Graduated on Saturday. Graduate student fashion show Sunday. Sleep on Monday.

It's been a hard 5 years, a lot of money spent, but I worked my ass off for my two degrees, plus first-class honours. It was an experience, I've had enough of school for awhile, and am ready to move on into the next phase of my life.

As of this moment (crossing fingers that there will be no more cuts), I officially have 3 looks into the SCAD fashion show 09! I'm so excited! All those months of torture was worth something in the end. :D

It airs live May 16, 8pm ET on SCAD TV.

Wow, it has been eons since I posted anything on LJ. Some life I've had lately, staying up late nights in the sweatshop sewing room completing my senior collection. I'm totally exhausted, but let's cut to the chase.

Anyways, Jury Show. I would consider it the most important event in a fashion senior's calendar because it will determine if you get into the fashion show. Each senior makes 6 "looks" (a look can be a dress or a 3 piece suit, thus a look does not necessary mean one garment). 4 out of my 6 "looks" are going to the jury panel next Saturday.

( click to view photo )

On Saturday, I welcomed the most adorable little kitten to the household. He's a red Abyssinian, very sociable and daresay he'll grow up to be a very bold troublemaker. He has taken to sleeping in our bed and wakes us up half the night purring and cuddling, and I have more scratches on my arms and legs than I can count on my fingers. But we love him. And he's called "The Stig". (For those who don't watch BBC's 'Top Gear' -- awesome show!, "The Stig" is the anonymous test driver for the show.)

I'll post pictures later. Right now, I have to go prepare to do something called "going to class".

Discovery of the day: Stiggy is most amused by wire ties. An excellent way of preoccupying him so he doesn't follow me out of the house.

After all the sleepless nights and effort put into it, I still only managed a B in senior collection. I'm not exactly pleased, but it could always be worse. I was hoping to scrape an A. (I really do hope it wasn't the fact that I forgot to submit some small minute part of the final assignment so I submitted it late because I didn't read my emails the day after finals were over because I was busy trying to SLEEP that I only read the threat email sent by my prof 24 hours later, which was to lower the finals grade by a letter and that would SERIOUSLY PISS ME OFF. It wasn't like I didn't submit one of the most crucial aspects of the assignment. Okay, typing this up has me peeved.)

On the upside, business got an A, as expected, and all my last minute-ish late night efforts in publication pulled through an A, so at least my Graphic Design GPA remains unscathed since the dreadful Bs I got in Type II and Studio II.

Graphic Design is officially over and done with! I have unofficially completed one degree!

Just a quick wave to let you guys know that I'm still hanging onto my very fibre of being and calmly reassuring myself there is no need to panic for THE END OF THE FRIGGIN QUARTER WHERE ALL MY WORK IS STILL HALF DONE!!!!!!

Nothing much is new (except for the new macbook pro that I have!). Senior collection is still draining the shit out of me. Outside of graphic design people, others think that I'm sheer genius at branding my fashion label for my imaginary childrenswear company for class and a whiz at computer presentations (erm yeah, what the heck do you think I've been doing for 4 years of my life? Branding things left, right and centre on the friggin computer!)


That's it for now, I'm going back to sewing. Maybe at the end of the quarter I might post my fashion stuff (flocked of course, this is top secret people!) so you guys can see what I've been working on down in the SCAD caverns where nights are endless and no one sleeps!

I have succumbed to the shinyness that is the new macbook. Shiny.

See LJ post here.

Yes. Sylar is a Petrelli. I am *that* good.

In SCAD news, senior collection is driving me batshit crazy. It's like, you come up with 50 designs. Go to class. 30 are thrown out the window. You take the remaining 20 and alter/create more from there. End up with 50 designs. Go to class. Repeat (you get the drift) till around April. Prepare to get slaughtered in Savannah (repeat this process about 6-7 times). (Optional) Turn up at SCAD Fashion Show 2009 as a zombie because all life has been sucked out of you.

I had to redesign my portfolio site for Portfolio class. Spent the whole of today tweaking it. So anyways, pimping my portfolio website here.

www.esthertham.com

I received my official grade transcripts in the email today.

