The Pineneedle Collective

Friday 14 February 2014

Cherry Pancakes (DIY Dress) & Confirmation Biases

Dress is DIY | bag is thrifted | shoes are thrifted | ring is DIY | cherries c/o Sarsparilly

Say hello to my brand new pancake dress! I've been planning this particular dress for months, then spent two days sewing it up all perfect, and right now I couldn't be happier with it! And you'd better believe that I wore it with my pancake-stack ring. You can never have too many pancakes. Only problem with this outfit is that I AM CRAVING FOOD ALL THE TIME. It's basic stimulus and response - I see delicious pancakes all around me, I want to make and eat delicious pancakes. All. The. Time.

I also filmed how to make sleeves and how to make a peter pan collar, the first of which was uploaded to my youtube channel the other night and the latter coming soon!

So you all know how one of my favourite science topics on this blog is the psychology of human perception, and I repeatedly tell you how you can't ever trust that your own brain is giving you an accurate representation of reality (examples here, here, here, here, here and here).
But if it's the case that our perception of reality is actually pretty awful, how is it that we can ever "know" anything? How can scientists, for example, ever "know" that one theory is better than another?

The Scientific Method & Confirmation Bias

Image source

An example. One day, your phone is ringing and for whatever reason, what immediately pops into your head is "that must be Gary*". When you answer, you are pleasantly surprised to find out that it is indeed your friend Gary calling you.
"Hey! I knew it was going to be you!" you tell Gary.

The next time your phone rings, you have the same thought: "That's Gary."
And you know who's on the other end of the line? It's your friend Gary again!
"This is getting seriously weird," you think.

A couple of days later, when your phone rings, you immediately "know" that it's Gary calling you. And guess what. It is! "Oh my gosh," you tell Gary, "I don't wanna freak you out, but I think that I'm psychic. I always know when you're calling me".

In fact, it seems like you're always getting it right whenever Gary is calling you. Thus, you develop the theory that you have psychic-phone abilities exclusively for your friend Gary.

But what you actually have is confirmation bias.

It turns out that throughout the past couple of days, other people have also called you. A couple of these times the thought of "Hey, that's Gary!" also crossed your mind, but when you picked up the phone it was actually your mum, and once, a telemarketer. But because these instances didn't confirm the above-mentioned theory, you simply forget about them. This is a case of "counting the hits and forgetting the misses". For each case that confirms your belief, you place a big fat tick against the theory. But you simply ignore the times when that didn't happen. Don't feel bad - we all fall victim to this trap, and it's an extremely human thing to do. And it's yet another reason to always second-guess your own brain.

But how can we make sure that this doesn't happen, for example, in an important scientific experiment? Well, how could we test whether or not you're truly phone-psychic for Gary? This is where the idea of "blinding" comes in.

A "Blinded" Study:
Being keen to get to the bottom of your "psychic" abilities, you invite four of your friends, including Gary, over to your house. Gary and two friends go into a separate room, where you can't hear or see them. They all have their phones with them, and they're going to take turns in calling your phone at random. Another friend sits with you - they're there to make sure you don't cheat. You have a pen and a piece of paper. "I'm ready", you say.

Your phone rings. One of your friends is randomly calling you from the other room. Obviously, you can't see a number or the caller ID. You don't answer. You write "test number one", and then write down whether or not you think it's Gary calling you. Your friends in the other room have also written down "test number one", and written down who has called you.
Your phone rings again. You write "test number two", and again you write down whether or not you think that Gary is calling you.
You repeat this 50 times.

You then meet up with your friends, and compare results.

After a statistical analysis of your results, it turns out that you were actually correct in guessing that Gary was calling you only 14.28% of the time. With these results, you abandon your psychic-phone theory.

And this is how scientists avoid confirmation bias in studies as well. A simple "blinded" test, in which you, the subject, doesn't know which condition they're in (i.e. who is calling them), but is still able to respond, can help to eliminate this very human thing we do called confirmation bias.

Read more about blinding in studies (and double-blinding) here.

*Gary bears no resemblance to anyone I know in real life; I named him after Spongebob's snail.

I hope that you have a great day!

Wednesday 12 February 2014

How To Make Sleeves (DIY tutorial)

Many of you requested it, so here it is! This is a method I came up with of adding cap-style sleeves to a top or a dress. I actually made this as a kind of addition to my circle-skirt dress tutorial, but it would work on all different kinds of tops and dresses.

This dress isn't done yet, either! The above picture shows it nearly-finished, but I'm yet to add a couple more things ;) HOW GREAT is the fabric, though!! Unfortunately, the fabric is all but sold out on fabric.com (there's 1 yard left right now if you really want it).

Anyway, the video is below. Enjoy!

