* It rained this weekend. It was glorious. Tromping around in it brought back all the best parts of Seattle.
* Yesterday I went on the SF Tweed Ride. I am not one to pass up gratuitous costuming opportunities. I learned that 1. I should totally wear knickers more often and 2. I don't ride my bike enough. I've resolved to make more use of it in the future.
* Someone smashed the window on our car and took a couple of CDs. Annoying.
* Saturday was the big NIMBY party. NIMBY is the warehouse where we build Syzygryd. I worked crew for 2πr and generally made sure people did not light themselves on fire. This was excellent, though cold.
* I don't have many pictures to add to this post. I would like to start carrying a camera more regularly again, or get better about taking and uploading pictures with my phone. Not sure what the solution should be there. I don't spend much time with my personal laptop these days, so photos tend to languish. I still have a major backlog of un-photographed projects.
* About a week ago I spent an hour taking all the clothing I don't wear very often and putting it in a box. I have yet to really notice the difference, so I probably wasn't aggressive enough. Ideally I'd have a small and carefully curated wardrobe of totally awesome things that changed pretty frequently. Something to work towards.
* I've had a number of houseguests recently that haven't gotten mentioned here. I haven't been able to hang out as much as I'd like due to other commitments, but it's been good to see people. It's been a very social Fall.
* Fall means more homey comfort food. In particular, squash. Time to make bright orange soup!
Monday, October 18, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Tweed ride!
On Sunday I plan to ride in this. I spent last night hacking horrible womens' suit pants from the 80s into something resembling knickers, and have a bad-ass vest from a thrift store. But no pictures of them. If I manage to acquire fabric early enough I want to make something along the lines of this vest:
It wouldn't look exactly like that, of course, and would probably be grey. But it would be long, made of tweed, and have tails. And there would be some kind of bad-ass pocket system going on. Unfortunately I can't photograph my sketches well at work, so that'll have to wait.
Last night was relaxing - quiet sushi with a friend, and then making things at home. Good for getting my head together, even if the apartment is beastly hot. I must do more of this.
It wouldn't look exactly like that, of course, and would probably be grey. But it would be long, made of tweed, and have tails. And there would be some kind of bad-ass pocket system going on. Unfortunately I can't photograph my sketches well at work, so that'll have to wait.
Last night was relaxing - quiet sushi with a friend, and then making things at home. Good for getting my head together, even if the apartment is beastly hot. I must do more of this.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Needle felted dinosaur
I made this ages ago to experiment with needle felting. I'm mostly interested in the technique as a way to add design and texture to wool garments (because seriously how many little decorative objects can anyone actually own?), but this guy was fun to make. The repeated stabbing motions are quite cathartic. I did break a disturbing number of needles, but that's probably just amateur technique.
This post brought to you by my desire to actually have pictures of things I made on this blog...
This Week in My Brain
*I finally uploaded pictures from Burning Man! This one is my favorite:
The rest can be found here. I edited them heavily for half-decent photography, so there aren't many.
*A couple people have linked me to various high quality electronics cases recently. I'm thinking of attempting my own variation on the bookbinding based one at some point. I certainly have plenty of electronics rattling around.
*I've been fascinated with nomad furniture for a while. I bought this book last time I was in Portland, and there are several relevant things on Instructables. The idea is that if you're in the young, urban, semi-itinerant class (like everyone I know) you don't want to acquire lots of large stuff that's difficult to move. Furthermore, you want furniture that disassembles and is easily reconfigurable in different spaces. This has definitely been informing the sorts of things I'm thinking about building for our space, even if I haven't actually gotten around to too many of them.
Another interesting variation is gridbeam, which appears to have a community as well as various projects floating around the web. I don't actually like the look that much, but I appreciate the sentiment.
*Nature! My mom was in town, and we went up to Yosemite for a day and a night and went for a short-but-steep hike. Tom gets extremely happy when out in the woods.
We need to do this more often.
*I spent about an hour last night talking to Jason (yes he's alive!) which was great. It's really nice to have exes that play a positive role in my life. Yay for being grownups I guess? We talked a bit about that, as well as swapping trashy fantasy recommendations. And promised to send each other various media we were recommending. We'll both be in Boston for Thanksgiving (along with many other people I guess?) which will be excellent.
*In my continuing saga of being sort of bored with my clothes, I've also been looking at kinderwhore fashion. Apparently grunge is coming back? I've been listening to riot grrl music again lately as well, so I guess it's topical.
*This podcast. I am a sucker for economic storytelling? Blame my father.
*Thinking about taking more classes at the Crucible. Do I have time? Who knows. I'm thinking maybe welding and a class on jewelry techniques.
*I know I've linked to this before, but I'm having yet another bout of fascination with Alabama Chanin. I've made a shirt, dress, headband and hoodie in this technique, and have cut out the pieces for another dress and tanktop. I've been wearing the first dress constantly. I found the flickr pool for people who've made projects from her books (though apparently there are only about three people who've posted pictures). One of my favorites is here:
I'll try to post later with pictures of the stuff I've made and more details. I picked up these on Sunday for a crazy patchwork dress:
I could happily just wear clothing made this way. It would be seriously labor intensive though.
