Steamy Saturday

On Saturday, I had the opportunity to visit the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation. The museum is located in the former boiler room of one of Waltham’s mill buildings and steam from the nearby Charles powered the many machines. The mill used to produce textiles and later, other factories in the town built clocks. Today, the museum features engines and machines, antique watches, and lots of exposed gears and pulleys.

(And sorry for the shoddy iPhone shots – I conveniently forgot my camera when I visited. I tried to jazz them up with some Instamatic filters)

One of the museum employees who was working on building/fixing things in the machine shop passed by while I was taking this picture and quipped,

Upstairs, the museum has a gallery overlooking the main room that containes many examples of Waltham watches and their miniature geared innards.  I was fascinated by these watch and dial face designs

The one that reads "Novelty" is my favorite

The museum is also a center for STEAMPUNKERY in the area. I mainly visited because they had a whole steampunk exhibit and the designs did not disappoint. This is the Steam Powered Brain Wave Enhancer, built by Gary R. Sullivan (link to his blog) and Michael G. Poisson, which generates energy and transfers it into intelliwaves which stimulate brain activity. Although it wasn’t on while I visited, the top opens and closes, the gears turn, and ZOMG, the whole thing emits STEAM – see YouTube clip here. Also, it is very stylish!

I felt smarter just looking at it!

Here’s a fanciful Ray Gun built by Roger Wood of Klockwerks. They had several on display but this one was my favorite – something about the large wheel and the swirls made me so happy. Jen @ EPBOT, this one’s for you!

And then I couldn’t leave without these fantastic goggles… I am totally justifying the purchase by calling them “onion-cutting goggles.” I made french onion soup later that night and shed nary a tear (and also looked entirely fabulous while doing so).

CRMI will be hosting the Steampunk City Festival on May 12 – 13, which should definately be a fun time! And if you happen to be in Waltham, MA, do check out the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation!

 

Behind the Curve: 23 Feb

Behind the Curve: 1.  a weekly links roundup that is possibly a little stale.  2.  things found while trawling through the internet.

Drexel University is building ROBOT DINOSAURS. with a 3d scanner and printer.  I’m calling it now.  In 20 years, I’m going to be driving a Ford Stegosaurus LX.

Move over dogs.  Penguins are the new therapy animals.  Or at least, one named Roast Beef is.

The universe contains things that are very big and very small.  This website illustrates the scale in an amusing manner.

Of Monsters and Men is an Icelandic band.  Their video for Little Talks is crazy – adventurers, zeppelins, monsters (of course), tentacles, and icebergs.  Crazy in a cool way.

Here’s a thought-provoking article about Christians in science – the joys, the trials, and how the Church can come along side of and better minister to scientists and the scientific community.  As a scientist, I resonated with several of Crouch’s points.

I’m excited about Pixar’s new film, Brave.  I know the market is saturated with princess movies, but a fiery-redheaded, deadpan snarker, archer princess?  In a movie by Pixar, a company long overdue for a movie featuring a female main character but that also crafts clever and beautiful films?  Yes, please.

You can Call Me Al, especially if we’re wearing foulies and sitting on boatramp.

Herbivore

My Herbivore shawl started like this:

Blue faced Leicester roving from FreckleFace Fibers in Firenze

I don’t exactly remember when I spun it (Rav says my stash page was updated on October 20, 2011, but it must have been sometime in the spring), but I felt victorious upon finishing this yarn.  I wanted 400+ yards of thin 2ply and I got just that.  This was also the first yarn that I spun exactly what I wanted to spin – usually my handspun is thicker or more uneven than I like.  Spinning this yarn made me feel like I’m finally at the place where I can imagine a yarn and then spin it up (usually).  I don’t have a picture of the finished yarn all skeined up, but trust me, it was pretty.

I cast on for Stephen West’s Herbivore shawl in the middle of a July heat wave.  My thought was that since it would grow so slowly, I wouldn’t be working on the body of the shawl until after the heat had passed.  And indeed I was correct.

I worked on this shawl, a row or two at a time, for the rest of the summer, autumn, and winter.  It hibernated through frenzied Christmas knitting and witnessed the beginning of my foray into quilting.  And yet I plowed on.

Fast forward to February 2012.  Me, in my chair, in my pink gnome PJs, muttering under my breath as I unknit the hundreds of stitches in the last three rows for the second time.  The first time it was because I hadn’t realized I’d come to the end of the yarn.  I thought, “I’ll unknit this present row and then cast off,” forgetting that the pattern called for a garter stitch edge (which wouldn’t roll).  Also, I didn’t realize that the little ball of yarn was way too small for casting off.

