a p p a r e n t l y

Mmm, homemade Twix®. I think I gained two pounds just reading this recipe.

I’m rich, I’m rich! Thousand Dollar Bars | King Arthur Flour – King Arthur Flour – Baking Banter.

This part is going to be brief. There were robots. And more robots. Then tacos and some amazing strawberry lemonade, and then more robots.

Makers love robots. Next to the craft pavilions were two more huge tents: one filled with adult robot enthusiasts and the other, Youth Makers, with kid robot enthusiasts. (Not Kid Robot, that’s entirely different.) OK, so perhaps a few of the exhibitors showed creations that weren’t robots, like light-up anglerfish sculptures and various plushies stuffed with lights. Maybe there was one guy making digital name tags, another scanning book pages and oh, these metal sculptures were pretty cool. Also, I enjoyed watching the little Kelvin Generator make sparks. And someone had created a pulley system that generated music. But seriously? 80% of what I saw involved robots, Arduino boards and/or remote-controlled conveyances.

The Young Makers tent was almost identical except for the youthful excitement and a lot of LEGOS. We had trouble getting the kid to leave the Robofun booth, because they handed him the controller to a LEGO car. I thought we were going to spend the whole morning there.

Inside the museum we found one hundred more exhibitors, most with their own special type of robot. I don’t mean to sound snarky, but I did reach a point where enough was enough. Just because you can successfully build a kit that you ordered online (or matriculated in NYU’s ITP program) does not mean you have earned your own exhibition booth. And if you have one anyway, you should be required to be able to hold an intelligent conversation about what you’ve invented. That said, I had my voice turned into a sculpture with speaker wire, turned a story into knitting and played with various RC devices. We also were able to enjoy the NY Hall of Science itself, including its blissful air conditioning, and to spend a few minutes with the best museum exhibit ever, Mathematica, which I recall fondly from many, many visits to Boston’s Museum of Science. We now return you to your Maker Faire programming:

The best low-tech spectacle I saw was undoubtedly the Egg-Bot, “an open-source art robot that can draw on spherical or egg-shaped objects.” It was incredibly mesmerizing…

What did we miss? Everything large-scale. I can’t speak to the life-size mousetrap, the MakerBot and ShopBot, the Diet Coke and Mentos fountains, anything presented by a car company or that required the signing of a waiver. But we did glimpse bicycles that emitted fire, Science Friday’s Ira Flatow and a steampunk guy on a giant tricycle who informed me I was a brave woman for crossing his path.

Did I love it? Yes. Was I the target audience? Only partially. Would I go back? Absolutely.

Robyn Love's Message to the Universe

Please don’t expect this to be a thorough recap of the World Maker Faire NYC experience, because it would be absolutely impossible to have seen the whole thing in 4.5 hours with a toddler. But what we did see was spectacular, and even the kid – perhaps I should say, especially the kid – had a blast. Some top-of-mind thoughts:

We went on the first day, right when it opened at 10am. I’d recommend this for most large scale events, particularly those populated by enthusiasts and semi-professionals, as everyone’s spirits are high on Day One. The sun wasn’t too strong yet and all the vendors and makers we visited were excited and high-energy. We headed first to the craft pavilions, taking a quick look at some of the vendor booths in the BUST Craftacular…but I’ll confess that I wasn’t too excited about looking at more handmade soap and silkscreened tees. You know how I feel about silkscreened tees.

The craft activities, on the other hand, were not busy yet and loads of fun. The kid and I made a bottlecap ring by fitting a spider button and some sparkly beads into a pre-assembled blank and covering the whole thing with ModPodge Dimensional Magic. AND, they gave me a little bottle of ModPodge to take with me. Yay for sponsors.

Lion Brand Yarn, Red Heart Yarns and a knitters guild (I missed the name, sorry) offered yarn and needles to anyone willing to sit down for a lesson. The knitters guild even had lovely rosewood needles from Lantern Moon, which was delightfully generous. Lots of people were learning to knit! And crochet. And cross-stitch.

