Moving Over

Hello! If you’re here you have found one of my many blogs! There are too many I fear so I’m moving over to a single place.

 

Find that place here: http://michellejuettsilva.blogspot.com/

Monster of the Day Starts Tomorrow!

Wow. October literally snuck up on me. I thought I had a few more days of September left until I saw a calendar and noticed that tomorrow is indeed October 1st! I guess that means I’ll be starting up my MotD streaming! I won’t be able to do streaming of all of them due to some stuff coming up late October but I’ll keep them going as long as I can! Tune in tomorrow at 9pm Eastern at http://twitch.tv/shelldragon for the fun!

Monster of the Day 2013

Hello old and forgotten blog. I’m reinstating you at my whim once again. The year is 2013 and my intent to create another October of monsters with my Monster of the Day project. I’ll be streaming at http://twitch.tv/shelldragon daily, as I can, my Monsters of the Day. Last year I decided it would be one monster a week and working on it daily. This year, I’ll take up one new monster each day but decrease the level of polish in the interest of time. I’m brainstorming and taking suggestions now, though! So, suggest away!

October MotD 2012

It’s about time again for October and Monster of the Day. I’m going to change things up in an attempt to complete an entire month of monsters. Instead of a single new monster each day, I will choose one monster for a each week and work on it for half an hour to an hour every day until the end of the week. This process starts Monday, October 1st at approximately 9pm EST. I will also Ustream some of them if I can get it all set up and feel confident enough about showing everyone my process. I haven’t decided on a monster yet for week one but I’m thinking of starting with a base idea, growing and changing it each day. I’m completely open to suggestions but please be somewhat more creative than zombies.

Update: After some fussing around with Ustream and with help from some friends from Twitter, I’m going with Twitch.tv to stream this mess come October. Here’s my Twitch.tv url. Keep an eye out on Twitter if this sounds like something you want to spend your evenings watching, I’ll be posting when the stream is live.

Thanks! Here’s to a great October!

Summer Runnin’

It would appear I completely left this blog post in the dust. Fortunately, I did not do the same with my training leading up to the indoor tri and the YMCA indoor/outdoor Anyone Can Tri. Much has happened since January. Here’s a little recap:

Summing Up The Last Few Weeks

Week 2 (1/29) – My birthday! I organized a run on Monday to celebrate. I think this officially makes me running crazed. I took more rest than usual this week but still got in some runs and a F.I.T. Camp class. Superbowl Sunday!

Layers

I was digging through old art files and checking out how I would use layers in different pieces. I decided to show how I use layers. I don’t use them the same way for every project but here’s one way I used them in the past.

The First Week I Tri-ed

Enjoying my clever titles? I’ll “tri” to keep them going.

Here’s what happened(and what will happen since I’m writing this Thursday night) my first week of triathlon training:

I Can Tri

I’m starting triathlon training tomorrow and I would like to blog about it a bit to share my quest. This is an adventure I would have never seen myself taking on five or even one year ago.

I was never very athletic. I dabbled in swim and tennis in high school but I was never very good at anything. Mediocre maybe, but certainly not varsity level. I was the very bottom rung of junior varsity and I only stayed because my friend was on the team with me. I also took dance classes once a week but again, no amazing ballerina here.

Thankfully, my high school offered aerobics instead of P.E. and I finally found something I was good at. I could do cardio and lift light weights like no one’s business. I was a decently fit teenager.

Then college happened. In college, an unhealthy relationship happened. We’d eat dorm food, then eat fast food because the prior wasn’t satisfying. I gained a lot of weight. Freshman 15? Try Freshman 45. Not kidding. With my tiny frame my bmi skyrocketed from a healthy normal-low to actually obese.

Crochet Skull!

As you may have seen on my twitter, I couldn’t for the life of me find a good, free skull crochet pattern. It’s not that I have a problem with buying patterns, it’s just that I have no guarantee I’ll understand the pattern and be able to make use of it. Everyone has their own pattern writing style and I don’t always get what they’re trying to say. The free patterns I did find were hideous and not at all in a style I could enjoy and feel proud wearing. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention… or was that second cousin… Anyway, I got so frustrated by what I found that I decided to create my own pattern. I’ve been crocheting for about a month but I’ve done enough variety of things that I could take what I knew to shape what I wanted. Here is the resulting pattern. FOR FREE! Because unless you’re a world class crochet pattern inventor, I happen to think patterns like this should be free. Please share your success or failures with me and let me know if I can make the pattern better!