I’m super excited to show you guys one of my latest lingerie sets, made from a kit I purchased from the Merckwaerdigh ebay shop. Let me give you some details first!

Here is the pattern and kit I used. Photos borrowed from the Merckwaerdigh shop!

On the left is the photo of the Mix 30 pattern, which you can find here. I also thought you might like to see what the kit looks like in the photo she provides. Photos on a computer screen can look different than in person, that’s for sure! So you have to take a bit of a leap of faith here. Her title for this kit was: “DIY LINGERIE PAKKET Zilver & Jeans voor Beha+Slip van Merckwaerdigh”… that’s Dutch! But I figured zilver = silver and jeans = denim, and I like those colors together so I went for it.

I showed you guys this sneak peak of the kit in my post about lingerie inspiration. I can tell you that in this case, the kit was pretty close in color to what I imagined. Win!

Some of you might be wondering how much it costs to buy a kit like this. Well I’m happy to share! Her price for this kit was €18.95, which comes out to about $28.75 in Canadian dollars. The Mix 30 pattern was €11.50 = approximately $17.45 Canadian. I ordered two kits, a pattern, and a bunch of elastic, and shipping came out to €26.35, which is around $30.00 Canadian. Not cheap, but not crazy either. The pattern I will use again and again. With the kit, I had enough fabric to make the bra and a pair of panties. I even have enough of the silver jersey and elastic to make another pair of panties, either without lace or with less lace. Yes, I can buy a bra and panties for less than that, but I wont get the same fit and quality! For me, this is totally worth the investment.

Okay, now the fun part…

I am so happy with how this turned out! For my first go at this pattern, I’m pretty smitten. The pattern went up to a size 38D, but I am a size 36E. Quick bra fact – that is the same cup size. As you go up in band size, the cup size goes down. So if you are a 32C, that is the same cup size as a 34B. I started with the 38D pattern, so that I had the correct cup size, and trimmed off some of the band to make it the correct size around by body. Keep in mind, there is some wiggle room there because there are three hook positions in the closure. So I wasn’t too concerned about getting the perfect band size, because I knew I could tighten or loosen a touch if needed.

The lace is my favorite part. This combination of fabric and lace really reminds me of lovely french lingerie. It’s not the most supportive style for me, but it’s a wide enough band, and the cup pieces that extend into the straps give me just enough of the lift I need. When I make this pattern again, I think I’m going to experiment with padding or lining the cups fully for a bit more support.

Oh yes! And with my adjustment to the band, the fit is pretty spot on! Here is the back view.

Isn’t the lace band gorgeous? The pattern is designed so the scallop of the lace ends up along the top edge of the band, with elastic sewn behind it. The bottom band edge is finished with wide picot band elastic.

The kit comes with the matching elastic to reinforce cup along the lace edge. The inside of the bra ends up looking really clean, because the fabric part of the cup is lined with tricot, which encloses the cup seam.  The pattern does not call for any lining in the band – it’s designed to just be lace. I thought this would be too flimsy so I decided to add power mesh as a lining. I actually thought of this after seeing a finished Mix 30 bra that Tasia made. I didn’t think the lace on it’s own could support my chest.  The power mesh lining is nude, so you barely notice it’s there, but it adds a ton of extra support. I love that about bra-making! You can really improvise. Our teacher in the bra making class called it “fudging it”. Hah!

Here is a close up of the back of the panties. The lace part is sheer. The first step in the construction is zig-zagging the lace edge to the knit fabric. You can kind of see my wavy zig-zag along the scallop edge. This is probably the most difficult thing to do in the whole construction of these panties, and it wasn’t too bad at all! They came together in a flash.

You can see the sheerness of the lace a bit better in this photo. So pretty right? There is only one thing that bothers me about these undies. I didn’t stretch the elastic enough as I was sewing the leg openings, so they came out a bit wavy looking. They fit totally fine on, but look a bit odd when you see them flat. I’ll know for next time!

Voila! My favorite lingerie set so far, probably because it’s just so darn pretty and feminine! Soon, I will have to give you an update after wearing.

See you next Wednesday!

Countway has Cooper the Therapy Dog … the Ernst Mayr Library has a flourishing group of Gromphadorhina portentosa. More familiarly known as the Madagascar hissing cockroach, these animals, which can grow up to 4 inches long, are quite unlike their pesky cousins, the ones that invade our homes and, though harmless, usually disgust us. After all, most people don’t enjoy going into their kitchens at night and opening a cabinet only to have multiple roaches skitter into corners, across counters, and even up one’s arm. Note the newly molted roach in the pictures. Hissing Cockroaches in the Ernst Mayr Library G. portentosa, on the other hand, move slowly and can’t survive on book glue and soap scum as their unpopular cousins can.

