Going to Maker Faire 2012

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I’ve got a golden ticket…

This year, in a effort to see everything at the 2012 Maker Faire, hubby and I planned to go to both days of the event – May 19th and 20th. Full of energy and waiting to be amazed, we hoofed it to our local Caltrain station, and made the long walk from Hillsdale to the San Mateo County fairgrounds.

Here comes the train - choo, choo! Walking to Maker Faire

Are we there yet?

 

In the distance we could see what looked like a large paper plane soaring through the air above the fair. As we drew closer, it was clear that this plane was being controlled from the ground. Excited, we sped up our steps fueled by the desire to see what this year’s fair would have to show us.

Robot Crossing

Robots.

Lots of robots.

Robot costumes, robot sculptures, felted robots, robot kits, dancing robots, and dancing with robots too!

Cardboard Robot CostumeGiant Robot

 

Mr. Maker Faire  Instructables Boy

Robot Mascots

 

Robot Dance PartyIt’s a robot dance party!

 

Talbotics had found object robots on display – but not for sale. Tragedy! Jigsy, you need to run away from home and come stay with me!

Lots of wonderful crafts and crafters as well. Etchhpop let you print up a woodblock print from one of their samples. You can send them an image, and they’ll send you a custom woodblock. Add that to the must have list! The Woolbuddy folks had fantastic kits to make, or pre-made items to buy like this irresistible R2D2.

Etchpop print  Felted R2D2
Bottle rocket power  C64 Guitar

Want to be jet propelled? Make your own rocket pack out of empty bottles (Mom should have left them full for training a la Rock Lee from Naruto). Have an old Commodore 64 lying around? Clearly, it needs to be turned into a guitar.

 

Sleeping at Maker Faire

Tired yet?

But wait, there was so much more. Adam Savage in a cage with lightning bolts, Teslas and motorcycles that stand on their own (gyroscope-power), Lego cities with working trains and tiny cities made out of rolled up masking tape (Tapigami) and 8 foot space marines to hug.

Adam Savage Zapping Adam Savage Tesla ride
motorcycle     Tape City
 Lego TrainSpace Marine

and, of course, what would Maker Faire be without FIRE!!!

Fire breathing dragon

Can’t wait until next year.

A measure of Steve Matchett’s awesomeness

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Formula One fans in the US know the dynamic trio of sportscasters who make Speed TV the best channel for watching the races – David Hobbs, Bob Varsha, and Steve Matchett.

Unless you are really and truly a gear-head, you may not know that Steve Matchett also records a video series which streams on Speedtv.com called “Chalk Talk” in which Steve goes over various elements that go into Formula One cars and car development. (He was an F1 mechanic after all!)

But wait, there’s more!

Apparently, Steve is also a bit of a sci-fi fan, and shares the stage with two knitted robots – Bender and Flexo from Futurerama. 

Bender and Flexo

This is so cool, I think my head just exploded and fell off.

Check out the Chalk Talk for the 2012 Chinese Grand Prix, featuring Steve, Bender and Flexo for yourself.

 

Lytro meets the stash

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Could this be the first picture of a stash ever taken with the Lytro? Maybe. Does making this picture possible this justify all the yarn I have in my stash? Absolutely!

Click around on the photo to set different focus points. Kinda cool, isn’t it?

Despite all the marketing showing how easy pictures are to take with the Lytro, it does take some getting used to. Even though you don’t have to focus per se, you do need to be aware of, or manually set the mid-range point, or you end up with photographs that don’t focus on anything. Also, the camera seems to work best when you have at least one thing up close to the camera lens. I took some shots of the garden outside my apartment, and was disappointed in the initial results.

With a little trial and error you can see which type of shots the camera works best with, and when you get the hang of it, these pictures are unique and super cool. It is such a privilege to be witnessing the birth of something new and different.

Yay, photo-geekery!

Robots and knitting at the 2012 Robot Block Party

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On April 11th I dropped by this year’s Robot Block Party at the Stanford Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Lab. Despite the clouds, the rain held off, which was great news for the kids running around chasing the robots. Probably pretty good for the robots too!

Robots live here
Robots live here!

Just as last year, there were military robots, consumer robots, and robots built out of Legos and various other bits and pieces by robot enthusiasts.

Big Robot
PRD from Willow Garage says hello.

There were robots from Nasa and SRI, robots doing push-ups, robots dancing to ‘Thriller‘, movie-making robots and cars that drive themselves.


Nao gets down with his bad self.

Robot apps
Robots. There’s an app for that!

Knitting and robots
Knitting at the Robot Block Party. Awesome.

Although there were no knitting robots present, one of the folks sitting near the Tech Museum display was knitting and attracting the interest of her fellow booth-manners.

Robots and knitting. Sounds like a great combination, don’t you think?

 

Robot Art and Indie Craft in Boston – Joy!!!

