My waffle iron had a missing shoe. Which made the pancakes have bad posture and list a little lop sided. For many years. Tonight, I stopped and got some polymer clay. And then I actually used it! I was going utilitarian tonight, but while I was waiting for it to bake, I tried a little artistry. I liked it a bunch until I tried to flaten it a little and obliterated the neat-o twists. But… oh well!
I fixed the dyes this evening and they are now drying in preparation for the final ironing before wearing. Or something. Still not sure what to do with them. But it’s interesting how the color intensity decreased a bit upon drying. And I may I have waited too long to use the salt – I noticed very little effect.
My favorite part of my favorite scarf (mostly just cause of the colors) although the interesting pattern from the squirt bottle diffused and is no longer noticeable:
I think the swirls in this one are super awesome!
And here’s a little bit of the salt effect:
PS: Got my servo! If I’m not feeling too icky tomorrow, I may play with it a bit! Woohoo!!
I have gotten tired of my cats scratching and meowing at me before I want to wake up to be fed. I have also seen how powerful frequent, portion controled meals can be in reducing and maintaining weight and would like to try to share that with my cats. Having a job makes it impossible for me to feed my cats 4-6 times daily, though. So, I naturally decided to make an automatic cat feeder. I looked a several tutorials on instructables and MAKE, but none of them did what I wanted: multiple, small portions delivered indefinitely. This cereal dispenser is the first part towards my feeder. $38.89 (s&h included)
I took the long back parts off because I’m planning on mounting this on a board out of kitty reach.
While the knob clearly has four lobes, the spindle inside the canister is divided into 6 sections. So, when I build the turning mechanism, I’m going to have to get it to turn only 60 degrees, rather than 90. Turning 90 releases two sections of food. Each section releases 1/4 cup of food. If the knob is turned 90 degrees, 1/2 cup will come out. If my goal is to feed the cats at least 4 times a day and, since they’re on a diet, they get fed 1/2 cup a day, I’ll need to make each section smaller. Preferably releasing 1/8 cup. 1/16 would be even better though!
I have to decide how I’m going to make the sections smaller. Using cardboard and tape were suggested to me, but you know how tape can curl and leave sticky residue on the things around it. I’d prefer not to muck up the spindle or feed residue to my cats. I’m thinking about using some sort of styrofoam or spray foam, but am not liking that idea – I’d imagine it would be hard to clean and not be good for cats to eat. I just now thought of using fimo. I can mold it to shape inside the spindle, take it out and bake it and then varnish it in nontoxic varnish. I’m guessing two-part epoxy would not be “healthy” so I’ll have to come up with a safe glue.
Once I get that figured out, I have the turning mechanism to build which will be attached to a Teensy or Dorkboard which will do the timing and turning on and off of the turning mechanism servo. The servo is in the mail and should be here soon! Yay!
So, I think I’ve finally caught up on all the things I’ve finished so far that I wanted to share with the world. Now, what I’ve really been wanting to do, which is post as I’m working on projects. Yay! So, here’s one that came out of nowhere…
My boyfriend arrived home one evening last week with a silk painting kit. I’d never contemplated silk painting, but now I needed to. As soon as possible. So, today I worked through the kit. The kit came with two long silk scarves and I believe his mom put in two silk handkerchiefs.
Since the mordant could only be mixed up once, I felt like I had to paint all the items to fix at the same time. I decided to paint flowers on the handkerchiefs, but the paint spreads much more than I thought it would, even as it continues to dry.
For the really long scarves, I decided to play with the spreading. Since the scarves were laying on plastic bags, the way the dye spread was pretty cool. On the stripy scarf, I sprinkled rock salt, which is supposed to marbalize the dye as it dries. On the blotchy scarf (my favorite so far), I experimented with scrunching up the plastic and a water spray bottle.
Now, I have to wait 24 hrs for them to dry. I’ll iron them (to heat set the dye) and then swish them around in a mordant. Let them dry and then iron again and they should be rather pretty.
… I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them, though… But silk painting was fun! I can’t claim that I’m an incredible artist w/lifelike representations, but its hard to make anything ugly with such pretty colors!
I’ve seen instructions on how to paint on a frame, which would eliminate some of the spreading artifacts. And there were instructions on how to use a resist to keep colors from combining. So, I think this is a technique I’ll be able to use in future costumes.
So, I finally finished my camp box enough to put stuff in it! I still would like to put a vinyl top on the primary work surface and get/make some little shelves/drawers, but figure I’ll do that when I a) plan another camping trip and b) have some extra funds that aren’t needed for my automatic cat feeder. Here are some pix!
This is as far as I got in my woodshop class – milled and cut the wood out (with many mistakes) and initially assembled. In this picture you can see that the screws are the steel/zinc (?) ones. This photo is in my craft room, after moving from Beaverton. I’d had those things in my car since January..
Now we’re at the Davis’ Compound Wood Shop where I have finished cutting and assembling my inner box. After I had it all dry assembled, I took it apart, glued the pieces down and used pretty brass screws.
Here is the whole-y assembled box. This is what you’ll take out of your car.
Slide the outer frame off and place where you want your cooking station to be.
Slide the sides off the inner box …
… and place them where you’d like. Here, one is set on top of the outer frame as a side-counter, and one as a bottom shelf.
Then place your inner box on top of the outer frame and – wa-la! – you have access to all your cooking gear with room to work!
Saddly, I have already altered this dress once to fit my smaller size and need to do it AGAIN! SHEESH!
But, it’s pretty awesome. This is the first dress I made using my duct-tape body double and it fit perfectly (at the time). Since then, I’ve donated the double to Fat Fancy (an awesome resale store in Portland) and am waiting until I get to my “optimal” weight and can maintain that for a while before I build another one…
SO! Here are some finished pictures of it!
