One Inch World

We had our sort-of annual gingerbread house making party yesterday, and it was a lot of fun. This year I skipped the nervous breakdown inducing making of 50 billion slabs of gingerbread, and we all used graham crackers. They work better than 3/8″ thick slabs of gingerbread anyway, they aren’t as heavy, although they don’t taste as good. I tried calling a local bakery, but they laughed at me. Someone mentioned they sold slabs at Nobb Hill, so maybe I’ll try that next year.

Anyway, there was plenty of candy and icing and graham crackers, and at least 10 houses constructed. My best friend and I collaborated on Donaldson Castle, complete with body hanging from the ramparts…

Today, through Kiva.org, I loaned $50 to a tailor in Ghana. Join me in my December drive to give a helping hand to people in poverty.

Isn’t this LED beautiful with its leads bent around in loops? I finally broke out the conductive thread and velcro for a soft circuit. And, man, that velcro is expensive stuff. $16.50 for a foot long strip 1″ wide.

Also, two thumbs up for the spinach, cream cheese and sardine sandwich on whole wheat. Maybe it could have used a little honey.

Finally finally finally! This is what I’ve been working on for the last month besides my 2007 photo book. And suddenly I find I have nothing to say… I think the pattern came out nicely though, this time I decided to illustrate it instead of photographing it. I like how it looks, it isn’t overloaded with pictures for each tiny step, and I think the illustrations are easier to understand. I wanted to get this done further before the holidays, but it’s pretty easy to make, so maybe I’ll get some adventurous takers.

I think finding wheels is a little intimidating, so I put some sets of those up for sale in my shop too, although I really don’t want to get into the business of selling wheels. If I was a business major I’m sure I’d think it was great and call it something like horizontal productization or leveraged diversification or something, but there’s a reason I’m not a business major, and I don’t run a store. Because I want to make things, not resell them. Except, now I have a store. Hrm.

On a separate note, Thanksgiving was really low key at our house this year. We were going to go over to a friends for a group shindig, but Rebecca got sick Tuesday night. Thursday it got to be time to cook dinner, well, 20 minutes until dinner is supposed to be ready is a little late to start, and I felt lame that we didn’t have anything Thanksgiving-ish. So in 40 minutes I managed to cook elbow noodles (Rebecca survives half on whole wheat noodles and half on milk and fruit), sour cranberry relish, biscuit wrapped chicken sausage bits, and roasted chestnuts. And the biscuits didn’t come out of a pop-tube either. We opened a bottle of wine, and had the chocolate cream pie Jesse made for the party for dessert ourselves. I was quite pleased with my adrenaline fueled speed cooking session. It brought back the days when we used to have Iron Chef cooking parties at our house.

I should probably have some kind of giveaway now, shouldn’t I? Maybe tomorrow.

I got this idea from MaryAnn Kohl’s Math Arts, although I think the math connection is pretty weak it sounded like fun from a sensory perspective. The version in the book was more involved, but what we did was paint with glue and then sprinkle spices over the glue. Then there was a lot of spice layering, and then we were making ‘mudge’ according to Rebecca. Mudge being a paste of white glue and aromatic spices apparently. Although I was not deemed competent to make mudge, maybe someday if I practiced enough, but I was just making spudge. Which was fine with me. I don’t care what you call an art activity if it lasts for almost two hours, which this did!

So find those five year old spices in the back of your pantry, put them in jars with shaker tops if they aren’t already, and some paint brushes and watered down white glue. It may look like, uh, awful, but it smells really nice. Ours is hanging on the kitchen wall for Rebecca to sniff. I think we’ll do this with our artfriends on Friday.

Felt lollipops for Halloween, or anytime you need play-sweets. Start your own lollipop sweet shop with dolls (you can even twist the pipe cleaners around their hands so they can hold them if you make them long enough), or engage in some trick-or-treat play drama, or maybe you just need something cute for the middle of your table. These are so simple you don’t need a tutorial, but the dimensions and pictures are useful, right?

Materials:
Half a pipe cleaner,
two 1.5″ circles of felt,
embroidery floss,
2″ wide packing tape or clear contact paper.

(I used wool felt, but craft felt should work fine.)

Twist one end of the pipe cleaner up in a spiral that is a little smaller than one of the felt circles. Fold about half an inch of the bottom end up so that the wires at the bottom won’t poke anyone.

Stitch around the edge of the circle with contrasting (or matching) embroidery floss, trapping the pipe cleaner inside. I used all six strands because I wanted the stitching to really stand out. To make it easier to sew with six strands you can divide it into three strands, thread it onto your needle, pull all six of the ends together and knot them. Then you aren’t trying to pull twelve strands of floss through the felt with each stitch.

Cut three pieces of packing tape or contact paper:
* One 1.5″x3.25″ piece for the inside of the wrapper, cutting this without getting it to stick to itself is a little tricky!
* Two about 2″x3″ pieces for the outside. Don’t worry about the exact size – just big enough to cover the inside wrapper and hang over the edge by at least 1/2″, but more is fine.

Take the narrow piece of tape and fold it over the top of the lollipop, sticky side out – you don’t want the tape to stick to the felt. The folded tape should be just a tiny bit bigger than the lollipop.

Place the larger pieces horizontally and sticky side in on the front and back, lining up the bottom edges as best you can and letting the other sides hang over. Press it all together and smooth it out with your fingers.

You should now have a wrapper that slides on and off. Take it off and trim up the edges. You can cut them all flat or cut some of the edges with pinking sheers – for a traditional lollipops from a roll look trim the top and bottom edges flat and the left and right edges crinkly. I decided to pink mine around the top three edges, because crinkly is cute!

These are really fast, so make a bunch! Time for play!

We try to make our house as child accessible as possible, but the kitchen sink faucet has been slow coming – she can always walk over to the bathroom, but sometimes that isn’t such a good idea, say when her hands are dripping paint. Because as much as you tell a three year old not to touch anything on their way to the bathroom, their concentration isn’t always there.

So now with a four inch piece of wood and some rubber bands Rebecca can turn on the kitchen sink too. As long as the lever is pointing forwards, and isn’t completely inaccessible off to the side. It’s an improvement anyway, we’ll see if it’s as successful as the dowel-and-plastic-tubing enhanced light switch in the bathroom.

So, hurrah, I made something today. And yesterday I made pizza (including the crust), signaling the end of my I’m-not-cooking-I-have-a-baby period I guess. Really it was fueled by my growing frustration that even living in California, the land of hippy food, I can’t order a pizza around here with a whole wheat crust, and hey, one quarter no cheese for my picky daughter.