Astronomy

Recently, my science class has been studying astronomy. We are learning about all the planets, the sun, and nebula. Last week, our class was assigned a project. We are required to build a model of the solar system. Therefore, that is what I have been working on lately. I am making it out of a few different things. I am using some Styrofoam balls, a Styrofoam board, skewer sticks, rubber balls, and clay. I'm still not sure how it's going to look when I'm finished, but it will hopefully look great. I'll take a photo of it when I am finished with it since it is a work in progress. Speaking of astronomy, that was actually what I was reading up on this summer. I attempted to stargaze a few nights but that is kind of hard to do when there are so many lights turned on around you and when you're not supposed to be outside in the middle of the night. However, I still did get to see some stars. You can see the short record that I kept of what I saw during the summer below.

August 23, 2010: It's been a great stargazing night. I think I have spotted the Summer Triangle. I also think a saw part of the constellation Scorpius. I also spotted a few other stars, but I can't really tell what they are. I think I saw just about everything that the website, Stardate said to be visible tonight. It is nice and cool outside tonight. (I use a website called Stardate which usually tells me what will be visible in the night sky during the week. Here's the link if you're interested: http://stardate.org/nightsky/weekly.php)
August 24, 2010: Tonight I observed the full moon, a constellation, and a bunch of other stars. I saw many more than usual since I actually went outside tonight with my mom.
September 15, 2010: I haven't really been stargazing since I am going to school again, but I have been watching the moon lately and I have been watching this star in the eastern horizon that seems to be moving farther away ever night. It's a sign that autumn is coming. Good bye Summer Triangle. (Note: What I saw was not actually a star, my friend told me that it was actually a couple of planets that were close together. They were Jupiter and some other planet that I can't remember.)

These were the books that I read during the summer. The Stargazing Year was a really interesting nonfiction book about a guy named Charles Laird Calia who built a backyard observatory. I read half of The Planets by Dava Sobel. It mostly just gave me information about the planets and their names, but it wasn't really that interesting to me.
This is a photo that I took probably around the time that school started. I just found it really amazing for the moon to be on the western horizon extremely close to a star that I look for every night. The moon is hardly ever there, so that is why I took this photo. It's not great quality especially since I took this from my window.
This is just one of many pictures I took of my cat. She kept me company on most nights while I was stargazing.

The Garden

I found spare time to blog. Well, this post will just be a mix of things. I finally finished crocheting the owl I was making, and I also crocheted a fruit for my teacher. He really liked it, and I hope that people like my cute little brown owl. Since I am back at school, it also means that I am playing in band again. I play the clarinet, and yesterday, I got to bring home the bass clarinet to practice. It's actually really cool and fun to play even though I am having difficulty playing the high notes. I may or may not be playing it during our Halloween concert next month. Today, as I finished my dinner, my mom told me that there were some beautiful flowers growing the backyard, so I thought I would grab my camera to photograph. When I got outside, my dad pointed out some pretty flowers to me and a couple of dragon fruit growing from a cactus.

These are some pretty white flowers that my dad is growing on some long branches in my backyard.

This is a close up of the white flowers.
This is the cactus with two dragon fruits growing from it. It was so interesting to me since I never knew that's where they actually came from.
An close up of the dragon fruit. My dad says that they should be turning red in a few days. I'll be getting another photo of it when it does.These are some marigolds that I planted a month ago that are going to bloom pretty soon. (I know that the picture is a bit blurry. I don't have a steady hand.)
I don't know why I took a picture of this. I guess it's because my dad told me to since it also has a nice white flowers growing from the top.These are a few more nice flowers that I photographed. Sorry about the blurriness.
Here's my completed crocheted owl. I think I should have done a better job on the eyes and wings.
Here is the fruit that I crocheted. What does it look like to you? If you said it looks like an apple, you are correct. If you said it is a strawberry, you are wrong.
This is my clarinet that I learned to play last year in band, but I didn't exactly play on this clarinet when I was in band last year. This clarinet is newer.
Now, this is my awesome bass clarinet that I got to take home yesterday. I had a lot of fun learning how to play this although I didn't have to learn much. It has the same fingerings as the clarinet, but I need to drop my jaw to play low notes and do long tones if I want to learn to play the high notes.
These are the Standards of Excellence books that I use in band. We usually use then for warm-up exercises. I have book 1 and 2 for clarinet and borrowed book 1 for bass clarinet. I actually have a lot of music that is not shown in the photo.

Summer

The summer is coming to a close soon, and I will be going back to school. I haven't really been recording recipes, but I have been helping to make them. Even though I haven't been recording recipes, I have been doing other things. So what do you do when you have too much time on your hands? You crochet of course. I have recently been learning to crochet and have made quite a few things that I am quite happy with such as a strawberry pouch, a black bracelet, a flower, a blue glove, and a few other things.

This is the strawberry pouch that I made and is currently being used to hold change.

This is the black bracelet that I crocheted for my friend.

This is the blue flower that I crocheted although I failed miserably many times before I finally understood how to make this. :p

This is the blue glove that I crocheted, and it was actually quite easy to make. I haven't made the second glove to make it a pair yet. I really enjoyed making these during the summer but I probably won't have time to make so many things after the summer is over. I am currently trying to finish this cute toy that I can't wait to see completed. I am very happy that I spent my summer making these things although I wish I could have gathered more recipes. Maybe next summer.