Busy Busy Busy!

Its been super busy here at the ND household, er office. :) Really, its just a house.

But it's been fun! I've put out a lot of orders and I'm still needing to work on some. But I also have some Christmas things of my own to get done.

I do want to say thank to you one of my customers. One of my most popular items these past few weeks have been the normal distribution plush ornaments.


They were made because of a request for a gift for a professor. And they've been a hit with other shoppers also. So thanks, Kelcey, for asking for these ornaments! Not only do we think they're cute, but so do others. :)

And Happy Holidays, too!

Retired Descriptions Part 1

Since my embroidery machine gave me issues last week, I had to remove those items from my shop that needed the machine's services. Now that I have it back, I'm taking the chance to combine listings. I mean, I love my little girl and think she's fabulous, but my shop has been overtaken by adorable baby items.

The first to get condensed are the Statosaur onesies. Instead of 5 separate listings, they have been combined in to one listing where you choose the statosaur.

Here are the old descriptions and front picture for memories.

Stegonormalus Onesie

When the wonderful worlds of statistics and dinosaurs combine the result is statosaurs.

This statosaur is a stegonormalus, the combination of a stegosaurus and a normal distribution, and he is ready to do two things. First, make something (like a baby) look cute. And second, make something (like that same baby) look smart. How can you go wrong when you're making babies look cute and smart?!

Chiceratops Onesie

The land of statosaurs is full of beasts that are terribly cute and amazing statistical. How can you beat that? You can't, not even with a slide rule.

What is one to do then?

Join them. Join the land of statosaurs starting at a young age, as a baby, with a body suit.

t Rex Onesie

Tyrannosaurus Rex means “Just look at the size of his teeth! Lizard” in Greek. In this onesie it is paired with the t-distribution or “King of Distributions” (self-titled, Erlang took out a trademark on the phrase a week before the t-distribution was published). Marriage made in heaven, or in the Cretaceous Period? Consider:

Tyrannosaurus is mean and ate animals to get larger. The t-distribution “eats” degrees of freedom and gains mass around the mean.

The number of Tyrannosaurus alive today has a mean and mode of 0, looking at data over the last couple of decades. This too is the mean and mode of the (standard) t-distribution.

And the most chilling “coincidence”: The t-distribution was first published by William Gosset, who went to college at Oxford - there is a skeleton of a Tyrannosaurs at the Oxford Museum of Natural History.

With these cold hard facts it is no wonder statisticians are calling the t-distribution the t-rex of the univariate distributions. While paleontologists are quite often overheard saying that the t-distribution might in fact be the inspiration the t-rex was modeled after.

Brachiolognormalus Onesie

According to Sir Wikipeadia, brachiosaurus means “arm lizard”. And the log normal distribution could be described as an “arm distribution” since it is so skewed. Come with me, arm in arm, as I take you on a journey to meet a wonderful new statosaur, but please don’t be alarmed. Now throw your arms in the air and give it up for brachiolognormalus!

Get your baby an arm above the rest with this cute bodysuit. But don’t feel strong-armed into buying this, just take a look at it, how can anyone resist a statdino with such charm? But that doesn’t mean that I won’t twist your arm (despite what that does to my karma) to buy not one, but an army of this cloth armor for the baby which you can’t help to wrap with amore (that is Italian for love it like an arm).

And to top it all off it doesn’t even cost an arm and a leg.

Unidactyl Onesie

Log 8:00am: I have climbed the highest plateau near the ridge and have been surprised to find three Uniform distributions laying in a nest. I will take one back to basecamp to examine closer.

Log 10:15am: After placing the Uniform distribution under the heat lamp it started to move. I was going to leave camp to fill my water jugs at the stream, but I will wait to watch the distribution some more.

Log 11:30am: The Uniform distribution has hatched and inside of it was a winged like dinosaur that still carries shape of the Uniform distribution. I shall call it the Unidactyl.

Log 11:45am: Egad! I am under attack from a huge Unidactyl! I can only assume that this is the mother of the small Unidactyl I have found. I fear I will not survive this attack, especially since I am writing in my log book instead of fending it off.

Log 2:15pm: After a hard fight I was able to escape the domain of the Unidactyl by running past point B. Even though there is theoretical support for the Unidactyl past this point is seems that she can not go beyond this limit. I have decided to commemorate this great day by embroidering a Unidactly on baby onesies, for that shall forever insure my place in history.

