On hiatus

For the upcoming 10 days, courtesy of presentations, research proposals and finals. Will be back with updates on the 11th if not the 12th. Thanks for understanding! 🙂

PS. Hope y’all had a great Thanksgiving, mine was flurried but wonderfully so.

Cotton Inc & Lake Crabtree

So I thought I’d do a proper non-academic related blog despite the fact that mid-terms and thesis proposals and what-nots are piling up because need to regain some sense of normalcy. Anyway, here are some snapshots from my trip to Raleigh, NC, courtesy of Cotton Inc! The trip was mostly catered towards future fashion design and fashion merchandising professionals, but I was very fortunate to be selected as part of the team that will be working on the research proposal concerning social media perceptions towards cotton and so had the opportunity to go on the excursion. This is my first ever sponsored trip and it was extremely interesting to learn how social media platforms can be used to facilitate marketing for a variety of products as well as to address issues with consumer awareness. Without further ado, here are some pics:

The above and below was during the first part of the tour that demonstrated how raw cotton was transformed into manageable shapes. Apologies, please forgive my lack of proper vernacular as I had no prior knowledge of the cotton manufacturing process prior to the trip – which also explains my lack of photos as I was preoccupied with trying to understand all the concepts!

Here’s a close up shot. Another reason why I refrained from taking photos (although it was highly encouraged!), was that it felt rather rude or impolite to be snapping away while the speaker was explaining certain parts of the machinery, especially since I have a DSLR and it makes quite a bit of noise!

My favorite parts of the tour, aside from the talks regarding marketing, was the digital image printing and the dye lab! Perhaps it was because there was finally a spot of color in comparison to the previous industrial whites!

Managed to get some closeups here because this area was rather noisy so everyone was wearing headphones  tuned to radio frequencies to listen to the guide, therefore the noise made by my camera shutter would be a lot less noticeable, haha!

Loving the patterns!

Apparently the design-prediction team (that’s probably not what they were actually called) in New York comes up with color schemes they think will be hot in the next season and publishes them into the… I want to say pamphlets but I’ll go with promotional materials which you can see above in the bottom right corner.

This was a sort of QC section where they tested different things including the visibility of wrinkles in terms of certain patterns and colors. Can you believe that all the polka dotted fabrics had a ton of wrinkles? Sure doesn’t see like it from this point of view through the naked eye!

By the end of the tour, we were absolutely starving and were delighted to be greeted by mountains of sliders!!! As well as fruits, salads, and my personal favorite… desserts! (Which consisted of peanut butter cookies and some scrumptious concoction of caramel, fudge and peanut butter! Mm-mmm!). After which we munched while Mark Messura conducted the Q&A section. Personally, I think he did a phenomenal job paraphrasing and answering questions regarding new technology and sustainability as well as bringing them back into how these issues were relevant to Cotton Inc.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to see much of Raleigh at all as my Southwest Airlines flight was horribly delayed by 3 hours the night before (Was planning to go sightseeing downtown since my initial arrival was around 5:00PM). Following the tour, we had time to visit Lake Crabtree which was in the near vicinity and it was definitely a welcome scenery compared to the yellow shrubs and tumbleweeds of Texas! Really reminded me of the Vancouver/Seattle landscapes!

The fashion students were doing what they do best – taking Lookbook and OOTD photos. #notinTexas

Haven’t seen natural growing flowers since forever!

How I’ve missed TALL TREES! Not so much the vicious mosquitoes though, we turned and ran all the way back after I slapped a mosquito and blood splattered over my hand while we were in the process of completing a jump shot. Stopped by Chicago on the way back with another student and we got to try some fake Chicago pizzas which were pretty huge and pretty good to me, since I’ve never had the real thing. Also bought some magnets and ordered a Raleigh magnet off of Ebay since I don’t think I’ll be able to go back anytime soon. Abrupt end to the post now since it’s 1:00AM in the morning and I am probably not thinking coherently!

My spaces in other places:
twitter.com/mslittlefickle
youtube.com/mslittlefickle
instagram.com/misslittlefickle
mslittlefickle.tumblr.com

New additions to the balcony!

Despite living in a somewhat sketchy neighborhood, we’ve been fortunate to rent a two bedroom with a balcony for a very reasonable price in Austin,TX. Sadly, our balcony has been devoid of decorations due to our lack of fund (seeing as we are a group of one MA student, one PhD student, and one fresh graduate currently waitressing while looking for opportunities in animation), but not anymore! My sister, the fresh grad, brought these lovely flowers back home from Home Depot the other day and they’ve certainly been a bright and cheery addition to our otherwise drab, gray area. Now the only thing is to somehow prevent them from perishing under the unrelentingTexas heat. Any tips and tricks would be appreciated.

My spaces in other places:
twitter.com/mslittlefickle
youtube.com/mslittlefickle
instagram.com/misslittlefickle
mslittlefickle.tumblr.com