about those middle two.
One nice thing about pinyin is that it makes Chinese a hell of a lot easier to type once you figure out how it works. But. The IME that comes with windows only lets you type simplified Chinese with pinyin. You have to either radical-lookup or write the traditional characters. So I still have to translate the simplified into traditional after typing. WTF. Am I just not using the right settings?
I just found the handy mapping of pinyin to zhuyin in wikipedia today. The first time I checked that page, I never made it past the linguistic geekiness and unhelpful pronunciation tips at the top of the page. sample text:
"For other finals formed by the suffix -r, pinyin does not use special orthography; one simply appends -r to the final that it is added to, without regard for any sound changes that may take place along the way. For information on sound changes related to final -r, please see.." blah blah blah zzzzzzzzz
doll fashion portfolio
Download portfolio pdf (440kb) - includes the 6 outfits and a few sketches I dug up. If for some reason anyone wants a higher res version, I've got a 10Mb pdf sitting on my computer.
Nice big photos over at flickr
Let's see, notes about each new one...
knit gray bubble dress
This is probably the most complete outfit with a turtleneck, tights, boots, and dress. It's probably also the trendiest outfit with the volume and the tights. I ended up painting the black acrylic swirls in with a toothpick b/c my smallest brush was too big. I don't think it'd actually look good on a real person with a normal waist and leg length, but that's why this is doll fashion :)
wonderbread dress
I thought the polkadots were cute when I first got the fabric. But, when I finished the dress, she looked like a loaf of bread. The hoodie helps mitigate the peppiness.
... and the party dress I think I already blogged about. All done.
新年快樂 (xin nian2 kuai4 le4)
Happy (Chinese) new year!
I tried to make a few traditional dishes on Saturday, one of which was sticky cake (年糕 .. or is it 粘糕?, nian2 gao) . I didn't want to make too much since I would be the only one eating it, and it's a pretty dense thing, so I cut my mom's recipe by a third. There is still a ton sitting in the fridge.
It turned out mostly pretty well ... except for the red beans. The grocery store I went to had dried red beans, but no canned ones, so I tried making my own by boiling them for a long long time with lots of sugar. They tasted fine at first, but after baking in the cake, they turned into weird dried grainy things. Lesson learned: next time, use canned.
I was trying to find photos online, since mine are too ugly to show, but not much of it is what I'm used to (here's one that looks like a fish!) Here's something more like what I'm used to, but the color's different, and it has a lot more chunky things in it. The texture is like a mochi cake.
Here's the recipe, so I can remember how I made it:
年糕 nian gao recipe - dessert
1 1/3 cups sweet rice flour
1/3 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/3 tsp vanilla
5/6 c milk (thereabouts)
1 Tbsp melted butter
~ 1/4 can of sweet red bean (or raisins, dates, dried cranberries, walnuts, etc)
1. preheat oven to 300 F, grease loaf pan with butter
2. mix together dry ingredients, then mix in wet
3. mix in your fruit/chunky stuff to taste, pour into pan
4. bake for 55 minutes, until chopstick comes out clean
5. let cool a bit (will pull away from pan), cut into 1/4 inch slices
6. fry the slices in a little oil if you want, or eat as is
A 9" loaf pan will actually give you a very short cake, but I didn't have anything smaller to bake it in... a mini loaf pan would be ideal. I also haven't figured out how to keep everything from sinking to the bottom yet.
evening gown w/ chiffon pleats
Here's the evening gown:
another view
I wish I could've put in more pleats in the front center, but it was just too hard with something that small. The hem is rolled, vintage-handkerchief-style, since the hem I'd done on the black and white dress didn't look so great. Not sure if I did it right, but I guess it looks fine.
The hair on this one was fun and inspired by Hwangjiny, a Korean gisaeng drama. I made a bunch of braids and overlapped them in different ways until it looked interesting, then stuck in bobby pins to hold. Photoshop got rid of the bobby pins after. Do they make doll-sized hair pins?.
I'm pretty much done with the portfolio, so I'll post it as soon as I make the last few tweaks. (update 1am: Eep, just sent off the portfolio. Let's see what happens!)
yoked gathered top
Another thing for the portfolio.
