Aaah, yes.
Now I remember why I haven’t actually watched a DVD in years. I don’t watch many things to start with, and all the movies I watch at home were ripped to the servers long ago.
via Boing Boing
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Amusing anecdote
Recently, my grandparents moved from their place in Knoxville to a place closer to my parents in Nashville. Mom, Dad, and I were out at their former home yesterday, packing up and sorting through another load of stuff. I was packing away the little tchotckes left on my grandfather’s desk, and Mom started going through the stuff in the closet. she found a chocolate rose, said “no idea how long THAT’S been there,” and threw it away. then, “Oh, look, dark chocolate mint things! These are great, I’ll check and see if they’re still good…”
Me, I prefer the Dove chocolate of the rose, so I retrieved it and was pulling the wrapping off to see if it was still good.
Dad came in, laughed at both of us, and said “I brought those… they were for your mom for Valentine’s day tomorrow. I didn’t expect you to start on this closet!”
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Hacking things
“Hacking refers to the re-configuring or re-programming of a system to function in ways not facilitated by the owner, administrator, or designer.” -Wikipedia
“Hacking” is most commonly technology-related, I suppose, but around my people it has taken on a bit more than technology. We use it to refer to “getting any thing to do something it was not originally intended to do.” My favorite way of expressing this is “I’m going to use this in ways that neither God nor DeWalt/Volkswagen/etc ever intended!” We are all perfectly comfortable voiding warranties of one sort or another. I think it’s wonderful, even if it occasionally leads me to say “What did you DO to the media server?!”
Much of the fun comes from figuring out what you can use to get the desired results. Jump rings without sized mandrels? try your socket wrench set. Want waxed linen thread in colors, but the store only has black and white? run some embroidery floss over a taper candle. Need to press tiny books? couple of binder clips work fine, add in some chipboard pieces if the clips are leaving marks.
What’s your favorite non-standard use of an object?
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Needle tatting
I sat down at my desk tonight, put what is hopefully the last layer of sealer on something I’m making for my daughter’s teacher, and wondered what I wanted to play with next. I realized that I wanted to tat, which is a shame.
I miss my tatting needles. I left them in Nashville two weeks ago, at my friend’s house. Not that I’m a ridiculously proficient tatter, if you want that wander over to TotusMel’s blog but I’ve made a couple of things that I’m proud of… I even have pictures of one of them!
That’s made from a pattern she kindly posted, is the most complicated thing I’ve tatted to date, and it will probably be a while before I attempt something that large again. I am *very* proud of it.
What I like about the craft is the intricacy. hundreds of stitches forming dozens of loops and chains, curving and joining to create beauty. It always looks so joyous.
It’s also pretty easily portable, hence why my needles are 100 miles away. If timing works out, I might be able to retrieve them this weekend, and I’ll get to play with them soon. Woo!
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Little Bottles
Yesterday, circumstances had me looking through the cabinet where we keep all the medications. In this process, I decided to pitch everything that had expired. In THIS process, I found a lovely little glass bottle, from a child’s liquid medicine. I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away, it was begging to be used. I washed it out:
and pondered what I should put in it. It would be at home on an apothecary’s shelf, or being emptied into a witch’s cauldron. Obviously, it needs to contain souls.
What color is the soul? What color of liquid do I need in this bottle? Well, according to two reliable sources, lawyers’ souls are black and viscous, but there is little consensus otherwise.
I took the bottle with me to work this morning anyway, so I could play with fonts and font sizes. There, I ran into an auditor (who is, honestly, a very nice human being), but the thought was too good to pass up.
I selected the “chiller” font, and played with sizes:
Wound up in 44 font, for the curious. I centered it, printed it, tore the edges and then aged it. Aging paper isn’t hard. this method included crumpling the paper, setting it in a dish, and dumping coffee on it:
note- this really works better with sharpie marker or a toner-based copy. inkjet printer ink is more liable to smear.
I drained the dish, and popped it in the toaster oven at 200 for about five minutes, until it was nice and dry. I took a lighter to the edges (best done at a sink with a running faucet) to finish the effect. I originally intended to bring it home and glue the label to the bottle, but I got impatient, and decided to hang the label from the bottleneck:
This left me with the question of “what color is an auditor’s soul?” but auditors don’t have souls, which made the next part really easy. The bottle came with a standard plastic cap, which is entirely unsuitable for this kind of thing. I lit a candle, and dipped the neck of the bottle in the melted wax several times, sealing it.
(it later became blatantly obvious that jar-candle wax is entirely too soft for this sort of thing, so if you want to replicate this… try taper candles or sealing wax)
That’s all there was to it:
The auditor was amused.
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Books
I like books. I’ve had my nose in one book or another since learning to read, and one of the highlights of my parenting career was having to remove a book from my daughter’s hands as she read in the light of her computer monitor after bedtime. (It was a school night or I’d have left her to it.) The internet has done horrible things to my book habits, I admit, but the fascination with books remains. I love the potential of a new book, I love the smell of old books, I love the beauty of leatherbound and the playfulness of mass market paperbacks. I love the promise of intimacy a journal provides, and the convenience of a tiny notebook
A few months ago, I ran across this lady: http://www.etsy.com/shop/TheBlackSpotBooks, and purchased one of her necklaces. I then wandered the internet, and discovered any number of resources for learning bookbinding, and learned that I really didn’t need a whole lot of specialty equipment to bind a book. Most of the tools I had on hand for other craft genres, or were of the “that’d be nice but isn’t totally necessary” variety such as a stitching frame or a book press. You’ll get better results with those things, but they’re expensive. I elected not to forego something i wanted to try because I lacked big equipment… I forged through it.
http://michaelshannon.us/makeabook/index.html had the best diagrams in the first round of tutorials I turned up, and so after a round of pamphlet stitching and a couple of 5-hole Asian stab-bound books for practice, I tried it. A couple of months, some practice, and adapting his technique to suit myself… and this is the product:
Three sizes of books
The red one is the oldest of the three, and I took the time when making it to hand-tear all the paper. 
the tiny gray one I made largely to see how difficult it would be to shrink all the processes down that far. It made a few things easier, and a few things harder.
They’re fun to do! The green one I just pulled out from the final pressing, I do believe I like the little closure.
I find myself quite attracted to this art form, so you’ll probably be seeing more books from me as the months go by.
I made this as a Christmas present
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Introductions
Ah, the introductory post. These are always awkward. Hi, I’m Kristen. I go by Imp online. I’m barely 30, unnaturally redheaded, and gainfully employed. I have a husband and a nine-year-old daughter. We live in a small town in Tennessee. I run a MacBook.
I can play the oboe with reasonable competence, and have spent the last 18 months (give or take) in a mixed martial arts class. I do not, under any circumstances, recommend trying to blend those two activities.
I like to make stuff sometimes. Lately I have been dabbling in bookbinding, polymer clay, a very tiny bit of decoupage, needle tatting, and sometimes pulling out the trusty embroidery hoops for a cross-stitch pattern. Sometime in the next few weeks I will learn to convince the sewing machine to obey my bidding.
This is a blog about stuff I think is interesting. Sometimes it will feature stuff that I have made, because I wouldn’t make it if I didn’t think it was interesting, and sometimes it will feature stuff I have found.
Welcome! I hope you enjoy it here. It should be interesting.
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