A researcher has identified the script used for annotations in the 1504 edition of Homer’s Odyssey held by University of Chicago Library. We will announce the results in a few days. Thanks to all the linguists, classicists, and other amateur detectives who responded to our call for assistance.

GENRE | WHAT MONSTER HURT YOU?
VERDICT | WHOA DUDE, YOU’VE CHANGED
LABEL | MERGE RECORDS

You know how telling someone that they’ve changed can be both an insult and a compliment? Well, we’re not sure which it is here. We love Wye Oak–they’re our favorite thing to come out of Baltimore since Senator Clay Davis–but we’re conflicted. “The Tower,” off the Charm City duo’s forthcoming LP, Shriek, is a total curveball, especially when considering their canon of atmospheric rhythms and feedback-feathered guitars. The single opens with a bright, evenhanded string of tones that keeps up even as Jenn Wasner’s flanged-out voice materializes from the ether. Whoa, Andy Stack, when did you fall so in love with your keyboard hand? (Sorry, but we’ve been hurt before. Remember that shit The Avett Brothers pulled with The Carpenter? That put us in such a dark place that we don’t know how to feel.) The poppy upturn is pleasant, though, and Wasner is a siren we’d sail into the rocks for, but still, we can’t shake the feeling that this is all a bit … chillwave-y. Maybe we’ll be proven wrong May 9 at the Paradise.

tastefullyoffensive:

[buckwheatwaffle]

In an attempt to drive home just how much time they spend creating their new T camera, German manufacturer Leica has created “The Most Boring Ad Ever Made?” featuring 45 minutes of an employee hand polishing a camera. The video highlights the camera’s finishing process in real-time, as a narrator attempts to dissuade uninterested parties from watching any further.

Of course, there are faster and less costly ways to make a camera, but is there a better way? A more fulfilling way? Hardly. Here everything is essential. Nothing is extraneous. And if that sounds boring, stop watching now.

via Robert Andersen

Rick Santorum is running for president. Again. According to the Republican Rulebook, the 2016 Republican nomination is his by rights. Santorum was the last NotRomney standing in 2012 and the GOP always nominates the runner-up next time around. To seal the deal Santorum went on MSNBC's Morning Joe today and urged Republican primary voters not to make the same mistake in 2016 that they made in 2012: failing to nominate Rick Santorum. Because it turns out that Santorum and only Santorum, according to Santorum and only Santorum, could've beaten Barack Obama in 2012. But we don't have to take his word for it! Some of Obama's own flying monkeys thought Santorum would've won if GOP voters had the sense to nominate him. They even told him so:

"Look, I thought I could have won last time," he said. "I'm convinced. You know I asked one of the Obama minions who were running the campaign 'Hey, why didn't you guys help me? I was up there battling Romney and all these folks at MSNBC were saying wouldn't this be great if, Santorum were the nominee, why didn't you help me? Why didn't you go out and bang me a little a bit, hit me you know, as being too conservative?'" "And the consensus was, 'We didn't want you, because of this,'" Santorum added, holding up his book.

Obama's minions were convinced that a book Rick Santorum hadn't written yet would win him the election. That must be some book. Anyway, Rick Santorum wrote a book. It's here. And Esquire's political blogger Charlie Pierce wrote a blog post. It's here. Money quote:

Bullshit, bullshit, and also, bullshit. First, I don't think this conversation [with an Obama "minion"] actually happened but, for the moment, let's assume that it did. One of the key factors in the president's re-election was a 12-point gender gap over a guy who once held relatively moderate positions on women's issues, but who abandoned them because he was a big old 'ho who wanted to get nominated. If the party had nominated Santorum, who actually believes this stuff, and has campaigned on it his entire career, there would have been a gender gap the size of the fking Bosphorus.

The gender gap was a key factor in the president's re-election. But it wasn't the only gap that factored in:

The backing Mr. Obama received from gay voters also has a claim on having been decisive. Mitt Romney and Mr. Obama won roughly an equal share of votes among straight voters nationwide, exit polls showed. And, a study argues, Mr. Romney appears to have won a narrow victory among straight voters in the swing states of Ohio and Florida. Mr. Obama’s more than three-to-one edge in exit polls among the 5 percent of voters who identified themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual was more than enough to give him the ultimate advantage, according to the study, by Gary J. Gates of the Williams Institute at the U.C.L.A. School of Law, in conjunction with Gallup. The results are consistent with earlier research on the number and political beliefs of gay voters.

