Today I attended a good old fashioned ivy league football game, and luckily Brown beat Cornell at home 27 to 7, in front of a spirited crowd. The weather was crisp, the hot dogs delicious, and the football was fast-paced and entertaining! The photo above is a panorama I made from where I was sitting in the stands.

This weekend was filled to the brim with activity, most of it with the scoobs up in Boston. So much activity, in fact, that I am dragging and tired on this sunny Monday morning, and feeling slightly congested like I might get a cold at any moment. But it was worth it, because I had so much fun! It almost makes up for having to attend nine solid hours of classes while everyone else enjoys their Columbus Day.

First, I received two very important packages in the mail on Friday: both my Spoonflower order and my Ponoko order! Great excitement. I haven't photographed the fabric, but I went a little nutso over my fancy yellow stars:

On Friday I headed up to Boston and, among other things, had lunch with the ladies of the scooby clan:

Then on Saturday Matt, Lizzi, and Julie came into town to see Waterfire and get a taste of the RISD atmosphere. I was running around a little crazed for a portion of it, but eventually got all my to-do items checked off, and we enjoyed a delicious dinner at the Red Fez before walking over to Waterfire. I even managed to get us all onto the roof of the Design Center so that we could see the whole thing! Very cool, and we only had to climb out of one window to do it!

And then on Sunday I drove back up to Boston to attend Charlotte's first birthday party. She started taking her first steps just this week, so of course there had to be repeat performances for all the grandparents. And a huge pink piggie cake to be smushed and consumed. Lottie didn't really know what to make of all of it, but she was pretty cute anyways! I drove home and went immediately to bed, I was so exhausted. Birthday parties take a lot out of you!

This week I tried out two cool services: Ponoko and Spoonflower. Both are new entries in a little niche called desktop manufacturing, where you can design something at your home computer and have it fabricated in small quantities without sacrificing quality or paying heavy setup fees.

Ponoko is basically an online laser cutter. You send them outlines created in Illustrator or Sketchup, and then choose from a menu of materials to have your shapes cut from. A few weeks later, you get a package in the mail! I tested it out with some Morroco-inspired stars that I had lying around my hard drive, and cut them out of yellow acrylic. So if you see me wearing yellow acrylic star earrings, you'll know where they came from. :)

Spoonflower is the same idea, but for textiles. You create a square design that can repeat or tile in any direction and then upload it to the site. Choose the size of fabric you want to print (anywhere from a fat quarter up to three yards) and in a few weeks you have your own fabric to work with! This has been my desktop background for a couple months now, but as fabric its destined to be a pair of pillows in a certain New York lady's new apartment.