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Pickles

My friend Marisa and I made these refrigerator pickles for Burning Man. From left to right, there are two big jars of cucumbers, one of green & wax beans, and one of purple carrots with onions and peppers. We made up a quadruple batch of the pickle brine from Smitten Kitchen’s pickled carrots, and added a couple of tablespoons of pickling spice to it once we had pickled the carrots. We also added dill to everything. It was super easy, and hopefully these guys will taste delicious on the playa!

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2010 08 19 Cyn Cooking Comments (0) Permalink

Hula Hoops!

I love making hula hoops almost as much as I love hooping. All of my hoops are loosely based on the Jason Unbound tutorial. I also always wrap duct tape around my joins, and make sure that any shiny decorative tape is covered by either gaffers or electrical tape on both sides to keep the edges from getting super beat up.

This was made with all of the leftover tape remnants I had lying around. I think it turned out pretty good, despite it’s haphazard nature. Also apparently I love neon spike tape.

Two more hoops – the one with the pink stripes is a blatant rip-off of a hoop that belongs to a girl in my hooping class, because I saw it and was like “WANT.” The other one was an experiment with having a stripe of tape going over the main tape in the opposite direction – I like it, but I think it would look cooler if I’d waited to add the green tape and put it over the pink spike tape.

This was originally going to look like the pink hoop in the previous picture, but before I added the pink spike tape one of my friends was like “Oooh, that looks so cool with the black and pink together”, so I decided to use black instead. I think it makes for a more elegant, understated hula hoop, the kind of hoop you would take to prom with you.

I made one of my hoops collapsible based on the collapsible hoop instructable. Folding the hoop up seems to make the joins wiggle open a little bit, but I just pop them back together when it’s open.

I’m so excited about my new foldy hoop that I’ve already managed to scrape it up in two places. This is why I can’t have nice things.

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2010 08 09 Cyn Hoops Comments (0) Permalink

Pants Pants Pants (and Shorts)

This weekend my friend Helena organized a “Crafternoon”, and I took my sewing machine over to our friend Matt’s house where we all made pants. (We also went on a field trip to the fabric store the day before. Helena is a total fabric-buying enabler, she’s all “Oh, you need at least an extra yard of that.”)

I couldn’t resist this fabric. So ridiculous.

Helena just kind of made up the pattern for these shorts for me. And came up with the idea of using the rainbow ribbon on the side. She is a genius!

These are pretty much the perfect “lounging around the house on a Sunday morning” shorts.

But I’m especially excited about their hula hooping potential! I didn’t actually own any shorts before this, and they’re very useful for hooping around your legs, since the hoop sticks to your skin better than your clothing.

We also made wrap pants! Helena showed us how from an internet tutorial she’d read, I’m guessing it was this one. These turned out cute enough to actually even wear outside the house! At least, I wore them to the grocery store today and no one actively made fun of me.

Hooping shot!

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2010 08 08 Cyn Sewing Comments (0) Permalink

Playing Around with an Arduino

I recently bought an arduino to use with my hexayurt project. My goal is to use it to control groups of Red, Blue and Green LEDs so I can do color cross-fading. (Examples here and here.) Here are a bunch of probably very boring videos of what I can do with my new toy!

First I made the on-board LED blink. I used the helpful Blinking LED code from the arduino site.

This is the same code, but with an LED attached to pin 13 and ground. (Pin 13 has a built-in resistor.)

Same code, but with a different pin. I moved the LED to my breadboard, and added a resistor.

And finally, here it is switching between three different LEDs.

I also got it to slowly switch between the LEDs to create a color-melding kind of effect, but my video turned out even worse than these.

Bonus fun fact: I’ve managed to use 40 pink LEDs in various craft projects in the last 2 months.

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2010 07 27 Cyn Electronics Comments (0) Permalink

Elephant Skirt

Sometimes it is nice to work on a project that does not involve fake fur or LEDs, but does involve crazy paisleys and elephants. Working with nice, smooth, non-stretchy normal fabric is so nice after all the random crap I am usually sticking into my sewing machine. It just works! My sewing machine does not get all upset at all, it just sews it together!

This skirt was a basic a-line skirt that I threw together a pattern for based off of my measurements, but it did involve both putting in a zipper and using bias tape. The zipper thing went very well, although I had to redo the waist a couple of times because it started out all huge. I think I tend to make things too big because I’m afraid of making them too small and having to throw everything away. Also, I think I am a little bit in love with bias tape now.

PS. Photographing skirts is hard.

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2010 07 04 Cyn Sewing Comments (1) Permalink

My Plants Are Still Alive!

I am up to three plants, and they are all alive, and none of them have been stolen so far. (For the record, the total is four plants purchased, one (basil) stolen, NONE DEAD.) Left to right, they are: Rosemary, shiso, mint. The mint is the oldest and is pretty much trying to take over the world. Today I replanted them into real pots, so hopefully they will continue to do well. The pot the mint is in I got yesterday out of someone’s “Free Stuff” pile while I was on my way to buy pots. Score!

2010 07 04 Cyn Gardening Comments (1) Permalink

Fuzzelglowy Leg Warmers

Pink faux fur leg warmers with white & pink LEDs: The silliest things I’ve ever made?

Probably, but there’s still 2 months of sewing days until Burning Man! Maybe I’ll even make something without fake fur OR LEDs.