Embroidery Machine Troubles

In February of this year I got my embroidery machine. It was a Christmas gift from my husband and my mom. We did research and went around to places to get demos and see what was available. We decided in a Brother PE750-D. The D is for Disney and has been completely unnecessary for me. But that's not the point. Its an embroidery only machine and its been good to me. Until Monday, 11/15/10.

I started to embroider a chi^2 burp cloth. I went to go check on my napping child and when I came back, the machine said "A safety device has been activated." Ok? The manual said I likely had thread somewhere. So I took it apart as best I could, but saw no problem. The machine however, knew something I didn't.

After calling around locally and the place I bought it and my husband, I learned that there would be a 2 week turn around and about 60$ cost to fix it. Jeepers, that's crummy. But my husband suggested I take a 3 hour drive to Wichita (where I bought the machine) and see if they could fix it by Thanksgiving, since we'd be in town then. Well, to save me some typing and you some reading, I'll just tell the result.

A-1 Singer Sewing Center in Wichita fixed my machine the day I brought it in (which was this past Wednesday, the 17th). They said it was a thread jam in the needle bar. But they embroidered up a piece and I will do the same this weekend!

So happy to have it back and so fast too!

Statistics Icons

My husband designed 26 statistics themed icons for the ABC of Statistics poster.

Then, we made some burp cloths for coworkers using those icons. They came out pretty good, so we made some to sell on Etsy.

And to further the fun, my husband thought they would look good as pillow covers. So I made some with fleece, and we like them too. So, they also go to the shop!

I made them out of fleece since it doesn't need to be hemmed on the edges and it comes in many colors. The reason I didn't use felt is just because fleece is softer. I'd rather lay my face against fleece than felt.

They are just covers, over a 16x16 inch pillow form. To avoid zippers, buttons, velcro, etc I made them envelope style, so they have a slit in the back that the pillow slides into. I first tried to put the slit low and on the bottom, but that just pulled funny and didn't work. So I put it right in the middle which works great. (Kind of seems obvious now. It minimizes the pull for each direction.). But I am pleased with how they look! I made three different ones for photos, but there are many designs I could have made.

Happy Halloween...

Statistics Style! (Thanks to kthenaj for the awesome appreciation photo!)

My husband and I carved pumpkins with family last weekend. He made powercat (go Wildcats!) and I made a normal curve.

Beware of the Evil Plushies

To spice things up in my shop, I've been working on a series of "evil" plushies. So far, there is the Evil Weibull...

and, from today, the Evil Poisson.

Also in the works is an Evil Cauchy. I just have to sew him shut and have a little photo shoot with him. The faces on these distinguished gents are machine embroidered, instead of hand embroidered like on my other plushies. It goes a lot faster, but I think it really changes the look of them.

Anyone have any suggestions for another distribution? Or a suggestion on what makes a face look evil?

My Crafty Room

In order to make crafts, you have to have a place to do it. Before I lived in the house I'm currently in, my place to make crafts was the same as my place to do homework, my place to eat dinner, my place to cook, my place to play games, and basically do anything. The apartment we lived in was small, and it worked for us for 7 years. But now we have a house and I have an entire room of my own that I can craft in.

This means no more putting away all of my sewing stuff so that I can paint something or eat dinner. It's nice! And I figure I'd give you a little tour. It does look like a mess. But it's a well organized one (to me).

Welcome to my craft room! My husband helped me hang some peg board for organizing and storing different things. It's been SO handy.

Here is my sewing table. Its a good sturdy table so it doesn't vibrate when I sew. I've sewn on wobbly ones before, and it's really annoying. You can also see my idea board to the right and my home-made thread rack on the left wall.

Here is my super messy corner. But it's actually quite organized for me. I've got boxes of boxes for shipping and polyfil for stuffing. And a quaint little spot for my daughter to sit with me while I craft. She can't walk in the walker yet, so she just sits there, chewing on her toys, throwing them off the little table, and then staring at herself in the mirror. I enjoy it almost as much as she does. :)

Next is my shelf. I made this shelf about 2 years ago when I first moved to Tulsa. Each shelf had a purpose when I made it, but as it gets used I've rearranged many things. I also have 2 dressforms (fancy!). The short purple one is old. It's from my husbands grandma. I was so happy/thrilled/thankful when they passed it down to me from one of her daughters. It's a really good one. You can adjust basically every measurement you'd want to! The taller blue dress form is one I bought myself last year when I was making my sister's wedding dress. The purple one doesn't get large enough for my sister, so I bought a second one. Now my room just looks fancy. :)

Here is my extra storage, the closet. Almost all of the tubs are filled with fabric. I've got old patterns in one and some of my finished products in another.

