Week 2: Fake Eyelashes

Alright, so fresh off of learning how to knit, I decided to switch it up and do something fundamentally girly (and Japanese) that I'd never done before. Ever since moving here, I've marvelled at just how many young Japanese women wear fake eyelashes. Seriously, that can't be comfortable. How do they put them on every day? Do they stick easily? Can you get them off? Does it seriously improve your appearance? All these questions were running in my head, and I needed to find some answers.

The decision to do this came about on a whim, when I was driving the 5 hours back from snowmobiling in Monbetsu with Andromeda. We had stopped at a Seicomart to grab some snacks and drinks for the ride home, when I noticed the fake eyelashes just hanging out in the beauty section of the conbini. I impulsively grabbed them and purchased them, running out to the car before Andromeda could notice what I'd done.

When I got home, I decided to wait until the next week to start the challenge, so wait I did. I was impatient, though, and decided to further prepare by buying more different kinds so I could see what kind of difference they made. I rounded up all my materials and ended up with a table that looked something like this:

 

The tube on the bottom is eyelash glue, which is also apparently liquid liner. I started by washing my face, and appliying this to one eye, and one eye only. I wanted to see the difference it made. Because of this, here is my before photo. (Not gonna lie, didn't take an actual before photo but here's one I just took of me wearing no makeup)

Right, so I added the eyelash glue/liquid liner to one eye very carefully, then I took one set of fake lashes and tried to press them on. They didn't stay. Big surprise there.

I pulled them off, and tried sticking them on again. It worked, but they were hardly close to my actual lashline and the liner was super messy. I decided to try to fix it by putting more real liquid liner over it, and then covering it with eyeshadow, and I guess it sort of worked. Here's one photo of me with one eye covered in fake lashes and the other eye still bare.

It's kind of a creepy picture, and I apologise, but you try to take a decent picture of yourself with only one eye done up and have it not look ridiculously strange.

ANYWAY, Then I painstakingly did the other eye as well, and ended up with something that looked sort of like this:

As I mentioned, this was my trial run, so I didn't actually go out of the house like this. I did, however, walk around the Yuki Matsuri that weekend all eyelashed up, and here's a few photos of my beautiful eyes then:

What do you think? Do I look better with fake eyelashes or without? Have you ever tried wearing them? Would you try wearing them? I'd love to hear your thoughts. :)

By the way, if you actually want to read about the snow festival, visit my Japan blog at http://jeriandjapan.blogspot.com/

Week 1: Learn to Knit

About a week ago, I decided that I would do one thing I'd never done per week for the next fifteen weeks. 

I wish I could say that there was some sort of overarching thought behind this, something that had been coming for ages, something leading up to this sort of decision.

There wasn't. Basically, I just thought "hey, wouldn't it be cool if I did a bunch of new stuff and wrote about it?" and then I answered myself with a resounding "yes. Yes it would".

So I started last week. I learned how to knit.

This was something that I had wanted to do for a while. I had even bought the knitting needles and 4 balls of yarn at Daiso ages ago on a whim. There was an inner knitter inside me that was just aching to get free. Her name was Super Knitter Jeri.

The problem was that I was lazy. I needed something to kick my ass into gear. This seemed to fit both the criteria for the challenge and the ass kicking criteria, so it was decided.

I stuffed my mouth full of chocolate chips and looked up "how to knit lefthanded" on youtube. I watched the first video that came up about 10 times over and over, painstakingly learning how to cast on. Then, I knitted about 5 rows and ended up with at least 10 more stitches than I started with. Luckily (for myself) I didn't take any pictures of this, so you have no idea how embarrassingly bad it was.

I was so upset with myself that I pulled all the stitches out and started again.

Unfortunately, by that point, I had already forgotten how to cast on, so I had to watch the video 10 more times. Then, I tried the knitting part again. It still didn't look perfect, but it looked better than before. The beginning rows looked something like this:

 

Eventually,  after a lot of TV time with my knitting needles, I ran out of yarn and moved onto other colours. Apparently you're not supposed to do this, but I just tied the end of one colour to the beginning of the other and continued to knit. I will rectify this on my next scarf (oh yes, there will be more). Then it started to look like this:

 

Yay! I had something that was starting to look like a scarf! And I had done it all by myself! You have no idea what kind of adrenaline rush this brought me. Seriously. Ridiculous. I became obsessed very quickly, and would spend time at parties (sort of) knitting while half listening to the conversation at hand. My friends still love me, though. I think.

Anyway, so tonight I finally finished my scarf. It looks like this:

 

It's pretty short, but it does the trick. I wore it home from Jessica's today, and it kept my neck nice and cozy. I've gotten so pumped about this that I promptly dragged Andromeda out to Daiso to buy more yarn and knitting needles. I've got plenty of projects on the horizon, so get ready, internet!

(Me wearing my warm and wonderful scarf)

That's all for now! Now, rest up and get ready for the surprise new thing that Jeri does next week! What will it be? Only time will tell!

Now I can go back to posting other things.

Like the fall 2010 DKNY collection.

I'm bringing the blog back!

Hello!

So I've decided to try something new every week for the next 15 weeks. The week starts on Monday. In order to document all the new things I'm trying, I'm going to bring back Pretty Much Premium!

So hopefully, I'll be making one new post a week, to document what new things I've been doing. If you have things you want to see me do, leave me a comment and let me know!

The blogging starts.... NOW!

<3 Jeri