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2010 06 29 Cyn Electronics
Sewing Comments (3) Permalink

End Table Hack

The other day I realized that if I put my lap desk on top of the crate in which I store my knitting, it forms a perfect little end table on which to place a beverage while I sit on my couch. Considering how much of my leisure time I spend drinking beer on my couch, this has improved my life considerably.

Have I mentioned I’m sort of obsessed with crates? If I see a crate just sitting around abandoned on the street, there is a 100% chance I will pick it up and take it home with me. Free crate! So perfect for storing everything.

2010 06 16 Cyn Misc. Projects Comments (2) Permalink

Coffee Table Update

I went up to LA to work on my coffee table this Sunday and Monday, and it is finally all done except for staining, which my dad is getting one of his friends to do. So let’s all look at some pictures of my coffee table!

A close up of the apron – my dad did this carving, because it is complicated and fancy and he has skillz. The wood we’re using is cherry. Right now it is very light pinkish white, but over time it will become reddish. The stain is going to be slightly reddish as well.

The aprons and top. I did some of the carving on these. Also lots and lots and lots of sanding. The top is put together in a way that allows the individual boards to expand and contract over time: the boards in the middle are all loosely tongue and grooved together, and then held in place by the four boards on the outside framing them.

Here it is all assembled except for the top. To put the top on, you put screws through the little blocks of wood on the sides. You attach it to the sides and not the corners so that the wood can move around some over time. I did a bunch of carving on the legs, although my dad did their little feet.

Here is assembled (and upside-down). I learned a lot working on this project with my dad. When I initially suggested “Hey, let’s make a coffee table together” I sort of assumed we’d nail some already-shaped pieces of wood together and call it a day. But of course, since my dad is a bad-ass who carves insanely amazing pieces of furniture as a hobby, this table involved a lot of what we in the software biz call “feature creep.” First it was “Oh, let’s carve the legs” and then it was like “Let’s just do a little bit of simple carved detail on the aprons” and then it was “But wouldn’t this look nicer if there was this little spirally bit on the ends?” And who am I to complain about a coffee table with more awesome?

There is also no way I could possibly make anything like this on my own. Not only were there lots of “Oh, I will do this super advanced part” times, but there were also two days of “Okay, now we go to your uncle’s stair-building shop and use all his fancy machines.” We used five different kinds of power sanders on this table. And a router. And many different kinds of saws. And a boring machine.

(Related aside: When I was in high school and working for my dad at a different stair-building shop, I found the name “boring machine” to be hilarious. It’s just a machine that bores holes, but whenever my dad went to any kind of machine trade show, I’d be like “Were there boring machines there?” and he’d be like “Yes, they had some very nice boring machines” and I’d be all “Well, they’re all boring machines to me!” Ha ha ha, I was kind of a jerk as a teenager.)

It was really nice getting to work with my dad on something that he really likes doing, and is an expert at. It was fun getting to see how he designs/thinks about projects. (Not surprisingly, it is very similar to how I approach projects.) And he was a very good teacher, one who dealt with all of my “Ahhh something went wrong and I don’t know what to do!” moments with “Don’t worry, we can fix that.”

And now I have this amazing coffee table, which in case of a fire will be the second thing dragged out of my apartment after the cat. Maybe before the cat, if she keeps waking me up at 6 am to pet her.

Expect 2000 more pictures once this is stained and in my house. And possibly also a “Look at my coffee table but no touching the coffee table party.

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2010 06 11 Cyn Carpentry Comments (3) Permalink

Furry Hat w/ Light Up Ears

I’ve been meaning to make a furry eared hat for a while, and the other day it occurred to me that it would be awesome to give it light up ears.

I started by sketching out a pattern based on a furry hat I already owned. This was really difficult to trace based on the fur, so I basically marked down three points (bottom corner, top of ear, and middle of head), and sketched it out from there. I sketched it out on an old t-shirt, because I have a ton of scrap t-shirts. Then I used this as a template to cut two pieces out of some purple fake fur I had. I find the easiest way to deal with fake fur is to use a utility knife to cut the non-furry side – unlike scissors, this minimizes how much fuzz ends up everywhere.

Then I sketched out my circuit on my scrap fabric. I put three LEDs in each ear, and the battery holder on the side where it would be easy to get to. I used my sewing machine to sew conductive thread traces along my circuit sketch on the scrap fabric, then sewed my scrap fabric to one side of my hat, with the traces out on the non-furry side. Then I sewed on my battery holder and LEDs – for the LEDs, I put the LED on the furry side, and then poked their leads through the two layers of fabric and bent them over with pliers.

After my circuit was done, I sewed the two sides of the hat together. Then I sewed together a lining out of another old t-shirt, leaving a gap in one side so that I can access the battery holder. (I didn’t put in an on-off switch, so I need to just take the battery out and put it in.) The lining is a little big, honestly, and for now I just sewed it to the hat right-sides-together and flipped them inside out, but I might end up top-stitching the lining down some. I just hate sewing extra seams on faux fur because it mats it down. Maybe I can sort of hem it in on the inside by hand.

Two things I’d like to improve about this hat: The ears are sort of too far back. I think the solution to this would be to have the front much shorter than the back – maybe have the hat sides be sort of diagonal? And my lining is really crappy. But for never having sewn a hat before, and making the whole thing up, I’m pretty pleased with it.

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2010 06 09 Cyn Electronics
Sewing Comments (1) Permalink