Brain Corals

Not really brains, not really corals. They’re adorable brain corals!

I decided to make these after my visit to the exhibit at the National History Museum. When I saw the exhibit, my mind exploded, to put it mildly. I also wanted to jump into the display and become one with it. The nice lady wouldn’t let me do that. (aww)

This is the first one. It was so adorable I had to make many many more.

This one was nearly impossible to photograph. Too much white. It’s also less fluffy than it looks, even though I used the softest yarn ever.

This one is really coarse despite being made of chenille and eyelash yarns. It’s also nearly a perfect sphere (under these conditions).

My dad asked for this one. I need to do some in other bright colors.

The camera washed this one out really badly. It’s as saturated as the sunburst above, just not orange.

And I made some kelp. Kelp are lame and not really kelpy.

I created these by making a four or five chain loop, doing as many single stitches through the loop as I could, three or four double stitches through each of the singles, and 3-5 doubles through each of the previous doubles, and 3-5 singles in those doubles. The second row of doubles OR the outer row of singles can be optional. It really depends on the density of the yarn and how much time you want to spend on these. I’m a very good crocheter, so I can do one of these in about 20minutes, but if you’re a n00b or haven’t crocheted in a while, they could easily take an hour. They also use up a LOT of yarn, so they’re great for using up scraps from old projects.

They are quite similar to the beaded hyperbolic flowers I made a while ago, because of all the same reasons.

Companion Cubes

I have a deep and unhealthy emotional attachment to them now… and people keep trying to take them from me! :(

I’ve been playing around with making companion cubes on dad’s 3D printer. I used emonk‘s version for the middle and biggest ones and gianteye‘s version for the smallest. I printed the middle one first and discovered that the top didn’t have enough ‘pixels’ to render the heart well.

A day, a 1.5 scale, a printer glitch and 50 minutes later, I had a palm sized one.

The heart on the top turned out much better and the sides are just as wonderful.

Jackson suggested that print one that the big one could fit on top of diagonally like the middle on did. That would take *forever*, so I printed an EVEN SMALLER one. The bottom failed quite a bit- the support structure didn’t stick to the build platform and then the bottom fell out while it was being printed. The sides are pretty good but the bump on the top is poor. It has no hearts because the printer doesn’t have the resolution, especially on the top surface, for that to work well at all.

Here’s the bottom of it.

And the three of them together! aren’t they cute?

From left to right, Inara, Kaylee, and Jackson. Yup.

Ruffled Cuffs

My sewing machine came with a ruffler. It’s an alien looking gizmatch but I believe it to be the /coolest thing evar/. At least, when it’s in operation. The day I figured it out I made rather a lot of ruffles-

-and I’m still finding the silly things in my bed. It’s quite ridiculous.

This is the attachment and a sample ruffle.

But I haven’t really done anything yet. I’ve just spent a day being gleeful. *puts glee to use*

Do-hin-gus

I *just* printed my first thing on The ShopMaster’s Thing-o-Matic.

I started it out in google Sketchup, just doodling around pretty much, exported it to .stl, sent it through SCAD, and thence to the printer!

And it printed! (for 11 minutes)

There are so many things wrong with it that I can’t even start but IT IS MADE OF SO MUCH WIN

Hyperbolic Beading

I totally stole this from Jade.

This is a 4 layer hyperbolic plane. By the second layer, it couldn’t lie flat, and by the 4th layer, the time required to complete a layer was getting on towards infinity. I think I spent about three hours on this thing.

I ran out of dark blue beads (I thought I had infinity. apparently not!)

Vi Hart is here.

Heart Surgury SCIENCE

Yeps, this again! :D

This time the objective was to time how long it took each color to melt at what the oven calls 300 Degrees Fahrenheit. I divided 8 boxes of hearts into their individual colors, found that I could get 30 hearts of each color, made small hearts according to Evil Mad Scientist directions, put ‘em in the oven, and got out my apush hw to work on between checks.

Procedure (goes roughly like this);

• check hearts every 10 minutes until one starts melting, then check every 5
• take a picture every time I check
• repeat until they’re all melted or I have to go to bed

The downside of that is that the pink heart started doing interesting things in the first 10 minutes and then did NOTHING for the next, like, hour… blah…

Webbed Room

I’ve wanted to do this for years…
(pardon the picture quality scanner+sketchbook slightly bigger than scanner=FAIL)

The perspective is from sitting on my and looking out over the room ’cause that was the only way I could get most of the yarn in the picture. Not Pictured: /all/ the stuff on my floor and some of the stuff on my walls and yes that is an alphabet on my wall and yes I made that too…
I feel like a ninja when I can get through without touching any of the lines…that almost never happens though.

The Dresden Dolls

Since roo is incapable of posting music/maintaining a blog, I will.

This is a video done by a bunch of crazies fans for The Dresden Dolls. It’s pretty neat.

The Dresden Dolls themselves are out of Boston, perform “cabaret punk” and are generally pretty cool. They are currently disbanded.
Kelly is responsible for my current addiction. Thanky.