The second time I unknit those hundreds of stitches was when I realized the two things mentioned above.  I confess to sitting in disbelief for a moment, and then knitting quickly to try to outrace the end of my yarn.  You know the thought.  “If I just knit as fast as I can, I will finish before the ball finishes.”

And that never works.

But after everything, it is done!  And this is all the yarn that is left:

Barely even a yard.  I’m calling it a success.

Envelope Clutch

Usually when I make something, the project starts with a pattern or the materials on hand.  Say want to knit socks using a certain blue yarn.  I have the recipient in mind and I know they like unfussy geometric designs.  I trawl Ravelry looking for something that meets the specifications (and sometimes fits in with whatever the Sock Knitters Anonymous challenge is that months) until I find something I like.  I then cast on and away I go.  Likewise, with cooking, I know what I have on hand and go from there.  Quilting is slightly different because I don’t (yet…) have much of a working fabric stash, but still it is based on the pattern or the project.

In other words, I’m not a particularly creative crafter in that I don’t design my own projects.  And that’s just fine with me for the time being.

But for my dear friend Sarah‘s birthday, I had an idea.  I wanted to make a little clutch similar to the ones I made at Christmas, only instead of having a gathered front, having an envelope on the front.  Since we’ve not been roommates for several years, we’ve kept in touch mainly through the internet but also through letters.  My design inspiration was from this quilt by Amy at badskirt (which was inspired in turn by Ayumi’s  quilt).

I decided to make the clutch to the size specifications of the Gathered Clutch Tutorial from Noodlehead; I also used the tutorial’s instructions for assembly.  I also added a wrist strap to make the clutch more functional – I have a wristlet and LOVE that it is hands-free.

And I made the paper-pieced envelope template myself!  I read up on paper piecing (never having done it myself) and it seemed fairly straightforward so I drafted a pattern and went for it.  At first I set my seam length too short, which just punctured the paper, not sewing the fabric neatly along the lines, but that was an easy thing to fix.

The inside has a credit card pocket sewn against one wall and is lined with the same fabric that I used to make Sarah an apron a couple years ago.  And since the box bearing this giftie has arrived, I can write about it here!  I hope she likes it!

A Tale of Two Pairs of Fingerless Gloves

It was a fingerless glove-y Christmas this year.  Almost everyone who got something handmade got fingerless gloves (also called mitts because really, the two terms are synonymous).  Seriously – they’re useful, they’re warm, and (for me at least) they can make a difference between frigid and only somewhat cold – my time in grad school was proof enough of that fact.

The last pair of fingerless gloves were supposed to be for my friend Nathanael, who married my dear friend-and-former-roommate Sarah.  Sarah got a pair of pink stripey fingerless mitts and Nathanael was one of the merciful people who got things wrapped with the needles still in. After seeing them last month, I went home and finished the first mitt.

And then a funny thing happened.  In mid-January, I went to NH to visit another dear friend-and-former-roommate, Jess, and her husband Barrett.  At the time of our visit, they were preparing to move back to Bethlehem, Palestine.  If you’re interested, their ministry is called Askidenia.  Jess was telling me about how cold it would be over there this time of year, how uninsulated the buildings are and how ineffectual space heaters can be.  All the while I’m working on that second fingerless mitt.

You can probably guess where this is going. Yes, pair 1 is now in Bethlehem, hopefully keeping the hands of my dear friend warm.

I still had half a ball of Lettuce Malabrigo Worsted left over so upon finishing pair 1 and tossing them to Jess, I CO for pair 2.

This is the truer color of the yarn

And now pair 2 is in a box on its way to Sarah and Nathanael along with some other goodies.  In case she visits, I can’t spoil the surprise, but suffice it to say that I am very pleased with myself.

I think both pairs are pretty much the same.  They each have 7 cable crosses over the length of the mitt and the thumb gusset in the same place.  And I got two pairs out of one skein of Malabrigo.  It was tight – I knit the third mitt a bit longer than the previous two and I would have not had enough yarn if I hadn’t ripped back.  But with that, I believe that my Christmas knitting is really and truly done!

Now on to Mother’s Day knitting!  Mom requested teal socks.  And I am always happy to oblige.

What projects are you planning for the rest of the winter?