yesterday i spent the entire day down in san jose with bryan's parents. i finally went to a master's swim meet last saturday, and i got a wonderful idea while i was there to make two big mascot suits for me and my friend dave to wear while we cheer on people from our team. our team is from the strawberry canyon pool just above the UC Berkeley campus, so i thought that our mascots should be giant swimsuit-wearing strawberries. (the only one you can buy online is here. it is ugly and expensive, although heather likes mr. strawberry's moustache). since bryan's mom is crafty, i enlisted her help in making these sure-to-be-wonderful suits.



we bought all the fabric to make them at wal-mart and joann's. i picked a shiny polester red for the outside panels, and a duller but same color red cotton-polyester blend for the panels that you can't see. the green is for the strawberry top and i haven't decided on the color for the seeds so i'll have to buy that later. after much consideration, i decided on a design suggested to me by my labmate sally. each strawberry will be made up of 4 quarters, which will be 4-sided pillows lined with batting and stuffed with either polyfill or netting to keep the shape. velcro will hold the pieces together and my arms will stick out between the quarters on both sides.



this all sounds lovely, but trying to design the panel shapes so everything will work out that way was another matter. i made a small scale model first, and i still have to fix the big panel so that it curves at the top and the bottom where the inside panel will be curving so that there is a place for me to be in the middle. i don't think any of these desciptions are going to help anyone imagine this, but hopefully it will only take a few more weekends to see if my design works.



here is bryan's mom showing off her speedy midnight sewing skills (and bryan's dad made us a yummy dinner of shimp pasta. thanks to both of you for a great day!) we made two models of the quarter and i'm pretty sure from holding them together that this will work. you'll just have to take my word for it because i know that they look like two halloween ghosts trying to make out. we're going to line the panels with thick batting on the inside when we sew them together, and perhaps also with posterboard for the inside one to help keep the shape. i just stuffed the little models with polyfill so they're not acting the way the big ones will when we make them for real (i think). i'm excited to see if it works.



another exciting find at joann's was this orange furry fabric that bryan's mom bought for me to cover some pillows with. it is so neon! i love it. we'll probably cover them next weekend during a break from the strawberry madness.



and it turns out that i wasn't the only busy one on saturday. when i woke up today, look what a sad sight i found waiting in my baby hat and sock yarn:



two of my five number six dpns ruined. i wonder who could have done that?