The rest can be found here. I edited them heavily for half-decent photography, so there aren't many.
*A couple people have linked me to various high quality electronics cases recently. I'm thinking of attempting my own variation on the bookbinding based one at some point. I certainly have plenty of electronics rattling around.
*I've been fascinated with nomad furniture for a while. I bought this book last time I was in Portland, and there are several relevant things on Instructables. The idea is that if you're in the young, urban, semi-itinerant class (like everyone I know) you don't want to acquire lots of large stuff that's difficult to move. Furthermore, you want furniture that disassembles and is easily reconfigurable in different spaces. This has definitely been informing the sorts of things I'm thinking about building for our space, even if I haven't actually gotten around to too many of them.
Another interesting variation is gridbeam, which appears to have a community as well as various projects floating around the web. I don't actually like the look that much, but I appreciate the sentiment.
*Nature! My mom was in town, and we went up to Yosemite for a day and a night and went for a short-but-steep hike. Tom gets extremely happy when out in the woods.
We need to do this more often.
*I spent about an hour last night talking to Jason (yes he's alive!) which was great. It's really nice to have exes that play a positive role in my life. Yay for being grownups I guess? We talked a bit about that, as well as swapping trashy fantasy recommendations. And promised to send each other various media we were recommending. We'll both be in Boston for Thanksgiving (along with many other people I guess?) which will be excellent.
*In my continuing saga of being sort of bored with my clothes, I've also been looking at kinderwhore fashion. Apparently grunge is coming back? I've been listening to riot grrl music again lately as well, so I guess it's topical.
*This podcast. I am a sucker for economic storytelling? Blame my father.
*Thinking about taking more classes at the Crucible. Do I have time? Who knows. I'm thinking maybe welding and a class on jewelry techniques.
*I know I've linked to this before, but I'm having yet another bout of fascination with Alabama Chanin. I've made a shirt, dress, headband and hoodie in this technique, and have cut out the pieces for another dress and tanktop. I've been wearing the first dress constantly. I found the flickr pool for people who've made projects from her books (though apparently there are only about three people who've posted pictures). One of my favorites is here:
I'll try to post later with pictures of the stuff I've made and more details. I picked up these on Sunday for a crazy patchwork dress:
I could happily just wear clothing made this way. It would be seriously labor intensive though.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
This week in my brain
*Manic pixie dream girls. See also this. I have totally been guilty of this in the past, though I quickly turn out to be too emotionally complicated to perpetuate the illusion. Here is one analysis of why it's so damn irritating. Of course, whether someone comes across as "interesting" or "exotic" is completely subjective.
*This ties into thoughts I've been having about makers and gender and how most creative activities seem to be somehow gendered based on historical trends. Furthermore, the associated internet communities are pretty uniformly segregated along gender lines. You can even tell by the colors. Observe:
Man communities: Make Projects, Instructables
Girly communities: Craftster, this LilyPad/soft circuit community
Edited to add: I'm being a bit fair to Instructables here, as it's really the best of the bunch (and the original mitigating comment I'd put in seems to have been deleted when I added the HTML. bugger). A better example might be the project pages on popular mechanics or one of those sorts of things. But this does tie into a larger rant about how the SF bay area maker communities that think they're all egalitarian and stuff are still sometimes really guilty of egregious stereotyping that NO ONE THINKS IS GOING ON. And man does it bother me.
Also of interest is the phenomenon whereby soft circuit projects seem to be almost exclusively by women and kids. Not that there aren't guys that do this, but rather that they don't self-label the same way. Really this all deserves its own post.
* I still owe the internet pictures of everything for the last several months. They're coming.
*Morley played this for me. It's now stuck in my head.
* I've started reading several blogs about San Francisco and the Mission. I feel much more invested in the place when I know more about what's going on. I'll be a lot more informed about local politics this November than the last time I voted here. Which is definitely a good thing.
* Apparently H. R. Giger was involved in the production design for a never-released version of Dune. Interesting, though the sketches are too small.
* Deep wedding planning ambivalence. Tom and I had a discussion the other day that pretty much amounted to "the more I find out about weddings the less I want to have one". It does not help that we know lots of couples having various relationship drama around their weddings. Lots of perfectly happy people too, but definitely a couple of cautionary tales.
* Maybe we will go see Wagner's Ring Cycle next summer?
* My life needs more dadaism.
*This ties into thoughts I've been having about makers and gender and how most creative activities seem to be somehow gendered based on historical trends. Furthermore, the associated internet communities are pretty uniformly segregated along gender lines. You can even tell by the colors. Observe:
Man communities: Make Projects, Instructables
Girly communities: Craftster, this LilyPad/soft circuit community
Edited to add: I'm being a bit fair to Instructables here, as it's really the best of the bunch (and the original mitigating comment I'd put in seems to have been deleted when I added the HTML. bugger). A better example might be the project pages on popular mechanics or one of those sorts of things. But this does tie into a larger rant about how the SF bay area maker communities that think they're all egalitarian and stuff are still sometimes really guilty of egregious stereotyping that NO ONE THINKS IS GOING ON. And man does it bother me.