There's red topstitching down the side of the pants. I was debating whether or not to put them in, since without, she could wear them with more outfits. But then again, she's just a doll, and I don't think I'll be making any more outfits for her in the near future. Having made just 2 over the past 3 years, and 6 in the past month means that the quota's up for a good long while.
Not my favorite of the bunch, but it's kind of cute. If I were to do it again, I would choose a lighter colored fabric pattern ... the gold/red combined with the ruffles makes the outfit feel kind of dated.
The little ruffled sleeves were a PAIN to sew. Too many layers bunched together in too small a space. I'd originally gathered more fabric into the yoke for the main body, but she looked very pregnant, so I toned it down.
button tab shirt
I made a pair of red heels tonight and stopped with that. Set up everything for the photoshoot and went ahead with it. This is one of my favorite outfits:
I think the red button and heels are so cute.
I'll upload more photos over the next few days. Any interest in a tutorial on the heels? I mostly went off the instructions I found, but adapted it to using fabric, paper, and metal.
slouchy ankle boots
Found some really good instructions on doll shoes online and gave it a try.
Not so bad, eh?
Details:
I could only find brass at my local hardware store, so I used that and it worked fine (.005 thickness). For the heel, I cut up a thin dowel and whittled/sanded it to a taper. I used silk noil for the outside and rayon for the lining since that's the kind of black fabric I had around .. I might try to find some thin pleather in the future though.
Oops. I just read the instructions again and realized I did the soles backwards (I did copper inside, cardstock outside) ... no wonder I had so much trouble getting the fabric to stick to the metal. It looks nice anyway, on my fingers at least. I'll try it on momoko once the paint dries and hopefully it won't totally fall apart.
sew u review
A few of the crafty blogs I check in on now and then (maybe I should make a list of links?) had been sending out good vibes about the newish Sew U book. So, when I got S belated bday stuff at Amazon, I gave myself a little present too.
It definitely covers the basics, is clearly written and nicely designed. It also gives instructions on how to do basic alterations to standard patterns (and gives you a shirt, skirt, and pants pattern with the book). But ... it's not for me. I think I've taken a few too many sewing classes, aand it's geared for beginners. It did have a neat tip for quick dart marking which I might try with my next big project (I hate marking darts, takes forever). With the blog talk about customization of basic patterns, I was hoping that there'd be stuff about making things fit better on the body, but the customization was actually more like adding a ruffle here, trim there, buttons, patches, etc.
Is Sew U for you? Yes, if you'd like to learn how to:
- put together basic set of sewing tools
- read a pattern, transfer markings, cut fabric
- sew a dart, finish a seam, set a zipper
- make a facing
- add trims and patches to customize clothing
Or, if you live in the bay area peninsula, you could take beginner sewing classes at Canada College (and the intermediate one to better hammer those lessons in). They come with very nice instructors too!
Anyone want my copy? They very smartly made it with a spiral binding so that it will lay flat while you are trying to look up instructions with your hands full of pins.
having doubts ...
I was wondering before what the project dollway people would be looking for, and I was kind of thinking that maybe it was a more mature sort of style popular with American doll collectors ... found the webpage of the contest sponsors today (Fashion Boulevard), and it's looking like I was right.
Oh well. I guess I'm almost done with the portfolio anyway. Might as well send it in :p
doll clothes everywhere
I'm kind of getting tired of working on the doll clothes all the time. Designing, drafting a pattern, then sewing each thing takes a while. But, it IS a pretty good excuse to rot my brain on asian dramas practice my Chinese while I sew. (Yay for d-addicts and youtube.)
It'll be over soon too — just one last pair of shorts and it's done. I didn't expect to be going so quickly since there's still another month left. If I feel energetic enough, I'll spend the extra time figuring out shoes. If not, I'll go ahead with the glamor shots.
Here's a sneak peek:
L: black turtleneck, gray knit bubble dress, black tights
R: blue and sheer brown dress, tabbed sleeveless shirt (goes with gray shorts not yet made, missing red button), red yoked top (brown pants not there), black and white party dress, white wonderbread dress (goes with navy hoodie from a while ago and the black chunky boots momoko beta came with).