And my ironing station. It's comical. I have 11 year old cutting/ironing mat placed on top of a box of my old high school papers. It works though. I am not usually making big things, so this little 12x18 area suits my needs.

And there you have it. My craft room!

Crinkle Toy for a Nerdy Baby

My daughter enjoys crinkle toys, as I'm sure many babies do. So what would make sense for me to do? Well, make her one of course!

It was quickly decided that I'd make it shaped like a normal distribution. We also decided to use terry cloth for the back and flannel for the front. But how are we going to make it "crinkle"? I first thought of Sun Chip bags. Boy can those babies crinkle!! Jeepers! But being "compostable" I was afraid it wouldn't hold up to drool and washing. So we had to think of something else. I eventually decided to use a thick plastic from a pretzel bag. I know, weird to use trash. But so far it's worked great! It's been chewed on and washed multiple times. I air dry it, and it seems to be holding up really well!

The best part is, she likes it. :)

Bring on the Babies! Season 2

Spring was baby season #1 this year for me. And this fall brings on baby season #2. Today I went to a shower for 2 coworkers who are each having a baby in the coming months.

So what would a crafty statistics nerd give to coworkers who aren't stat nerds? Statistical burp cloths! But statosaurs and smiley distributions weren't what my husband and I wanted for this occasion. We wanted something more general. ABC's they are general aren't they? I'm guessing these two coming babies will eventually learn to speak.

So we pulled out all the stops and learned how to applique with my embroidery machine. I've been meaning to do it a while now and just never did. So Wednesday night, I just tried it. And you know what. It was pretty easy.

All you have to do is tell the embroidery program that the fill is applique. Then, load the pattern and fabric into the machine like normal, put the applique fabric on top, hit go, and it'll stop at the right spot so you can cut the applique fabric. You've got to cut it REALLY close to the stitching. But that's it. Let the machine finish, and viola, applique!

Here's what we crafted:

A is for Average.

B is for Box Plot.

C is for Correlation.

Great! And the moms-to-be seemed to like them. :)

Thanks to Dr. Leemis

An item recently added to my Etsy shop owes a big thanks to Dr. Lawrence Leemis at The College of William and Mary. The Univariate Distributions Poster is a giant version of the smaller chart he published in one of his papers.


It is one of the most amazing charts I've ever seen. My husband got permission from Dr. Leemis to make this poster and sell it in my store. I hope you love it as much as I do!

Here is a link to the original paper, too.

Statosaur Stampede!

This year has been the year of babies for people I know. Not only did I have one, but so did my sister-in-law, my sister's sister-in-law, a friend from college, a friend from grad school, and 2 friends from work. And my sister is due next April! Lots of babies. That could explain the recent explosion of baby items in my shop.


I designed the statosaurs before my daughter was born, about 5 months ago. And just recently did I get around to putting them on burp cloths. I've been sharing their nerdy cuteness with my new baby friends, too. Sadly, my own daughter has only received the practice pieces or items that didn't come out good enough to sell. She doesn't seem to mind too much. :)

Weibull Give-away Winners!

Thanks to those who participated in this little contest. It was fun to see pictures of the plushies around the country. :)

I said I'd pick two winners and here they are:

Norm on the Boardwalk from John


Chai Tea from Laura


Congratulations! I'll send your Weibull distributions this week!

Weibull Give-away: Contestant #3

Last night while sleeping, one more set of contest pictures came in.

Norm at Coney Island

Weibull Give-away: Contestant #2

New Cross Stitch Pattern

I've got a great idea for a new cross-stitch pattern. But it's proving to be quite difficult. I don't want to spoil the surprise yet. But here is a hint.

Weibull Give-away: Contestant #1

T(ea) and Doughnut


The Ch(a)i T(ea) Distribution


Student T

Evil Weibul Give-away!

It's the first ever give-away contest from Nausicaa Distribution!

If you've purchased anything from my Etsy shop in the past you have a chance to win a free Evil Weibull plushie.

Send me an awesome picture of the item (or items) you purchased at NausicaaDistribution@gmail.com. The picture can be of your product in use, or visiting some local hot spot, or anything else you can think of. I'll post all the pictures I receive here.

On August 15, 2010, I'll choose may two favorite pictures as winners. Each person will receive an Evil Weibull plushie, totally free of charge.

So get out there and take some pictures!

Inspiration, only in reverse

Over the Fourth of July weekend, we traveled up north to the land of Kansas to spend the holiday with family. It was a good time with lots of rain and fireworks and food.