Tuesday 11 February 2014

Mermaids & Meetings

Dress is from Molly | shoes are from Juju shoes | necklace from a market stall

After announcing that I was selling my wardrobe the other day, I got a message asking if I'd like to meet up and do a swap with some of my clothes, instead. Well, even though the idea of the sale was to make space in my wardrobe, I'm never going to say no to cute new clothes ;) Up until recently I never would have said yes to such a request (hello, insane social anxiety!) but for the past year or so I've been forcing myself to step outside my comfort zone and do things that terrify me, like meeting up with a strangers (and, besides, it's turned out awesome before). Anyway, it turned out that this girl, Molly, is actually a really cool person (and not a stalker/murder which I admit I was 5% worried about), and I now have a new sewing friend and clothes-swap buddy in Sydney! I'm so thankful for this whole blogging thing for existing, and for letting me meet up with awesome, like-minded people, both online and offline! I love you all, whether or not you creep on here silently, or send me emails and leave me messages :)

Anyway, this dress from Molly fits me so perfectly, and made me feel like a mermaid with my newly-dyed curly red hair (which is finally growing!). Because it's been ridiculously hot and muggy, I simply wore it with a necklace and some clear jelly shoes.

That's it from me right now, because I'm making a pancake dress with this fabric and using this design, and I really want to get back to it! I hope that you're all having a really lovely day.

Sunday 9 February 2014

Ghosts and Witches

Shirt, skirt, hat and socks are all thrifted | Shoes are no longer for sale

When you decide to buy most of your clothes second-hand, you have to get over being grossed-out by unclean things first. Don't get me wrong, most of the op-shops that I visit are wonderful; everything has been super-dooper cleaned, though I still always give things a wash after bringing them home. This particular shirt, however, I bought from a market stall the other day and it had obviously been sitting around in someones closet - unclean - for a very long time. When I got home I decided to try it on to see how it fit. I plunged my arms in and a ridiculous volume of sand and lint shot out the other end. I was so shocked to have half a beach suddenly on my bedroom floor, and amazed that neither the seller nor I had realised the large amount of sand residing within the sleeves.

However, as surprising and sometimes gross as they can be, I think that second-hand clothes are more interesting than new clothes because of the questions they raise about the past owners, and what they were doing while they were wearing them. Why was the past owner wearing such a fancy blouse to the beach? Maybe they weren't dressed for the beach and ended up there by accident? And lastly, how on earth didn't they manage to shake all the sand out of the sleeves?

To finish my post today, the following is a quote from science and psychology writer Guy P. Harrison that I really liked, and made into a little image:

You can test just how bad your brain is at giving you an accurate representation of the world here and here.

Tuesday 4 February 2014

Pretty In Pinup / Pluripotency

Top is DIY | shorts are thrifted | headband is DIY | shoes are from Yeswalker

I've been in a heaps pin-uppy mood with all my outfits lately - especially after discovering that doing a beehive hairdo is basically the easiest thing ever (why have I always thought that it was so hard?) I'm also really looking forward to making a dress with this style of top in this fabric, which I am now justified in having bought, after I made so much money selling my clothes today ;)

SPEAKING OF WHICH, I am completely, totally overwhelmed by how well that went! At the moment, I've got 14 large packages to haul with me to the post office both tomorrow and on Friday. As luck would have it, the instant that I made my first sale this morning, it started to rain and has been doing so all day long :| which was fantastic, as I needed to give some of the clothes a final wash before sending them out! Grr. I honestly wasn't expecting to sell so much within 12 hours, and thought I'd have more time! (But really, I'm super happy with how well it went).

If you missed out, don't stress because I've got LOADS more to sell in the next few weeks. Just keep my store in your bookmarks and keep checking back ;)

So, has Annika got any amazing science news today? WELL. Now seriously, if I ruled the world, this would have been front-page, headlining news for several days straight. But unfortunately, that never seems to be the case when an amazing scientific discovery is made. Heck, even the Higgs Boson was largely relegated to puff-piece status.

The news is this: Scientists in Kobe were able to create pluripotent stem cells - which are cells that are able to turn into any other type of cell in the body, like bones, hair, brain or liver (read what a cell is in my introduction to biochemistry post) - from already-living white blood cells. The scientists achieved this merely by stressing the cells out and bringing them close to death. When the cells returned from the brink of death, they looked like embryonic cells without actually being from an embryo.

Now, this is absolutely amazing because it has never been done before. And if it works on human cells (it works in mice, so chances are looking pretty good for that!), then growing your own personalised organs, just in case your own happen to fail on you, is looking easier and easier all the time! Read more here, it's absolutely fascinating.

Update (June, 2014): Apparently these scientists are being done-in for fraud. *Sigh*. Which means that it's possible that cells can't be turned into pluripotent stem cells using this method. Too bad, it was some amazing-sounding stuff. Let's hope someone out there *can* replicate the study! *Fingers crossed*

I'm selling my clothes!

I've reopened my store in order to sell my wardrobe! Literally - I'm parting ways with the lot. (Well, almost. Well, not exactly. But I am parting ways with a lot). I'll be listing more and more in the next few days, but if you really like something I suggest you snap it up before someone else does.

But why are you selling all your clothes?? You all ask. (You totally did ask me. And it was a fine question!)

Well, I have way too many clothes and can probably stand to part with a few, plus I need to make some space in my wardrobe(s) for all my new handmade stuff! Another reason is that I'd really like the funds to be able to buy more fabric so that I can continue making clothes and sharing them with you all :)

I'm selling a lot of my favourites here - it's really hard to let go of them, but I keep telling myself that I can't hoard them all forever. Also, if you want to browse through my past outfits and you see something that catches your eye, and it's not listed in the store, email me (annikavictoria@gmail.com) and I might just sell it to you, as long as I'm not too attached to it!

Oh yeah, and all dresses are $10. Click here to shop!