The other day I stumbled upon this beautiful bag DIY by Persia Lou and I decided I needed it. My friend had just given me two massive spools of cotton yarn that she was trying to get rid of, and I decided that this bag would be the perfect project to start chipping away at that yarn!

I made a few changes to the pattern for my own version: For me, the number and length of tassels were a little too much, so I only made a few short tassels for the bag flap. I also used a gold braided belt that I've had for a long time because I didn't really want to purchase a leather strip and all the supplies to go with it. I lined it with some gray fabric that I had purchased two years ago for a Doctor Who weeping angels project that I never ended up doing (maybe someday it will happen, but for now I've finally used up most of that fabric!).

 For the belt / strap, I ended up being super cheap and lazy - I didn't even bother sewing it! I attached two D-rings (I would've preferred round rings but I couldn't for the life of me find them at Michael's) to the sides of the bag. I then belted the belt, cut it near the buckle (I did this because I wanted the buckle to be intact on the strap), and used E6000 (my trusty all-purpose industrial glue) to wrap the belt around the flat part of the D ring. I then used some extra yarn and wrapped it around the "joints" to secure it further, just in case!

The finished bag! I'm super happy with it :) I added a snap clasp at the front for extra security but I don't actually use it that much, oops.

close up! I like how you can kind of glimpse the gray under the white yarn - I think they pair super nicely together!

A close up of the belt and how I joined it to the bag

And here's me looking like a dork with the bag! I also made the dress I'm wearing - look out for that post soon!

If you like the bag, you should definitely try out the DIY! It was a super easy, super short project - took me about two nights after work, so maybe around 7 hours tops. It's the perfect summer bag, plus now I don't have to go choose between the ridiculous number of semi-identical crochet bags on the market now! This one's homemade and much cheaper ;)

Since the last time I blogged, a lot of things have happened. I went home for spring break and cuddled my baby sister. I finally sucked up my pride and went to MIT Mental Health. I stopped eating for a while and survived pretty much solely on nutrition drinks and occasionally mac and cheese from a box. I gained back my appetite. I danced. I survived the semester and my slightly-psychotic-and-abusive studio professor. I completed my last studio of my college career.

I think feeling a little bit inadequate can be helpful sometimes because it drives me to work more and to work harder. I've always wanted to be the best, possibly because the ideal has been so ingrained in me from society and from my parents. But often times wanting to be the best just results in feeling really, really awful - like not beautiful enough and not smart enough and not hardworking enough and just not enough.

During the time I was unable to eat, I - understandably - lost a bunch of weight. I lost weight to the point where a pair of too-small jeans that used to be rub against my hip bones so much that it was painful to wear for more than half a day now fit me perfectly. It was weird - I was panicking that I was losing weight so quickly but some small part of me was almost happy that I might finally be the size I want to be.

I remember distinctly rubbing my elbows at one point and truly being taken aback at how spindly and pointy they felt. For some reason, I have become more aware of the sharp edges on my body. I think my panic over losing weight so quickly has caused me to become more understanding and more accepting of my body.

It's enough.

I am enough.

My legs are enough. I have big thighs and big calves which make it hard to buy skinny jeans and normal boots, but they are enough. They let me explore the city and hike and walk and bike and dance.

My arms are enough. They are skinny and spindly and sharp but they help me be expressive.

My hands are enough. They are tiny but they are talented and steady and they allow me to express my creativity. They're also really good at getting into hard-to-reach nooks and crannies, which is useful when someone drops something and also when I'm building detailed models.

My stomach is enough. I may have a little bit of a belly but it lets me eat lots of yummy food! I think this is something that I've always had trouble accepting - I've always wanted to be skinny, but now I understand that I would never give up my bottomless appetite for something so facetious.

My body is enough.

And I'm also slowly understanding that not just my body, but my mind... it's also enough.

A couple days ago my friend commented to me that I work all the time. I laughed and I said that I do things other than work sometimes! I do side projects like crochet and knit and sew and draw and read and watch tv and sleep. I then realized that I had just included sleep as a fun, not-work thing, and I instantly sobered.