Monday we visited a museum with my mom. One of the displays they had was all on dinosaurs, including fossils. :) This immediately reminded me of my statosaurs and so I took some pictures to show the "similarities" between the actual factual fossils and my recreations of them (+ statistics).

They had a t-rex fossil (not a complete fossil, but about half was actual fossil).


You can probably see the similarities between that at my t-rex.


They also had a triceratops head. Wow, that baby was huge!


Again, note the similarities.

Esty and a Baby

Now that I have a child, things are definitely not the same. Things have gotten harder to balance and get done. Luckily, my husband and I have worked things out and decided I can stay home with our daughter, at least for the first few months. This is great for a lot of reasons, of which I'm not about to get into here. :)

The reason for this post is because I'm sitting her in my craft room (which I recently cleaned) with my daughter in her little bouncy seat. She's making the cutest sounds and faces to go with them and I get to still embroider and sew. Life is good.

The Land of Statosaurs

If you've been to my Etsy shop recently, you may have noticed two listings for onesies. I've been meaning to add them for quite some time (and 3 more are coming), but I haven't' had time until recently.

Machine embroidering one that thin and stretchy of knit fabric has been a challenge, a challenge I think I've beat. And during my trials, I've learned three things.

1. I've found that using more stabilizer is better than less. So now I use one layer of of sticky back and one layer of tear away. I don't use any solvy on top, but I may pick some up and give that a whirl.

2. Using a thicker fabric is good too. Gerber onesies are not as good as Circe and Carter body suits.

3. The other thing that helps is adjusting the embroidery pattern so that it does not stitch back over areas that have already stitched. This isn't always possible, but the more I can avoid it, the better.

For example:

The stegonormalus had the most problems because there are a lot of locations where my original pattern stitched zig-zag on top of zig-zag.


When I went through and changed this to only stitch there once, in this case just when outlining the curve/body, it helped immensely.

So now, working on the other 4, I could make this change from the beginning and had many less practice onesies. Although now my daughter has about 8 variations of statosaur onesies from my practicing. :)

Statosaurs and a Baby

It's been just about 1 month since my daughter joined us in the world. It's been a quick month with a steep learning curve. I love her and think she is the cutest, but she does take a lot of effort and time.

However, I did manage to get an embroidery pattern put together that works pretty good on knit fabrics. My intentions are to sell adorable baby onesies in my shop. Now that I have a model I don't have any excuses. :)

Cross Stitching a Sieve

Last Sunday my husband and sat in front of my old laptop (our only computer) and started a new cross-stitch pattern.

It's based on the Sieve of Eratosthenes which is a visual/tabular way to identify prime numbers. It's been modified a little bit. Instead of just identifying primes, it will also represent the factors of composite numbers by different colors.

The pattern looks quite complicated, but it doesn't have to be. We've made it in such a way that you can make it super-complicated, will of the factors for numbers up to 120 identified with different color. Or you can make it much more simple by deciding to just mark primes (the factors) up to a certain number.

I've started to make one for our baby's room. She was due last Sunday and still isn't here. It's in the colors of the nursery (lilac, sage, and tan). We have used 6 colors (aside from black and white, which will eventually show up).

2 = Darker purple
3 = Light green
5 = Darker green
7 = Light purple
11 = Darker tan
all other primes = Tan

Statosaurs

Recently, my husband and I have been working on getting some new embroidery designs ready to go. About 1 week ago I drew 5 new ones, and now we are vectorizing and digitizing them. We've completed 2 so far.

They are statistical distributions that have been turned into dinosaurs! I think they are wonderful.

Stegonormalus = Stegosaurus + Normal Distribution:


Chiceratops = Triceratops + Chi-Square Distribution:

Yarnia and Yarn Art

This is so cool! Such an awesome way to combine geometry, old-school-ness, and crafts.

I mean, I really like this. My husband and I are having a baby (due date is 1 month from today) and we still need to decorate the nursery. I think we will do this!

So, here is a link to Yarnia's original blog post about this yarn wall art. And here is a link to the actual store, Yarnia. They are located in Portland, not a place I live anywhere near. But if you do, you should probably go there and at least tell them how awesome it is for them to be supporting such cool and unique art.

p.s. Thanks to Craftzine for their post.

enginerdy's Plushie

A fan of statistics and crafting has asked if it was okay to create her own plushie to give to a professor. I said yes, but she had to send me pictures!

Well, she did it and here they are:


I enjoy the super smiley face.


I also like the little z in a heart. I love the standard normal distribution too!


How cute! Thanks for sharing!