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Cabin Fever Indie Gift Show
The hubby and I were lucky tonight to get to two fabulous events, the Cabin Fever Indie Gift Show in Boston’s SoWa art district and I…You…We…ROBOT: A Visual Homage To Our Inner Geek! at Space 242 nearby on East Berkeley Street.

We arrived in the South End a little too early (doors at the craft show opened at 6) so we walked around to a few of the studios open for First Friday to stay warm, and see what was happening in the Boston art scene.

After viewing some of the less-obtainable art, we paid our $2 and ran amok at the gift show. Perhaps it was because we found so many wonderful, inspiring things. Or perhaps it was because spending under $100 on a lovely oil painting seems smart after passing up $7000 ones at the studios nearby. Whatever the reason, we are thrilled with our new objects d’art!

In particular, we scored a painting I’ve been lusting for on Etsy for the past year by Botodesigns.

Tea CeremonyTea Ceremony

Here are cards from a few of the vendors we visited (and many of whom we deprived of several lovely things). The full list of vendors can be found on the Cabin Fever website. If you are hanging around Boston on Saturday, February 6th you should go check it out!

Cards
With our happy bag of goodies in tow, we next headed over to Space 242 to see the display of robotic art. Lots, and lots of robots in many different media. Many items to tempt. Among my favorites were “Longing,” “Sundae-bot” and “The Robots Steal our Jobs“.

This should be a yearly event, and next year, they need to include some fiber robot art (hint, hint).

Check out this video of artists discussing their inspiration:

If you can’t make it to Boston before the show ends on February 19th, you can always visit Space 242′s set of images on Flickr.

Here’s a photo we took of a bit of graffiti art spotted in the studio bathroom. Shocking!

robotknitter graffiti

Happy 2010!

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baby pod
The 2009 holidays were busy, with smaller gift projects flying off my needles at a rapid rate. Hard to post anything about those efforts, as the intended recipients might see!

Looking back, here is the result of the past 2 months work:

  • 5 hats (okay, 2 were for me…)
  • 1 baby pod (pictured above)
  • 2 robot brooches
  • 8 coffee/tea cozies
  • 1 new Proto Robot

Next year, I need to do a little more advance planning!

Talking of planning, one of my resolutions for 2010 is to clarify the purpose of this blog and, with that clarity in mind, to post more often. So far, here is my outline:

  • Develop a mission statement to answer the question, why would anyone want to read this blog? (still working on this)
  • Plan and post in logical sections: Projects On and Off my Needles, Bye-Bye Budget ( Products to <3 ), Travel & Adventures, Geekery Alert!
  • Play the Eliminate the Words ‘I’ and ‘me’ game (go ahead, try it!)
  • Get my random capitalization under control
  • Above all, do no harm (constructive criticism is ok, but no careless or hurtful posts)

Any resolutions to share, ye bloggers out there?

Knitty Calendar Contest Winners!

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Sometimes things all fall into place.

I wanted to make a dress for my niece’s third birthday. When the Knitty summer issue came out, I thought the Elenka dress was just the ticket – but was not sure if my niece would like it. Val, her mother, liked it, and so I quickly knitted up the dress to be ready for their visit to the East coast in July – the first time I would see my niece in a year-and-a-half since their last visit.

She loved the dress (such a sweet reward to see a little girl twirl and jump and spin in something you made for her!) and when I mentioned the calendar contest to Val – she was excited to try her hand at taking a great picture of Maddie in the dress.

With wings and wand in tow, Val and Maddie (and Aunt Kathy) went out to Middlebury College Museum of Art on a beautiful August day in front of the Patrick Dougherty installation of twig tipi houses that helped set the scene in fairy-land.

We sent off the pictures to Knitty just in time for the contest deadline and impatiently sat back to wait. Finally, and unbelievably, we found that we had won the grand prize!

I’m so proud of my sister for the fabulous photo she took – and the vision she displayed in setting it up and making it happen.

Check out the full calendar – and all of the winning photos.

How I knit

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>For fun, I recorded how I knit on a wrong side row of the Lace Scarf I’ve been working on. This got me to thinking about a comment the Yarn Harlot made about how she is fascinated by watching other people knit. Wouldn’t you know it, a search on YouTube turned up lots of examples. Here is my video and a few of my favorites. Enjoy!


Sorry about the pause at the beginning. I was waiting for hubby to say “Go!”


This is a fascinating knitting style. Notice the crochet hook-like needles.


This is a long one – but the manner in which the right needle is held kept me mesmerized.


I was taught to knit Eastern European style but re-taught myself to knit from a book when I found following knitting directions difficult. Interweave had a great article on this style in the Spring 2004 issue – unfortunately, this is no longer online.


Love the technique. Love the nails.


This rhythmic flick is hypnotizing.


Bet she’s glad to get a moment to herself.


Great background music.


Silly. And makes me hungry for some reason….

Do you have a favorite?