A 12-point gender gap? That's nothing. Romney suffered a 52-point queermo gap. Obama and Romney split straight voters down the middle while 76% of voters who identified as queer backed Obama. It's hard to picture a scenario in which Rick Santorum—AKA "Frothy Mix," AKA "Man On Dog," AKA "Ban Gay Marriage"—would've picked up a larger share of the LGBT vote in 2012 than Mitt Romney did. And unless Rick's daughter has millions of imaginary gay friends—and they're all registered to vote—Frothy Mix doesn't have a prayer in 2016.

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clintcatalyst:

Maria Bradley
Photo : Tetsu Kubota
Fashion Editor / Stylist : Maher Jriti

Staff in the Library’s Regional and Cooperative Cataloging Division and the African/Asian Acquisitions and Overseas Operations Division now create catalog records for materials published in the “JACKPHY” languages (Japanese, Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Persian, Hebrew and Yiddish) online in the LC ILS.

Dear Members of the Harvard Community, The U.S. Department of Homeland Security recommends that all users temporarily discontinue the use of Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) due to a critical security flaw. Harvard Information Security recommends that all members of the Harvard community use another browser, such as Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome, until a fix has been issued for IE. If Harvard internal sites require the use of IE, please limit use to those specific sites. For more information about this flaw, please visit the Harvard Information Security website, security.harvard.edu. Sincerely, Christian Hamer University Chief Information Security Officer

We asked people in BuzzFeed’s U.K. office to tell us what stereotypes they had of every state in the U.S.A. Here are their responses. We’re so terribly sorry, America.

Tom Phillips/BuzzFeed | ekler/Shutterstock

Here is it in more detail, broken state-by-state. First up, Alaska and Hawaii.

Tom Phillips/BuzzFeed | ekler/Shutterstock

The West.

Tom Phillips/BuzzFeed | ekler/Shutterstock

The Middle Bit.

Tom Phillips/BuzzFeed | ekler/Shutterstock

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If my years of being part of the sewing community has taught me one thing, it's this: [functional] pockets make everything better. So, if you too are on Team Pockets, you'll love this helpful tutorial for adding pockets to almost any skirt pattern!

Read more on MAKE

The Massachusetts school failed to comply with Title IX, the Department of Education said Monday. UPDATED.

Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.

Flickr: Knar Bedian / Creative Commons / Via Flickr: hyekab25

The Department of Education said Monday that it "may move to initiate proceedings to terminate federal funding" at Tufts University after finding the Massachusetts school failed to comply with Title IX.

Title IX is a federal law that requires schools to "respond promptly and effectively" to sexual violence and harassment. Among the school's specific violations, according to the government: Tufts didn't employ a Title IX coordinator for two academic years, and "allowed for the continuation of a hostile environment" for one student who identified as a survivor.

The Department of Education said Tufts' violations aren't limited to these past incidents; its current policies don't comply with Title IX requirements, either. But in a statement on Monday, Tufts called this an "unsubstantiated finding" — one that led the school to revoke a voluntary agreement it made with the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to work toward compliance on April 17.

According to the university, at the time that agreement was signed, OCR didn't inform Tufts that its current policies were out of compliance — only its past practices. Days later, when OCR informed the school of its current finding, Tufts revoked its signature.

"We could not, in good faith, allow our community to believe that we were not in compliance with such an important law," the school said, adding that its "repeated requests to speak with OCR in Washington about this new finding have been unsuccessful."

In its statement, OCR acknowledged that Tufts had made "important improvements" to its policies. "However," it said, "more changes are necessary to ensure the safety of more than 10,000 students."

Tufts said it was "surprised and disappointed" by the "unexpected and troubling" declaration:

Tufts University is deeply committed to the safety and well-being of our students, faculty and staff. We have in place and fully support policies and procedures that comply with Title IX, are consistent with the significant guidance documents issued by the department, and effectively serve our students, faculty and staff. We believe the department's recently announced finding has no basis in law ...

In an email to BuzzFeed, activist Wagatwe Wanjuki — who founded the blog Raped At Tufts University after a disappointing experience with Tufts' judicial process in 2008 — said she was "heartened" at the news of OCR's findings.