I've realized I need to start thinking in terms of being enough instead of not-enough. I am hardworking enough. I am talented enough. I am good enough. I am beautiful enough.

After all, I'm stuck being me for the rest of my life. Why spend it the rest of it continuing to beat myself up for not being enough?

I cope. I'm good at it. My automatic defense mechanism is repression. I like to make sure I'm so busy that I don't have time to deal with personal, emotional things. It's one of the reasons I have a tendency to overcommit.

The problem with repression is that there's always a tipping point. The problem with my brand of repression is that I don't know where that tipping point is, despite having surpassed that point at least once every semester since starting at MIT.

I've literally repressed my ability to gauge my mental health so much that the only reason I know I am stressed right now is because I have had about 3 weeks of continuous canker sores within my mouth, because I'm spotting, and because I have been tired for the past two weeks despite my attempts to get decent amounts of sleep.

So, my tipping point.

No, it wasn't the chain suicides MIT has had in the past two weeks.

It was the conversation my French professor had with our class in response to the suicides. She told us about her taking medical leave last year because she had been diagnosed with cancer, and the subsequent chemotherapy afterwards. She told us about how she got through the worst of chemo because of the people around her. She wanted to remind us that we weren't alone.

It was a good conversation.

Unfortunately, cancer is one of the few things that I cannot talk about without getting ridiculously upset.

My grandmother passed away from breast cancer my sophomore year of high school, on January 15th, 2010. She had been diagnosed earlier that year - the story I was fed at the time was that she had been watching a drama where the protagonist had been diagnosed with cancer, which inspired her to get a check-up specifically to look for cancer signs, when in actuality she had been a victim of horrific trauma which caused her systems to shut down. She underwent surgery despite her own protestations because my aunt, panicked, signed for it. She then underwent chemotherapy.

As a 13 year old child, I didn't really understand what was happening. What I did understand was that grandma was sick. I knew that the chemo was making her absolutely miserable even though I was only home a few weeks a year because I was at boarding school and even though she tried to hide it from me.

I will never forget the shock I felt when I went into her room and saw her wig that she used to hide her hair loss. I hadn't known prior to the discovery that chemotherapy made you lose your hair.

Honestly, I don't remember much from when I was 13. I remember my grandma always being happy and strong and learning English to communicate with me. I remember her making the best pickled radish I have ever had. I remember learning about her getting sick and how she didn't seem any different. I remember my grandma fighting with my mom and at one point hearing her say she had given up. I remember my grandma trying to survive for her grandchildren.

I remember the last time I ever saw her, lying frail and thin and weak in a hospital bed, attached to what seemed like hundreds of different tubes, unable to even breathe.

I remember the doctors telling us she was doing better.

She didn't do better.

I remember on January 11th, 2010, I drew a picture of death in my sketchbook. I remember writing down how I felt about the whole ordeal. I distinctly remember wondering what would happen if she passed away on my sister's birthday.

She passed away the day my sister turned 1.

I remember on that day I went back to that drawing and wrote that I had cursed my grandma into dying that day.

I remember being told my grandma passed away and that I wouldn't be able to return to China to say goodbye, because my parents wanted me to focus on my studies.

As if I could focus on something as trivial as The Canterbury Tales or Pre-Calculus when my grandmother had just been taken from me.

So I repressed the memory. I don't think about these moments. I think about my grandma when she was in her prime, caring for me and my parents and my aunt's family. I think about her quirks, like how she liked to put her soup dumplings in milk in a bowl and heat them up and how she thought that was tasty. I think about her obsession with Chinese herbal medicines and how she used to stink up the house.

I don't think about the memories associated with her being diagnosed with cancer.

I have a terrible case of survivor's guilt, one that has continuously been repressed since I was 13. It's been 6 years. Sometimes I still think about how it must be my fault that she passed away so coincidentally on Hera's birthday. Sometimes I still think about how if I had somehow had shown that I cared more, she wouldn't have given up.

The conversation we had today with my French professor drenched up all of these memories that I had repressed, and coupled with the amount of stress that I am apparently dealing with even though I don't seem to feel or recognize it - I ended up breaking down in class.

