Hobbies
culture  

Hobbies

By Chengyi L

Today, we will take a small break from photos of food and look at photos of random craft things…

The weird thing about summer is that there’s no homework sets. When you get back from your [insert number here]-hour work day, you’re basically free. Or at least, free to do everything else that you should’ve done a long time ago. This is why, instead of doing the 50000 other things I’m supposed to be doing, I decided to start wasting my time on hobbies. Enter: needlefelting.

Needlefelting is the act of taking a needle and stabbing a ball of wool/fluff until it becomes a thing. It’s a great hobby for masochists because, no matter how careful you are, you will always stab yourself with the needle. In hindsight, needlefelting is probably kind of a terrible hobby…I first started this hobby because Roommate S decided to take up crocheting, leaving random bits of yarn fluff leftover. (The stereotype is that that Techers are all socially-challenged nerds with no knowledge outside of science and technology, but the truth is that Techers are all old ladies.) Here’s the tip of one of the needles from up close:

If you look closely, you can see little notches near the tip. The notches catch on the wool fibers as you stab down, but lets go when you pull the needle back up. This turns your ball of wool fluff into a really tangled ball of wool fluff. I bought the needles off of Amazon (a set of 4 differently-sized needles for $7ish) because it was the cheapest set I found. You can also find them at your local crafts store. Here’s a photo of some fluff:

The fluff becomes super compacted after you felt it–the Magikarp used about 1.5x more volume of fluff than the fluff in the photo! The wool was bought from Etsy. I didn’t know how wool weight translated to wool volume, so buying my first batch of fluff was pure guesswork… For reference, I had a total of about 15g of orange wool. Here’s a bunch of things I’ve needlefelted over the school year/breaks/summer:

Protip: Needlefelting small things is hard. Very hard. Seriously, you’re going to stab yourself so many times it’s not even funny.

Recommended Articles

My Friday Nights
culture

My Friday Nights

It was the Friday night of midterms during my first year at Caltech, and I was alone in the library. That weekend (week five of term, if you’re keeping count) also happens to coincide with Halloween. But as a bright-eyed frosh trudging my way through Ma 1a lecture notes, I was just baffled that no one else was studying alongside me. Spoiler alert: not all Caltech students spend Friday night—or every night—studying or grinding sets, even during midterms. And especially on Halloween weekend.

By
caltech q and a
culture

caltech q and a

In order to get a good sense of the Caltech community, there is no better way than to talk to the students themselves. To give a little bit of an inside perspective of Caltech, I asked some students a variety of questions. Questions ranged from conspiracy theories to Caltech-specific takes and other random topics.

By
What's on my desk?
culture

What's on my desk?

I’d like to think that I keep a tidy desk, but hey— entropy prevails for everyone. Here’s a breakdown of all the items you could find on my desk, circa February 2023.

By
Searching for snow
culture

Searching for snow

My grandma always says that it rains whenever Dragonssuperior zodiac sign travel, and sure enough, it was raining when I landed at LAX for my last calendar year at Caltech. It’s officially my graduation year—but between leaving campus just before spring term in my freshman year and returning, twenty-one years old, as a junior, it really does feel like my time here has flown by.

By