"I know too well the impact of the university's failure to take sexual assault seriously," Wanjuki said. "While I am disappointed that the same university that failed me in the aftermath of sexual violence has done the same to other survivors, I am grateful for the actions of the Department emphasizing the need for schools to protect students' civil rights under Title IX."

Tufts said it has requested to meet with OCR in Washington; OCR said it "stands ready to confer with Tufts on how to come into compliance speedily."

Along with Monday's press release, the Department of Education also published the voluntary agreement in question — the sort of document that is often kept between schools and federal government. Though it has pulled out of the agreement, Tufts said it's still moving forward with "actions described in that agreement."

"Indeed many of those actions have already been undertaken," Tufts spokeswoman Kimberly Thurler said in an email.

Read the government's letter to Tufts University.

LINK: Read a letter sent to students and faculty by Tufts President Tony Monaco.

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karlosmadera:

So it’s 3AM and It’s just occurred to me that the most telling scene in the entire Harry Potter franchise is the scene following the announcement of the participants of the Triwizard tournament.

When Harry’s name is pulled out of the cup, literally one of the first things he is asked is “did you ask an older boy to put your name in the cup for you?" or something to that effect, insinuating that, that was something nobody prepared for and that it was something that totally would have worked if anyone had been smart enough to figure it out.

However, in an earlier scene a student is turned into a hundred year old man when they try to artificially age themselves with a potion and put their name into the cup. Meaning someone trying to dangerously age themselves with potion they aren’t familiar with was something the teachers genuinely considered to be more likely than someone asking for fucking help from another student.

In other words, the wizards in Harry Potter’s world are so reliant on magic that it doesn’t occur to anyone save for people like Harry that asking for help is even an option in a given situation. This explains why wizards are so fucking ass-backwards at everything, they’re so confident that their magic is capable of doing everything for them that it has never occurred to fucking anyone that perhaps asking for help from the muggle world might be of some use.

Think about it, the wizarding world hasn’t changed in hundreds of years while in that same space of time the muggle world has figured out fucking space travel. I know it’s a cliché to say to say someone could have fucking shot Voldemort, but seriously, somebody totally fucking could have, he killed like 50 people, he was effectively a terrorist, if anyone in the wizarding world bothered to ask for help from the muggles instead of just telling them there was an invisible asshole flying around shooting death curses at everyone, they may have been able to help. 

Pretty much the only reason Voldermort thinks he’s better than muggles is because he’s able to kill them with impunity using magic, something he’s only able to do so easily because muggles don’t understand what magic is. Voldemort is basically like a fucking disease, he’s an invisible, lurking entity preying on mankind from the shadows like a cowardly piece of shit. You know what else did that? Smallpox and we stomped that to death the second we understood it. That’s the difference between muggles and wizards, when muggles don’t understand something, they figure it out.

And here’s the kicker, the only reason muggles don’t understand magic at all is because the wizarding world deliberately withholds information about it. However, even if the wizarding world kept doing that, it’d only be a matter of time until a muggle figured out what magic was and how to stop or harness it because that’s what humanity does, it pushes past what we think is impossible to see what’s on the other side. We didn’t understand the sun as a species originally and now we use it to power satellites and smartphones.

The wizarding world isn’t a realm of infinite possibilities, it’s a universe of strict limitations where boundaries are never questioned. The muggle world is where the real magic happens. That’s why during the course of the Harry Potter books, which are set between 1991 and 1998, the muggle world (our world) discovered dark matter, cloned a sheep and invented fucking MP3s while the wizarding world were literally paying some dipshit to figure out what the purpose of a rubber duck was.

Wow, I really shouldn’t think about this stuff when it’s like 3AM, it gets kind of dark.

harry potter was already broken, it was just relying on people’s unquestioned assumptions that it wasn’t

Dirty Habit is the horribly-named bar/restaurant in the former Fifth Floor Restaurant space in San Francisco. The interior, though, is sexy, with space-age lighting and a huge new patio. You will want to drink there. I had a preview of many of the drinks (sorry, no photos) and they seem pretty split between super-fruity-friendly and serious cocktails, and it's easy to tell which will be which when you read the menu. There are also barrel-aged and shareable drinks, served in fun vintage glassware - and one served in a lunch pail. Dirty Habit opens on May 1. Menu below subject...

[Visit Alcademics.com for the full post.]