So I want to thank everyone that had to deal with me bawling my face off all day today, whether it be my French II classmates who tactfully didn't say anything, or my French II architecture grad student buddy who walked me to studio, to the people I ended up crying to in studio. I'm not in a good place. Again.

My roommate thinks that I should go to Mental Health, but thats a whole other blog post in which I get to talk about the stigma around mental health and how much of a non-issue my culture believes it to be. I'm definitely considering it, though. Again.

Maybe this time I'll actually seek help.

So approximately a quarter of the semester has already gone by. It simultaneously doesn't really feel like we've been in school for long, because of the snow days we ended up getting, and feels like we've been in school forever. I can't wait for a real break - just three more weeks to go!

Confession time: I did a dumb thing and overcommitted, again. Silly me thought, oh I'm only taking 3 classes this semester, I can fill all the extra free time I'll have with fun things like dancing all the guest performances.....and jobs. Except I didn't think about the fact that my biggest time crunch is and always will be studio, and I am still taking a studio.

And by the time I realized, I was already committed and I'm now technically working 4 jobs. 2 UROPs (Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program), one with John Ochsendorf, who's a professor in Civil Engineering (course 1) and Architecture (course 4), and who's possibly the coolest person on the planet (shh don't tell him I said that), and the other a continuation of the UROP I've been doing with Meejin Yoon. Which, by the way, is super awesome because that project I worked on kind of over the summer? Yeah, the Collier Memorial? Its being built and I get to see it happen.

I'm also babysitting a 15 month old boy 3 times a week for an hour each, and tutoring about once every two or three weeks.

Just so you know, no one should ever do this.

Just no.

Don't do it.

All of it is pretty fun, some more fun than others, and I get to make bank, but I don't have any time, at all. I wake up at 8 every morning and sleep at 1 or 2 every night, which seems like a fair amount (6-7 hours? College students can survive on that, right?) but the lack of sleep adds up. Just Sunday, my friend took one look at me and asked me if I had lost weight.

The last time she saw me was the Sunday prior.

Oops.

On the other hand, my classes have been going fairly well:

French II is surprisingly more difficult than I thought it was going to be. French I was a breeze, and I kind of assumed the second course would also be fairly simple. Wrong. Grammar is hard, and the fact that the only two languages I speak, English and Chinese, have approximately zero grammar at all doesn't help.

Also sometimes I get French confused with weird Japanese phrases that I know, which is probably the strangest experience ever. The languages are not similar at all.

Psychology of Gender and Race is super awesome, just as I thought it would be! I'm taking it with one of my roommates, so it gives us something to talk and laugh about as we trudge through the snow on our way home every Thursday night at 10 pm. Also, people are really uncomfortable talking about intimate things - not meaning intimate stories about themselves, but intimate things such as clitorises and penises and piggy-piling - in the class, which makes it infinitely more entertaining.

Last but not least, studio. My biggest nightmare. We've been working for the past month on a mapping exercise, where we study a certain aspect of our site in depth and quite literally map it out. Our review was last Friday, and my professor decided that I should redo the entire thing over the weekend to reflect the critiques given, which was good in that now I have a stellar map that shows what I want it to show and conveys multiple layers of information, and bad in that the review was over and I really didn't want to draw more lines.

To quickly walk you through the board, this is the same area of the Back Bay / South End area of Boston (the red-outlined and shaded section is our site) shown in two axonometric views and in a top view. The line type corresponds to the type of infrastructure it depicts (city fabric, turnpike, orange line, and commuter rail), the thickness corresponds to the amount of traffic frequency the infrastructure averagely receives (the thicker the line the more congestion, basically), and the lengths of the line corresponds to the width of the roads.

I also have two sections - one with buildings and one without - next to the axons to depict the two layers of infrastructure that goes on around the site.

I guess that's what I've been up to lately, busying myself with a bunch of stuff and getting not enough sleep to make me sufficiently happy! How have you guys been lately? Comment below and let me know!

I was introduced to the concept of Implicit Association Tests (IATs) in my Women and Gender Studies class, where we then went on to take multiple tests and write about our findings of our own internal biases in a paper.