Also of interest is the phenomenon whereby soft circuit projects seem to be almost exclusively by women and kids. Not that there aren't guys that do this, but rather that they don't self-label the same way. Really this all deserves its own post.
* I still owe the internet pictures of everything for the last several months. They're coming.
*Morley played this for me. It's now stuck in my head.
* I've started reading several blogs about San Francisco and the Mission. I feel much more invested in the place when I know more about what's going on. I'll be a lot more informed about local politics this November than the last time I voted here. Which is definitely a good thing.
* Apparently H. R. Giger was involved in the production design for a never-released version of Dune. Interesting, though the sketches are too small.
* Deep wedding planning ambivalence. Tom and I had a discussion the other day that pretty much amounted to "the more I find out about weddings the less I want to have one". It does not help that we know lots of couples having various relationship drama around their weddings. Lots of perfectly happy people too, but definitely a couple of cautionary tales.
* Maybe we will go see Wagner's Ring Cycle next summer?
* My life needs more dadaism.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
This Week in My Brain
1. I've been really, really busy. Like, multiple commitments every night since Burning Man busy. Mostly, this is good. But it needs to stop soon. The bedroom (which I haven't spent any time in in about three weeks) is getting disastrous, and I'll have to finish unpacking some day.
2. A while ago, I mentioned to my father that I was interested in Vietnam-era folk music and protest songs. Last week, on my birthday, a box showed up containing a number of CDs. Tom and I brought it along when we drove to Yosemite last weekend. So now my head is full of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Phil Ochs,, Judy Collins, and so on.
I've had the Draft Dodger Rag stuck in my head for days
And was reminded of this, which my dad sung to me as a lullaby:
3. This summer was a big stretch of time with no nature in it. Then I went and played on the playa, then Yosemite, and now Sedona, which looks like this (thanks, random flickr user!).
4. It's impossible to do something like Syzygryd and not be possessed by the urge to Keep Making. So far this has mostly meant food (delicious tabouleh ), but I have grand plans. For my birthday (and after I talked his ear off with ideas) Tom got me some conductive thread and circuit components to play with. I am plotting and spending too much time trolling the internet for ideas. I have many links and pictures and things, but I'm too tired to dig them up right now.
5. I need to rethink my Personal Fashion Concept. Part of me wishes we could all dress like this:
but really no one can wear that much lycra. Good for inspiration, I supposed. Before leaving for the playa I acquired a number of books on pattern drafting and a dress form (which I'd been lusting after for YEARS). Time to MAKE THINGS.
6. Speaking of Things, it is time to own less of them. Or get a storage unit. Our apartment has a serious lack of closets, and we have a serious amount of burning man gear. We can get rid of things to a point, but more than half of what I own is either books or raw materials for something or other. And you can't take either one away from me.
Coming up:
Burning Man Pictures!
Career!
What I Am Doing With My Life!
Moving (Eventually)!
And Much Much More!
2. A while ago, I mentioned to my father that I was interested in Vietnam-era folk music and protest songs. Last week, on my birthday, a box showed up containing a number of CDs. Tom and I brought it along when we drove to Yosemite last weekend. So now my head is full of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Phil Ochs,
I've had the Draft Dodger Rag stuck in my head for days
And was reminded of this, which my dad sung to me as a lullaby:
3. This summer was a big stretch of time with no nature in it. Then I went and played on the playa, then Yosemite, and now Sedona, which looks like this (thanks, random flickr user!).
4. It's impossible to do something like Syzygryd and not be possessed by the urge to Keep Making. So far this has mostly meant food (delicious tabouleh ), but I have grand plans. For my birthday (and after I talked his ear off with ideas) Tom got me some conductive thread and circuit components to play with. I am plotting and spending too much time trolling the internet for ideas. I have many links and pictures and things, but I'm too tired to dig them up right now.
5. I need to rethink my Personal Fashion Concept. Part of me wishes we could all dress like this:
but really no one can wear that much lycra. Good for inspiration, I supposed. Before leaving for the playa I acquired a number of books on pattern drafting and a dress form (which I'd been lusting after for YEARS). Time to MAKE THINGS.
6. Speaking of Things, it is time to own less of them. Or get a storage unit. Our apartment has a serious lack of closets, and we have a serious amount of burning man gear. We can get rid of things to a point, but more than half of what I own is either books or raw materials for something or other. And you can't take either one away from me.
Coming up:
Burning Man Pictures!
Career!
What I Am Doing With My Life!
Moving (Eventually)!
And Much Much More!
Sunday, September 5, 2010
The man, the moon, a syzygryd
This has been my project for the past couple of months. Along with 60+ other people (many of whom are crazy hardcore!), I wrote software, drilled, countersunk, soldered, sawed, lifted and soldered some more. I bounced up and down for a looong time when I first saw it up and running. Holy shit guys, it is such an amazing feeling.
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