I had been worried about my grades for two classes that had me really stressed and working my ass off this summer.

I was pleasantly surprised and relieved to know that I pulled straight A's this quarter, and not B's that I was actually expecting as I didn't really feel I did well given the critiques in classes. That boosts my GPA a little from that one B in spring quarter. Yay.

One class for graphic design left, and eight classes for fashion left. Senior collection here I come!

Summer quarter is finally over. I have 12 days till fall quarter starts. I have 18 days till my fashion research portfolio for senior collection a.k.a "year-of-no-sleep" is due (doomsday: Sept 16).

Summer classes isn't exactly a breeze (well, considering I took 3 studio classes which were all pretty heavy in their own ways), and I haven't had an extended break since, well, last summer. Winter break I was working on research for my fashion research, which I need to put together in under 18 days. That is plus sketching out 30 looks (and by looks meaning top, bottom plus accessories if needed), of which I've only thought of about a grand total of 2 looks. Supposedly the collection would take about 50 - 100 pieces (blouses, skirts, pants, belts etc).

Plus, I caught the flu during finals week.

But overall, life is still good.

(And graphic design is almost complete! One class left! Whee!)

There are days were I question my liking for graphic design. It seems to me that the more I have to study about it, the more I seem to be disliking it, not that I ever proclaimed undying love and passion for this subject. But the course is almost over now and I'm just going to suck it up and finish it while working around my creative rut.

So I'm supposed to make a run to one of the (graphic design) printers today but I'm feeling like crap right now (cramps and the like) so I've been basically vegetating around the house. It started off with trying to find Project Runway (season 5 started this past Wednesday and I'm bummed because we don't have Bravo here :( ). Youtube is a fucktard for constantly deleting anything that isn't a personal home video. The links on show-links keep choking. I seriously need bittorrent.

I end up wasting away the entire day watching "Secret Diaries of a Call Girl". I had recently become undeniably addicted to "Doctor Who" and obsessively worship the Doctor/Rose, where personally when I get interested in characters I also get interested in other projects of the various actors/actresses. ( So... ) Now they just need to crank out series 2 quickly.

And, unfortunately, like "Doctor Who", "Secret Diaries" is a UK production so I'll have to be relying entirely on the internet for this. >.<

Oh, and a WTF for the day. Project Runway is ending it's airtime contract with Bravo and switching to Lifetime for season 6 onward. Okay, so maybe PR is more of a female and gay fanbase thing but who on earth watches fucking Lifetime? I only did once because Bella Mafia (with James Marsden!) was on it.

Ok, I need to get my ass off the chair and start on my drawing. At least I like my Life Drawing class.

The quarter is over.

Now to proceed on with THE SUMMER PROJECT OF DOOM.

Work progress is minimal but moving forward. Half of my garment pieces are cut up and serged. I'm just waiting on my rayon which is assumed to still be on the UPS truck. Illustrations and companying flats for final garments are done (drawn, printed and mounted). Started on illustrations for CAD (flats for CAD are done). Need to make major progress on flats for apparel III. Need to get illustrations for pop-up book done. Need to scan them in and print out draft to create trial pop-up mechanics.

And I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing but for the past few days I simply cannot sleep for more than 4 hours at one go. It's probably a bad thing because I know for one that I have accumulated quite a few hours of sleep debt and sleeping this little every night isn't helping. But I can't sleep with so much stress about the projects on my mind. I want to up my work pace but I've been so lethargic I have the pace of a snail.

And I just received news that put the cherry on top of my wonderful stress list. Prior to starting senior collection I in fall, I have to do A SUMMER PROJECT AS PREPARATION FOR SENIOR I. ISN'T THAT GREAT? AND THE BEST THING IS, I AM DOING A FULL-TIME COURSE (3 CLASSES) DURING THE SUMMER!!!

*keels over and dies*

1) Approximately 92 flats (technical fashion drawing as if the garment was laid flat and outlined) to be rendered in illustrator. [It takes LONGER than expected.]