To all my friends out there who've ever told me "I'm fine" when you looked visibly upset:

No. No you're not. Don't lie to me, but more importantly, don't lie to yourself.

I'm not the most aware of my friends' emotions - most of the time, I'm too busy wrapped up in my own little world of random things to deal with or too busy trying to get to the next place I have to be. So if I notice something's wrong, then something's really wrong.

I don't push. Or at least, I don't try to. I make it a habit to never ask "What's wrong?" or "Are you okay?" but instead I ask things like, "Do you want a hug?" Because for me, a hug speaks volumes more to the other person. Because an action is so much more successful at showing that I care, as opposed to a few words. Because I know that sometimes you're not ready to talk about it, and if you don't want to tell me that's fine. Tell me you don't want a hug, or you want to be alone. Push me away. Tell me to go away. Tell me to fuck off for all I care, as long as there's some kind of reaction. But "I'm fine"? I'm fine is the biggest lie anyone can ever tell. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to yourself.

And I'm always available for a hug, or to talk to, or to cry to. God knows I've done it enough to a good number of you, and I fully expect the same treatment back when you need to give it.

And I love all of you so much.

Snow days have filled up my last week so I literally have nothing new to write about, so I thought I could talk about something I'm sure a plethora of people are excited for. (psst. It's this Saturday.)

Valentine's day is coming up.

How do I know? Oh, only the massive plethora of overpriced chocolates and bright pink and ridiculously priced flowers in all the stores (but actually, why are you in my grocery store, I just want to get my veggies) and the massive plethora of Valentine's Day makeup tutorials and hair tutorials and outfit ideas and DIY gifts and recipes that are gracing my YouTube subscriptions page and my Pinterest.

And man, I hate Valentine's Day. I think it's the most ridiculous holiday ever.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for expressing your love towards others and showing affection and doing things to make them happy. I love it. I thrive on making little gifts for my sister and my friends and randomly doing the dishes for my roommates and writing notes for my friends when they're feeling stressed or down. My favorite thing to see on people's faces is a huge smile, so I like to try and put it there when I can.

But having a specific holiday, specially geared towards couples, and commercializing it? That's all wrong to me. For one day of the year, people like to spend ridiculous amounts of money on dinners (and having to make reservations weeks ahead of time) and chocolates and lingerie and flowers and for what? To demonstrate something that they already should be demonstrating? I understand the idea of wanting to have a special day to commemorate your love or whatever, but... make that your anniversary, or the day you went on a really cute date, or a birthday, or something, not something commercialized and advertised with a flying baby that carries a bow and arrow.

And the amount of sadness and loneliness that surrounds Valentine's day is heartbreaking, because I know girls that have lamented over having to spend this stupid holiday by themselves, or trying to find themselves a quick date specifically for Valentine's day because apparently if you're spending it alone and you've been alone for a long time there's something wrong with you. I know it, I've felt it, sometimes I still have doubts about myself and how I've been alone for literally so long, and every year without fail, my self-esteem dips just a little bit more because of Valentine's day and I spend the rest of the year trying to raise it up higher so that maybe the next time it dips again it won't hurt as much.

I know, boo hoo, woe is me, being a single woman for so long.

And I don't mind it, being alone. I have awesome friends, awesome roommates, people to love and people who love me back, and I get all the luxuries of not having to spend money on overpriced things or not having to shave until it starts getting warm or I have a performance and lazing around and being a total grandma like usual and not worrying about people judging me. It's just kind of weird when all my friends are pairing up around me (and I'm totally for it! I love matchmaking) and I'm not, because I start feeling like there's something wrong with me. And I don't think I should feel like that, I know I shouldn't feel like that, but I'm not quite sure how to fix it. I've been trying to do some serious self-love (like I mentioned in my New Year's Resolution post!) but like the years before, it's been wavering. Again.

Although I swear the next time I go back to China, if another relative asks me why I haven't found a boyfriend yet and mentions that it's "my time" because my older female cousin has a boyfriend even though my older male cousin is still living the single life, I will punch them. (Well, maybe not. I will chew them out though. My dad thinks it's hilarious when I pissed at my relatives for saying sexist things like that.)