Xyron encouraged people to decorate picture frames with stickers and even gave me a Magic Sticker Maker, which is a neat little device that makes stickers out of any flat paper shape, but googling reveals it to be a discontinued product. So I’m not going to get too attached to it. Did I mention it’s totally cool? We have 19 feet of stickability remaining…

Martha Stewart Living’s area encouraged you to cut out and attach to a stick one of the giant orange butterflies featured in the October issue. The big monarch butterflies people carried all around the fair lent additional color and whimsy to the day.

So yes, the craft pavilions were well worth a visit. Everyone was so friendly and generous, including my favorite BurdaStyle booth, who offered one-on-one instruction to make a drawstring bag on a sewing machine. I didn’t have time to do this, but they sent me home with fabric and ribbon to make my own. Thanks as always, BurdaStyle! (And thanks also to Lion Brand for the huge tote bag into which I put all this crafty stuff.)

As we left the craft areas, we ran to the Clif Kid folks, who encouraged my little one to decorate a recycled-cardboard hat with all manner of googly eyes, stick-on letters and pom-pom aliens. This was a perfect activity for kids, and they of course sent us away with samples of their new chocolate chip organic Zbar, which turns out to be pretty tasty for a packaged snack. Score another one for marketing/branding goodwill ambassadors!

Also of note was fiber artist Robyn Love’s Send a Message to the Universe, in which she yarnbombed a rocket with squares knitted and crocheted by over 100 different people. Including me and several knitters in our neighborhood. And now that the Faire is over, the piece and extra squares have gone to Lion Brand, who donated the yarn, to be made into blankets for Warm Up America. Lovely.

Oops, this was not meant to be entirely a craft recap. But I do commend the staff behind the now-online-only CRAFT Magazine for making the most of its second-tier status next to the robot enthusiasts, arduino programmers and fire-breathing-bicycle operators. Next post, the MAKE portion of Maker Faire…

(with thanks to Woodmouse, who inspired me with her similar post.)

Ten years ago I was living in Boston, two years into sharing a smallish apartment on Beacon Hill with an old friend when he decided to move in with a bunch of guys. (A few months later he was engaged, so I’ve always thought of this as his last hurrah, no?) I was working for a progressive company that bought and managed commercial real estate, and this being 2000, we needed to build a web portal. We hired (the now-defunct firm) BigBad to strategize and build it.

I made several friends while working on this project, and I also discovered that I enjoyed the strategy end of web work more than the client services side of commercial real estate. And I was better at it, too. The leadership at BigBad seemed to realize this as well, and we quietly, subtly began discussing the possibility that I defect. While BigBad was truly the more appropriate place for me to be (albeit briefly), I felt just terrible about leaving Paradigm. This is not a story about my work life, but I must say here that the principal of the real estate company had been most kind and generous to me, first giving me a break as a young woman changing careers and then offering me a great deal of trust and freedom to both succeed and fail, in addition to devoting much time teaching me how to think wisely in a business setting. I still feel badly about leaving.

In the midst of this sea change, I had offered to take in a cat for a BigBad friend who was also moving. As my plans became fuzzy, I suggested that perhaps she look for a different home for the cat.

Stick with me; this is all relevant, and we’re getting to the best part.

One weekend in August, a second BigBad friend and I traipsed all over Cambridge looking at apartments to share. At the end of the weekend, she apologetically told me that she’d decided not to move after all. She handed over the names of various brokers we’d met and promised to be as helpful as she could be. And also, Brian in her office was thinking about moving; maybe we could be roommates. Brian who? I hadn’t met Brian, as he was a programmer, hidden away in the back office far from the steampunky conference room and the blinky retro advertising signs.

She introduced us. He was tall, blonde and reserved. I told him I had a bunch of potential roommate interviews set for that week and would be happy to call him if they didn’t pan out. One did. So I called him anyway, or perhaps I just emailed, and gave him the names of the various brokers we’d met and promised to be as helpful as I could be.

September 1: I hauled my stuff up five flights of crooked stairs to a charming top-floor duplex apartment in the South End. My new roommate worked for an airline and would be away most weekdays. The apartment had a roofdeck and a stunning view. As I was arranging my small roomful of belongings, my new wireless phone rang with an invitation from the BigBad friends to join them for drinks that night. Sure, why not?