We treat people as guests, not customers. We make people feel like they're in their living room,” said Wiersma. “Sundays and Mondays are the best night to come — it's friends and family.”

The newly popular version of milk punch is a clear drink, not a creamy one.

Taxa, text, and trees.

The Internet is a brilliant invention. It’s complex, elegant, and took some of the brightest minds on Earth to create. But at heart it is a dumb network. The genius of the Internet is that the actual transport of your data is completely neutral by design. The intelligence is in the applications that run on what is a set of dumb pipes.

Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon are not dumb. And they aren’t interested in owning dumb networks. They think that because they own some of infrastructure they should be allowed to make it more intelligent. They also think Google, Netflix, and Microsoft will pay for a supercharged, tier one service that moves their packets along faster. Upstart Internet companies that can’t pay extra will have to settle for slower service.

Net neutrality is the reason we have this wonderfully dumb network. While it might not be dead, it is mortally wounded. The FCC says it is not killing Net neutrality rules, but will change them later this year. They only promise that telecom companies will have to act in a “commercially responsible manner.”

Right. Like they always have.

The kind of network intelligence they are proposing kills innovation. When the Internet is neutral, the services that run on it have to be smarter. They have to be more clever and user-friendly than their competitors. When money becomes the differentiator, innovation is devalued and incumbents have all the power.

No one is going to try a new music service that keeps dropping songs because Pandora is hogging the bandwidth. No one is even going to think about launching a new online movie service if Netflix and Amazon have access to the fastest pipes.

Service providers claim they’re making the Internet more robust and powerful. When AT&T had monopoly control over the entire phone system, they made a system that was hyper-robust, intelligent, and powerful. But while they hardly ever dropped a call, there was very little innovation for the user for more than a century. We had rotary, landline phones in 1890 and rotary, landline phones in 1990. Plus maybe call waiting and voicemail.

The only solution is more competition. How many options do you have for Internet access? If you want a different Internet provider where you live, who would you call? The cable company? Maybe DSL?

If that remains the case, we will soon have gatekeepers with the unchecked power at every door.

Let’s stop pretending the Internet is still a beautiful, pure and elegant technology that leaked out of a government research lab and magically gave everyone free access to a better life. They own the Internet now.

But there are lots of ways to change the dynamic. For one, we have to force monopoly networks to open their networks to competition. Your cable company can’t be the only service provider to use its fiber cables. Those networks are a public utility. They have to be forced to lease it out to competition. If the networks are going to control what we see, we can’t let them have monopoly control.

It will take a lot of time and hard work to change the rules for the better. But we can start today. We can still fight to keep the net dumb. Start by signing a petition. There is still time to come out swinging for neutrality. http://www.savetheinternet.com/sti-home

The Hill reports:

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) defended the controversial enhanced interrogation technique of waterboarding this weekend, and implied that the practice would still be commonplace “if I were in charge.” “They obviously have information on plots to carry out Jihad,” she said at the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual meeting on Saturday evening, referring to prisoners. "Oh, but you can’t offend them, can’t make them feel uncomfortable, not even a smidgen. Well, if I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists.”

Palin's 2008 running mate, Sen. John McCain, has repeatedly denounced waterboarding as torture. McCain was tortured during his five years in a Vietnamese prison camp.

(Video Link)

The Bay Area is home to Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose, three big cities that have been home to a vibrant street art scene since the early days of bombing trains and rocking end to end burners on the sides of buildings, and yet very little is known about the early days of Bay Area graffiti.

This fascinating documentary by KQED Arts is called Bay Area Graffiti: The Early Years, hosted by street artist NEON and it attempts to peel back the veil of secrecy a bit to show us the brightly painted early days of aerosol art in those cities by the bay.

-Via Laughing Squid

houghtonlib:

12 volumes in metal case with glass front, resembling miniature bookcase; miniature magnifying glass in slot at foot.

Midget Library, Glasgow : David Bryce & Sons, [between 1880 and 1900]

505.36*

Houghton Library, Harvard University

Contents: 1. New Testament 2. Burns poems 3. Old English, Scotch and Irish poems 4. The Koran 5. Golden thoughts from great authors 6. Witty, humorous and merry thoughts 7. The smallest English dictionary in the world 8. The smallest French & English dictionary in the world 9. A new pocket dictionary of the English and German languages 10. The tourists’ conversational guide in English, French, German, Italian 11. Tiny alphabet of birds 12. Tiny alphabet of animals.