I have noticed, though, that I feel the best about myself when I show love to others. I've been making it a personal goal to compliment someone I'm not familiar with a few times a week, even though it takes a lot for me to speak up and say things to people I don't know. I know how great it feels to be complimented, so I'm passing the love. And the smiles I've been getting? So worth it.

What are your thoughts on Valentine's Day? Do you like getting all dolled up for a special someone? Have you ever challenged yourself to compliment someone 3 - 4 times a week?

Now that I've had one of each class that I'll be taking this spring semester, I thought I'd recap my first week (more like semi-week) of the spring semester. Long story short, I'm taking 3 classes, one of which looks like it's going to be - let's just say, a loooooong semester - and the other two which look like they'll be loads of fun.

Bet you can't guess which one looks like it's going to suck butt.

Studio, or 4.024, or 4.115:

This is the only class I'm taking this semester that's within my major (the first time this has happened since freshman year!). So far we have been given a mapping exercise, where we look at different aspects around the site given (such as traffic patterns, history, wind pollution, etc), but we haven't actually been given our project yet, so basically literally everyone is confused about what's going on.

So far, the professor has given all of us a pretty terrible first impression - she doesn't pay attention when we present our ideas to her, she talks over everyone, she goes on ridiculous tangents, and she's just rude. I really hope it'll get better as the semester goes along.

French II, or 21F.302:

It's French 2 and my professor is possibly the cutest person ever. We've had two snow days and she emailed us saying that she hopes we're staying warm, drinking hot chocolate, and watching French films. (I have been staying warm but I haven't been drinking hot cocoa or watching French films. I've been watching a ridiculous Korean reality TV show and reading Le Petit Prince and sleeping.)

Psychology of Gender and Race, or WGS.228, or 9.75:

Honestly, I took this class because I needed to fulfill my HASS-S requirement (I tried to do this once by taking 9.00, or Intro to Psychology, and I gave up on it because I hate memorizing) and because my friend strongly recommended it. But I've only had one class so far and it looks really good! I'm actually really excited about it, despite it having an exam to look forward to at the end of the semester....


Unfortunately, I can't really say much more about the classes because I've only had a couple sessions of each (or in the case of WGS.228, only one) because of the snow! Boston has been in major shut down and I haven't left the house at all, save for one trip to the grocery store today. And rehearsal later, I guess, for ADT.

Speaking of which, I'm super excited about it because I got into the dance I wanted to get into!!!

How has the snow been treating you? Are you in school? What classes are you taking and are you excited about them?

I really enjoy watching TED talks because I can hear from inspiring people about a huge range of different topics, from architecture and self-assembly (one of my previous professor gave two talks on his 4D printing projects, watch them here) to self-confidence and health. I thought I could start a series on this blog about the different TED talks that I've watched and enjoyed while also perhaps putting in a little bit of my own input in. After all, I think part of the reason TED talks are so accessible is to help promote conversations.

A few days ago, I ended up watching a bunch of talks about health, food, and dieting. Part of the reason is because my roommate started taking a Food Anthropology class at MIT and shared this New York Times article with me. It discusses the relationship America has with food in comparison to other countries, namely France, and how that relationship is incredibly unhealthy. And with the New Year (I know, it's February, but the year is still fairly new! We're only like 30-something days in) there's obviously a huge wave of people dieting (again) and exercising (again).

To be honest, I've tried this whole dieting thing and exercising thing and I personally think I love food a little bit too much and hate exercise a little bit too much (or I'm just lazy) for it to work. I starved myself for a long time in high school - that didn't work (and it was unhealthy! Don't do it!). I also ran in high school, but no matter how much I ran (I was running 2-3 times a week) and how much water I drank, once I got off the treadmill I would get so dizzy I would have to sit down. Apparently running doesn't suit me.

