Every fall the University of Konstanz organizes a ball. The majority of the attendees are affiliated to the university but the number of those not affiliated to it grows every year. The best part of the ball, apart from great catering and music, is surely the evening attire that can (at last!) be taken out to “see-and-be-seen”.
Cloqué, please!
Have you ever heard about fabrics for dresses that are soft but still voluminous? And I don’t mean taffeta-like volume, but rather “I cut you this way because I also want you to fit this way” volume.
Spiritless Writing
The scientist in me went into seclusion to finish the doctoral thesis and promised to kill everybody who interferes with it. So the artsy guy in me has a free hand until the end of October. So, from now on (until the end of October) you will have to read about completely spiritless things like my dresses, skirts and make up. Don’t get me wrong! I’m not sewing them right now – I am virtually writing non-stop – I’ve sewn A LOT over the years. So, guys, get some popcorn and coke. It’ll take a lot of time.
I sold my own creation!
A couple of years ago, I went to my favorite fabric store and bought a piece of wonderful silk organza. As it was directly after the birth of my son, I decided to sew a dress for the “after I’ve lost a lot of weight” time. So I cut a really nice dress in vintage style. I did sew a beautiful dress and I did lose some weight but not a lot. The dress wouldn’t fit… I decided to be patient and to hide the dress in the closet until “after I’ve lost a lot of weight”.
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The Fairy-Tale Dress
Everybody has to have a hobby or else this energy could become really destructive. I have got quite a lot of energy that I have to use peacefully. Considering the effect that a slow mechanical work produces onto the nervous system, such an amount of energy is just screaming for something productive. That is exactly why my favorite hobby is sewing: with a little bit of time and effort you can create a piece that no one has but everybody wants.
I started out as a very primitive skirt-seamstress but in a couple of years I grew into a pretty good tailor. Nevertheless, my projects never lasted longer than a week, depending on the complexity of the cut and the character of the fabric (Oh, yes, they DO have characters and sometimes very mean!). My first long-term project though was my very first combination of sewing and stitching/ embellishing. It took me 1.5 months (!) to complete it but I still love it even almost 4 years later.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet my favorite dress:
The Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing
I have been to a lot of conferences over the past years, some of them being really comfy workshops for a very closed community and others being huge machineries with thousands of participants and attendees. My first international conference was a mixture of a closed community and attendees from all over the world. The name of the conference is Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing and in 2011 it was organized by the Stanford University in Palo Alto. This conference has a reputation for very strict peer-reviewing, therefore, my boss was against my applying there with the topic of my current project. He didn’t want to take chances with our common work, so I decided to apply on my own with the topic of my MA thesis. As it was not work-related, I also could not get the funding from the DFG in case I got accepted. So I also applied for a conference grant at the Academic Staff development and eventually won it.
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A Beach House
My first visit to America was over three years ago. At the time, I was almost three months pregnant, so we decided that my husband should go with me. We went to California, where I was to attend two great conferences (I’ll write about each of them later), and spent three unforgettable weeks there. The first and the last week I was busy at the conferences presenting my posters, but the second week we spent travelling.
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My Hair Care Favorites
Actually, I love my hair. This is the second part of my body that I am completely satisfied with (I’ll tell you about the first one sometime later). I mean, of course it could be thicker, heavier or whatever, but I love it as it is. Although it doesn’t really need extensive care, from time to time I love to do something special for my hair. Looking for a special treat, I came across two hair masks that are just perfect for giving my hair that famous last touch.
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The Material Tally
My mother was always trying to buy me linen clothes but she always failed to put them on me. I can’t even imagine why I was so prejudiced against linen – I just couldn’t stand it. As time passed by, I managed to find some trivial explanations to it, such as “it wrinkles easiy”, “it doesn’t iron easily”, “it’s too rough for my skin”, and so on.
New Year’s Celebration
We had to stay at home for the New Year’s celebration. The little predator got sick, and was roaring at us all the time threatening to employ his favorite cartoon characters if we did not stop trying to feed him. Thus, the family council decided not to invite any guests and not to become guests ourselves, so that our dear friends and family stay safe and sound for the beginning of the 2014. I guess it’s not polite to spread infections at the New Year’s Eve.