maker faire community egg

Maker Faire has come and gone, and though it took some feats of organization to be there along with a preschooler and a nursing baby for two big days, it was totally worth it. I was so happy to have the chance to share one of my crafts, making pysanky (Ukrainian eggs), with so many great people. Everyone was so friendly, and I loved getting to meet so many crafters from Austin and beyond.

And speaking of that, thanks to Rachel for making me one of her "editor's picks" among the craft makers. I didn't get as much opportunity to spend time looking around as I might have liked, but from the little I saw, I was thoroughly impressed (and am still in awe of the lace-making... hmm, I'm tempted... but do I need a whole new project?)

I helped about three dozen people make eggs of their own to take home, and several people seemed especially taken with the craft. (Oh, and for everyone who is attempting to remove the wax from their eggs at home: I said to use an oven on the lowest setting with the door propped open -- oops! That applies to eggs that have been blown out -- for whole eggs, you need a bit more heat. Sorry for any frustration I may have inadvertently caused... :)

I also had people add to the community egg (shown above). I liked the idea of an egg that was created by many hands, and it also gave people the chance to try it out even if they didn't have time to sit down and make a whole egg.

If anyone I met at Maker Faire has any questions, please feel free to post them here and I'll be sure to answer.

And I promise, we'll return to something other than eggs now... :)

maker faire // nest egg

maker faire is this weekend, so if you'll be in the austin area (or can grab your hobo stick and hop a train to get here?) come check it out, and be sure to stop by and say hi. i'll be there with my pysanky, which means i've been working on eggs all this week.

above is the final egg in a series of eggs i made to show the steps in the process (thus the simple design; i needed to repeat it five times). given current events, i felt motivated to make a graph of the dow jones industrial average across my entire lifetime so far. in egg form. (it's pretty accurate, too.) seeing the graph that way makes it pretty clear...that whole exponential growth thing had to break sometime, huh? the egg is pictured atop the contents of eva's piggy bank (which includes five different currencies... hey, does that mean we're safe?). nest egg, indeed.



(bonus points if you spot all the currencies... :)

ghosts of halloween past

i'm currently working on this year's halloween costumes, but thought i'd take a moment to offer a tour of past halloween costumes.

the one i'm most proud of is the evil knievel costume i made for larry a few years back. i based it on a commercial pattern for an elvis costume, but added the red white and blue trim (stars! oh the stars!), a belt, and a detachable cape.



i put more time into it than one logically should put into a halloween constume, but once a decade or so, i think that's okay. as a result, my costume that year was a more or less no-sew project. i made a mummy bride quickly by "draping" shredded fabric over my wedding petticoat, pinning, and basting in place. the bodice is more or less tied on, and the gloves and veil are cheesecloth (in december when i wanted cheesecloth to mull some cider, i couldn't figure out what happened to the full package i knew i had just bought...oh yeah. :)


(forgive the poor photo, this was several years ago...)

my sister lora and her friends are crazy about halloween. (no, really. cra-zeee.) they've done "dukes of hazzard" with tiny little cars, all the shrek characters (i think that damn cat took forever). here are a few others -- click through any photo for more info, or feel free to post a comment if want more details:

the lollipop guild (with a movie photo for reference):





various muppets, including statler and waldorf (the old guys from the balcony), kermit the frog and miss piggy, and beaker and bunsen (shown with a friend of theirs dressed as mary catherine gallagher):






the princess bride:





oops, looks like we got the blindfold color wrong. well, i think it's also a break from complete accuracy that our princess bride was noticeably pregnant. (hmm, i don't remember that plot twist from the movie. :)

and my other favorite, the monkey costume i made for eva two years ago. she wore it for two years, because i intentionally made it large enough and basted it up the first year. she was so cute, and convincing enough that it made all the neighborhood dogs bark like crazy. :)



this year, though, she's old enough to choose for herself. and sometime around february, based on her ongoing obsession, she choose cindy lou who ("who was not more than two") from the grinch. we're making it a theme, and the babies in her life (sister, cousin) will be the grinch and max the dog, and any participating grown-ups will be the whos from whoville. check back after halloween for that update.