I found this TED talk called "Why Dieting Doesn't Work", given by Sandra Aamodt:

While the science behind it is interesting, I already knew most of the information she was talking about. I was intrigued, however, by her concept of "mindful eating", which was also something - while not named - that was kind of discussed in the New York Times article. Mindful eating, as how I understand it, is basically taking the time to understand your body and the signals your body gives you. In that way, you let your body govern your eating patterns: eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full - don't keep those chips on hand to much on when your body doesn't need it! Obviously, this would be a long process because it goes against the whole 3-large-meals-a-day convenience. I thought, however, that I might try it - I've been trying to find ways to curb my sweet and savory cravings, not particularly in an effort to lose weight (although that would be awesome) but more because my constant cravings are kind of just annoying.

Things that I've learned so far:

1. My body either doesn't need very much food at all or I'm very bad at recognizing hunger signals. On Wednesday, I ate breakfast and only got hungry at around dinner time, but then I was starving by bed time (I slept it off).

2. 3 large meals a day is infinitely more convenient. In fact, my classes just happen to be structured so that it allows the time for those 3 large meals, with my "lunch time" to be an hour or so following my "breakfast time". I have a 1-5 class 3 out of 5 days of the week, which means while I would usually be getting hungry for a snack at around 3 pm (I eat breakfast at 10, and that holds me over for a pretty long time), I can't, so today I had to eat when I wasn't hungry to avoid the hunger in the middle of class, which kind of defeats the point of the whole mindful eating thing. On the other hand, because I spent a good amount of time this afternoon running around Boston, I became ridiculously hungry at 4. (I had a very early dinner.)

3. My savory cravings are ever present. They have always been ever present. The last time they were curbed, it was because I ate dinner at Yume wo Katare (in Porter Square) and the sodium levels and fat content of the ramen were so high I literally wasn't hungry until two days later.

4. Dried Mangoes have become my pecking snack: when I start to get a little bit hungry, I have a couple and drink some water and then I'm miraculously not hungry anymore. Dried mangoes are magic.

5. I no longer crave Twizzlers, which is good. I also no longer crave Swedish Fish or Sour Patch Kids. I think I will probably forever crave Lindt truffles. Mmm. Lindt truffles.

Obviously I don't expect to see changes after only doing this for a few days - I can't hope to understand my body so soon, and I'm unsure if my lacks of appetite and hunger are because my body doesn't actually need the food or because I've messed up my cues for hunger because I starved myself once not so long ago (again, don't do this. It's bad. Food is beautiful.) But I hope that as the semester progresses, I will come to understand my body more and become a healthier person through mindful eating.

And you know, the next time I come across a Lindt truffle and eat it, maybe I won't have to beat myself up over it.

What are your biggest cravings? What do you think about mindful eating? Let me know!

I've worn it a grand total of zero times.

In my defense (does this really need defending? Everyone has stuff they've bought and not worn... right?) it was an XXL which means it basically swallows me when I put it on. The plan when I bought it was that I was going to chop the bottom off... but then I never went to the beach afterwards and so never had the opportunity.

Oops.

So when I "rediscovered" the dress, I couldn't really justify getting rid of it - there was an excess of material, I had never worn it, blah blah blah... and stripes. I swear, stripes will be my downfall.

lol so big and so wide and so long

Time to chop it up!

I decided I wanted to make it a crop top and skirt combo (I've been really into that kind of thing recently, even though it is infinitely too cold right now to be wearing skirts and baring midriffs) so I cut it at a crop-top length, hemmed it, cut the shoulder straps to make it shorter (this part is super sketch looking actually because I was too lazy to properly figure out how to make the strap width match up soooo....) and decided I liked it oversized.

The skirt I cut shorter, hemmed, folded over the top, and threaded a wide elastic through it (this part was a pain in the butt because I HAVE NO SAFETY PINS. WHY CECILE. WHY HAVE YOU NOT INVESTED IN SAFETY PINS).

Super simple, super easy, and now I have two new pieces and more extra fabric that will probably eventually turn into another crop top!

yay for clothes that don't swallow me! you can see the extra fabric in the background.. I'm super good at cleaning up before taking photos for this blog

Have any of you ever tried "refashioning" or "upcycling" your clothes?

Also, let me know if any of you want an OOTD/OOTW post at some point! I'll try bullying my roommates into taking photos for me ;)