kitty pillows

I'm dealing with my I'm-not-in-Berkeley-any-more feelings by working on projects that I started while I was there. I unpacked and bought new dress shoes yesterday (which I'd planned to do before visiting Grand Junction last weekend). Today, I finished a project I'd purchased fabric for at Stonemountain & Daughter Fabrics: kitty-themed pillows!  This project also was my first (successful) attempt to make my own piping, which I used around the edges of the pillow shams.

The print reminds me of oriental paintings and a recent computer science preprint describing efforts to get computers to mimic these traditional styles.

 

our photogenic (and allergy-free) cat enjoying a throne of pillows

 

button placement on the back of this pillow sham worked out really well--the happy cat has a ball of yarn!

this week's stovetop: another science-themed dessert!

I decided to make another science-themed dessert for the QNL group retreat today.

This dessert celebrates the hybrid quantum memories I've been researching this summer.  [I'll come back and add some details later--in the meantime, you can read the Physics Viewpoint here.]  I was trying to recreate this image, which is more obvious if you take a look at the second cake I baked:

The cake itself is comprised of a base of orange cake (I made this recipe, adding a teaspoon of rose water and ignoring the suggestion to beat the egg whites), covered with bittersweet chocolate ganache. The resonator was made with toasted slivered almonds. The diamond is made with a vegan orange gel (like jello, but no gelatin) and the "spin defects" were made from melted bittersweet chocolate chips.

Fingers crossed the cakes survive the hour-ish car ride intact to our retreat!