Hello, I blog!
I share all my sporadic and toilet thoughts in here, because I am random like that.
Cycling is awesome
I cycled a total of about 14 kilometres today – from Still Road South to the eastern end of East Coast Park (near NSRCC) and back (map). This excludes some additional scenic exploration detours along the way.
Long evening shadows.
I’m pretty pleased, because I haven’t properly cycled in aeons. Additionally, didn’t quite realize that I could last all the way – usually my heart goes bonkers after a while – but it held out! (;
Invigorating, it was. The sky was a clear blue, and I witnessed a pretty awesome sunset.
Should definitely do this more often.
Tee-painting in progress
I’ve been wanting to do this since forever but have been holding out for years. One, because I had little or no faith in my painting abilities – especially when it comes to fabrics. Two, I didn’t have any good-quality plain tees on hand and was too lazy to head out to source for one.
So, when a plain white tee (of very decent cotton quality) landed on my lap (thanks to the sample t-shirt sourcing done by my work company a coupla’ months ago), it was a painting opportunity screaming for my attention.
Additionally, when I spotted a giant ‘Sales!’ banner at Spotlight – Singapore’s largest fabric and craft store – the opportunity began screaming even louder. I managed to get DYLON black fabric paint at 20% off. Whee.
I began by manually drawing out letters using a blunt pencil. (Yes, manually. No stencils were involved here because I had none. I measured the dimensions of the tee like crazy to ascertain where exactly I wanted the letters and that they were positioned symmetrically. I’m that anal. :P)
Drawing out the letters.
If you intend to do a similar tee but is too lazy to draw out the letters manually, you can create your own stencils by printing out letters on light cardboard and cutting them out.
And yeah, I know your eyes are boggling right now at the choice of letters on the t-shirt. I’ve been wanting a t-shirt with “WTF” printed on it since forever and I can’t seem to find them anywhere. So I decided to make my own.
Painting in the letters with fabric paint.
Following which, I filled in the letters with a soft brush dipped in the fabric paint. Because I wasn’t using stencils, this was pretty tricky especially when it came to ensuring the edges of the letters were perfectly straight. (Well, they weren’t in the end. But the very slight jaggedness was not very noticeable unless you looked very closely.)
Thankfully, I had decently steady hands so the outcome turned out pretty well.
Leaving the tee out to dry.
I left the tee out to dry for approximately three hours. Actually, the required drying time was much less than that but I just wanted to be sure. (First time painting a t-shirt, remember? Plus, I was really worried I might screw up something – although everything was pretty smooth thus far.)
After drying, iron over the letters (to set the paint permanently) with an electric iron on the highest possible heat setting, and a cloth placed over the letters (no direct heat contact here – the last thing you’d want is a t-shirt on fire!). The instructions on the bottle of fabric paint called for 1-2 minutes, but I did this for 4-5 minutes. (Weeeell. Just wanted to be sure again.)
Thus, behold!
The end product!
Oops, pardon that magazine placed beneath the words. I wanted to separate the painted side from the back of the tee for a while more … just to be sure. (Yes, again. Hahaha.)
Now that the tee painting is complete, it’s time for the last crucial step – putting the tee through its first wash.
I really hope the fabric paint behaves the way it is expected to and stays on the t-shirt.
I do not want to end up with a blackish stained, pseudo tie-dyed shirt to account for the amount of (extremely anal) work I’d put in!
Gems in the night sky
As predicted, the sky show did happen – the 10% illuminated crescent moon joined in the conjunction of Venus, Mars and Saturn in the western sky this evening.
Hurray for clear skies. The weather was pretty stormy yesterday until early this morning, but every wisp of cloud cover had cleared by early evening. It was a pretty starry night, though my attention was mainly focused on the western sky – where the moon and the three planets were hanging low. (Plus, stars aren’t easily photograph-able in Singapore skies anyway – too bright. :()
Planetary conjunction with the moon joining the crowd.
For larger resolutions, you may check out the photos I’ve submitted to Space Weather.
Ooh, and just take a look at the earthshine on the moon. I rarely see that here, actually – because the overpowering city lights. Hmm, tonight is indeed special.
As promised, I did end up dragging my woozy self up to the rooftop garden to capture this rare event in the sky. (Still pretty much reeling from the after-effects of IV sedation from my early morning procedure today – but nothing, absolutely nothing stops me from my sky watching!)
Thanks to the sky for co-operating. It made a pretty positive ending to an otherwise one-of-those-I-want-to-forget days.
There is supposed to be a meteor shower going on at this moment too, actually. But … the sky garden faces the wrong direction, so I doubt I would be able to do any decent fireball-watching. If you have a window facing the North-East however, don’t forget to look outside! (Do check whether the perseid meteor shower will be visible in your area first, though!)
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