Brian and I ended up sitting next to each other. The group of a dozen eventually dwindled to four, and someone suggested going to a bar to listen to live music. The venue was loud, and Brian and I sat on the same side of the table. We had to lean in close just to be heard.  I recall standing at a turnstile in South Station saying, “We should do this again…”

He emailed me funny things. I took two weeks of vacation before switching jobs, during which time I went to my new office for a couple of meetings as my former company became my primary client. One ended with our mutual friend saying, “Let’s all go out for dinner!” But she later bowed out, feeling unwell. A set-up? Perhaps. I was clueless. But Brian and I went to the Good Life. And days later, on September 20, Harvard Gardens. We talked about eyeglasses, strolled through the Public Gardens and kissed on a bench. Five years later he asked me to marry him in the very same spot.

By the time I officially started working at BigBad I was half of a secret couple. (Don’t be shocked: of the forty or so of us who worked there at the time, at least eight of us married each other.) It wasn’t a secret for long.

And the first time I went to Brian’s apartment, he introduced me to Cass, his cat. The same cat I had planned to adopt.

You’ll have to excuse me now; she’s the queen of this house and demands to be fed.

In just a few years, this won’t seem so weird. Or rather, this precise application will remain completely bizarre, but I’m sure we’ll have found some sort of good use(s) for peel-off fibers sprayed directly from a can…

Make Clothes Out of a Can With Spray-On Fabric | Gadget Lab | Wired.com.

Earlier this summer I discovered the lovely website of online fabric shop Hawthorne Threads. The site itself is so far superior to most fabric shop web sites that I started using it as a reference, and I’d find myself there whever browsing for fabric. The shop’s owners are located in upstate NY, but the shop itself is online only.

I signed up for their email newsletter, which they send weekly to announce new fabrics in stock. They also have a weekly giveaway and the occasional Facebook-only contest. I entered one of these and surprise – I won six fat quarters of the (then) highly-anticipated Far Far Away II by Heather Ross. A package arrived two days later, and I’ve been pondering for two months what exactly to do with it.

The felt case for my double-pointed needles has been looking a bit the worse for wear, and so I improvised a quick needle case with two of the pieces. In fact, I even made a travel case on the fly, since my needle case was turning out wider than I needed. I’m considering recovering my small ironing board with two more. That leaves two…what to make? (Do you have a favorite sewing project that uses fat quarters or small pieces? Tell me in the comments!)

Thanks to Charlie and Lindsay at Hawthorne Threads for a most excellent prize. Any guesses as to which shop will receive my next big fabric order?

I’ve waited nine years and endured two books of sludgy nonfiction for Jonathan Franzen’s latest offering, Freedom: A Novel.

It’s delicious.

I don’t want to say much about it yet, but if you’d like to read the first chapter, you can find it at The New Yorker. Another chapter was also published in The New Yorker, but I don’t know that it stands on its own. Just buy the book. And then set aside as many long sessions of reading as you can manage. It’s hard to put down.

I am currently suffering from that unsettling mental state that occurs after closing a book that’s occupied you for some time. Despite the fact that the characters lean towards the officious, self-involved and occasionally downright absurd, I already miss them. Fortunately Barnes & Noble was kind enough to send me an email today with a link to a video interview with Franzen, which has scratched the itch. Here’s twelve minutes of Franzen on writing for your viewing pleasure:

Franzen on Freedom

More internet awesomeness: the Bacon Cheese Turtleburger. I don’t know if there’s anything more to say that these before-and-after photos don’t address.

Interwebs Randomness and Other Inspiring Tales: Super Bowl Bacon Cheese Turtleburger.

via Humerus, via Editorial License

Swiss Miss, one of my favorite sources for design and inspiration, not to mention cool photos of the view out her office window in DUMBO, links to this knit and printed calendar, from Germany, that one unravels as the year passes.

File under “I wish I’d thought of that!”

swissmiss | Calendar Scarf.

On my to-watch list is this documentary about artists and scientists who are professional origami masters. And the film’s website has a quick little quiz that shows you an unfolded piece along with three possible outcomes. See how well you do!

BETWEEN THE FOLDS | Quiz: Match the Origami Folds | Independent Lens | PBS.