Wind Chimes

I saw this idea on Pinterest, of course. I had been scavenging the bins at the local thrift stores for spoons, forks, and knives. As it turns out, forks were the hardest to find, and butter knives are available in great abundance. The ecologist in me is always looking into these patterns of abundance and distribution. So I had a bear of a time getting the right tool to drill through stainless steel. None of the Dremel bits I could find were doing it. I tried a titanium bit and a cordless drill, and finally came upo. A cobalt bit that managed, though it got worn down quickly. Mi do not have a drill press in my life, obviously. So these wind chimes are what I came up with, using bailing wire to hold them together. I will probably come up with a better, more aesthetic design, but for now they function, even if they don't peal like the bells of St John's.

Happy Star Wars Day

Googly eye pleather bracelet

I've been trying to think of things to put googly eyes on, and I was inspired by seeing a punk rock studded bracelet to make this lil number with some leftover pleather and Velcro. I still need to work on my hot glue technique, and I'm not sure how well the eyes will stay on. I've got some other idea though.

Spraypainting things gold

A very satisfying pastime. Little plastic things look a lot fancier painted gold. I always think of Goldfinger when I'm doing it.

Happy Pi Day!

Being 3.14, it's Pi Day. And on Pi Day I like to make silly jokes about pi and make actual pies, which are round (not squared, see what I did there?). Last year I made a chicken pot pie from scratch which was a lot of work and not as good as I was hoping. This year I made apple pie featuring Granny Smith apples against the recommendations of the Joy of Cooking, and I made a variation on one of my favorite ice cream pies. My favorite ice cream pie is a chocolate graham cracker crust, then soften chocolate ice cream add peanut butter, mix and refreeze it.

My older daughter is not a big fan of dark chocolate so I opted to make her a vanilla ice cream pie, making a honey graham cracker crust with vanilla ice cream, white chocolate and coconut. And for dinner instead of chicken pot pie we opted for pizza. You know how to approximate the volume of a pizza of radius z and height a? Pi*z*z*a.

Happy birthday, Douglas Adams

Yet more can lanterns