2) 31 fashion illustations, 30 of which have to be done in Photoshop, 1 in markers.

3) A pop-up children's book, consisting of sixteen 16" x 8" spreads. Book is fully hand-illustrated and illustrations are still in progress. I have to print a draft AND THEN figure out the mechanics of the pop-ups.

4) Sew a garment. Still waiting on my orange rayon fabric from Mood (yes, the Project Runway Mood) which should arrive at least by Friday when I called them up about 20 minutes ago. Garment is a redesigned pair of overalls.

ALL PROJECTS ARE DUE IN A WEEK. JUST ONLY STARTED PANICKING YESTERDAY.

But my headache is killing me right now. And my entire body is aching. I hope I'm not coming down with something as I haven't been eating very regularly either. I'm eating dinner now but the last decent meal I had before this was breakfast yesterday. Other than that it was just quick bites/snacks/soda.

I've slept less than 4 hours each night for the past 2 nights, working on, as always, my fashion project.

After having a near panic-attack with my fabric fiasco (I ordered the most gorgeous silk chiffons from Mood -- yes, the Mood from Project Runway), where it took them 5 FUCKING BUSINESS DAYS (when I placed shipping for a 2 business day delivery) to get my fabrics to me. I had to call them up to find out that they were waiting on new stock and that's what kept my fabrics waiting. It would have been decent if they just sent me an email instead of trying to induce a heart attack.

I called them up, very agitated, regarding shipping. And then the UPS guy came. So I proceed to skip my two classes on Monday in hopes of being able to finish my garment for TODAY. Considering that I started at 10am yesterday all through 2am, and then worked on it again at about 8.30am this morning, I worked about 20 hours on my dress. The only reason why I stopped at 2am was because they kicked us out of the fashion building at 2 am. Because the seniors have finished their final projects. Erm, hello, we juniors (academically going by credits, I am considered a junior in fashion) have a very heavy workload too!!! If I could steal one of the sewing machines I would so totally do it.

Oh yes, silk chiffon is highly flammable. I was advised to melt the edges of chiffon over a candle, and it was nasty. I have the burn marks on my dress to prove it. So if you're wearing something that contains chiffon, stay far far away from any source of flame.

I think I'm beginning to lose touch with the social world. So far I've already pulled two all-nighters and it's only midterms. I don't want to think about finals. Lots of things to do. It's going to be another working weekend, and I am SO looking forward to my next sewing assignment. It's going to be FUN.

It never feels like I get any work done everyday. I'm feeling really sleepy (I pulled an all-nighter last night and then came back from class and crashed half of the afternoon) and I should probably go to bed.

My leather coat + cashmere cape is done and critiqued (for further alterations for a final critique at the end of the quarter).

I pulled an all-nighter last night. I didn't sleep for a straight 31 hours, and I didn't eat a proper meal for a straight 18ish hours. It was a miracle I could still function and drive myself to and back from class, as well as make a quick grocery run.

Thing is, I was up all night doing my fashion flats, only to be notified in class that what was adamant to be submitted is now only being collected at the end of the quarter. I'm pretty pissed off at that. I could have had a good night's sleep after slaving away late hours into the night working on this coat + cape SINCE LAST WEEKEND. I'm horribly sleep deprived and starting to be socially deprived as well lol.

I crashed for a good almost 4 hours, and ate dinner. Now I'm just taking the night off and I'm going to enjoy and nice weekend because I deserve it after all the crap I've been put through for fashion.

Finally got down to changing my layout. Season two Claire annoyed me much, and I was waiting for Enchanted to come out on DVD so I could screen capture the ending sequence, because I only care for Edward/Nancy (James Marsden/Idina Menzel) in the movie and no one else seemed to give a damn about screen capturing them.

I really wished that they had a longer sequence. And damn you Disney! YOU PROMISED TO PUT THE JIMMY/IDINA DUET (supposedly recorded) ON THE DVD AND I DON'T SEE IT!!!!! I don't know whether to fume or cry.