Infest the Waters: A Blog About Design, Life and Making Stuff

Zombies, Beards and Infographics

Beards infographic

For the past year or so, I’ve been making a lot of infographics, mostly for Goal Investor, a website that’s geared towards helping Gen X and Gen Y understand investing better.  The site features a really cool tool to help you work out just how much you should be savings for goals like retirement and education, and it also provides lots of education in the form of articles and infographics.  That’s the part I’ve been helping with.  You can see some of the stuff I’ve been creating here, here and here.

In the Spring, a good friend of mine asked me if I’d be interested in doing a workshop on the use of infographics in education at her school in New Hampshire.  She teaches English to high school kids at Pittsfield Middle High School, a school where they’re doing some truly groundbreaking work in rethinking education.  In addition to creating very cool hands-on learning opportunities for students and making strides in conflict resolution through their work in restorative justice (which my friend is heavily involved in), a grant has enabled them to offer workshops to teachers and students alike on a variety of topics.  Teachers can identify topics and presenters they think would provide useful, cross-disciplinary, project-based workshops, and funding is provided through the grant.  Needless to say, when she approached me about this, I jumped at the chance, as it combined two things that I’m passionate about, design and teaching.

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In Tandem

Columbia Twosome

It’s been a little more than three years since I hopped on a tandem bicycle with my soon-to-be husband and rode through the streets of Kensington with some of our best friends to get hitched to my best friend.  While our marriage has fared quite well in the subsequent trio of years, the tandem suffered a different fate, basically falling apart right after the wedding.  Last summer, we entrusted the tandem to the fine folks at Doylestown Bike Works upon the urging of a friend of mine who has been involved with DBW since they opened in 2011.  Ever since we picked it up in April (and no, it didn’t take that long for them to rehab it–we’re just delinquents), I’ve been meaning to show off the fantastic work they did.  Our anniversary seemed as good as any occasion for a little show-and-tell (even if I’m a few days late for that, too).

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A Midsummer Night’s Sewing Round-up

Placemat - closeup

For most of this year, I haven’t been sewing much because, well, I’ve been busy with work that pays me actual money.  Seriously, though, things are very different now than they were this time last year, which is likely to be fodder for a forthcoming blog post.  The long and short of it is that I’ve had a lot of rewarding work over the past six to nine months that has kept me very busy and away from my sewing machine.  Good for the pocketbook, but not so great for conversation or making stuff.

As I’ve slowly been clawing my way out of workaholism (really…what else was I supposed to do during this awful, awful winter?), I’ve been trying to get back to some of my avocations, like sewing.  There’s been no shortage of projects, and my collection of patterns, like sauerkraut left unattended in the fridge, seems to be multiplying on its own.  (Seriously, if anyone can explain to me that sauerkraut phenomenon, I will be eternally grateful.)

I also have an ever-present pile of clothes earmarked for mending and altering that taunt me from the corner of my sewing room, and some of the clothes have been on the pile for years.  Especially when I switch the clothes in my closets because of the season change, I am acutely aware of clothing that I haven’t worn in years.  I’ve instated a rule:  If a particular piece of clothing hasn’t been worn for the entirety of a season, it gets donated.  However, this rule breaks down when it comes to clothing my grandmother made for me, which carry a certain sentimental value.  Even though I know deep down in my heart of hearts that I’m never going to wear that large flower print pleasant dress that she made for me in the 90’s, I still harbor the completely unrealistic fantasy that perhaps Elaine Benes’ wardrobe will come back into style, and then I’ll be really glad that I hung on to all of those horribly unfashionable dresses that look like a cut-rate florist threw up on me.

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