Renee – Geek Crafts

The Doctor Who Experience

Have you ever wanted to lay a big smooch on a cute little Dalek? Anyone? …Just me? Well, just in case I am not the only one, I thought I’d tell you guys about The Doctor Who Experience in London‘s Olympia, where I got to lay one on this little guy (make love, not extermination).

A couple years ago, I wrote about my trip to the Coventry Travel Museums Doctor Who Experience, and that was amazing. I thought this would be a larger scale version of all the awesome I experienced there–hanging out with the Ood and K-9, taking pictures next to the TARDIS, that kind of stuff…

And was I ever wrong. The Doctor Who Experience is truly an experience. Buy your tickets in advance and show up early, because you will join a group, and walk into what is basically an episode of Doctor Who, written for you to play in. Matt Smith (as The Doctor) appears on screen through out, to guide you through Daleks, Weeping Angels, and tons more while you help him get his TARDIS back and defeat the Daleks. I don’t want to give too much away, but let’s just say the two children in attendance were not the only ones having a blast. When you come out the other end of the interactive portion, there are more displays, including all of the Doctor’s costumes, and most of his enemies.

I took a picture of The Silence, because…well, you know.

There was also a great space set aside to show what the Doctor Who writers’ office looks like, and perhaps geekiest of all, an entire display on how the theme music and sound effects are done (and have been done) throughout the series.

There is no shortage of things to make a Whovian go “squee”. I spent at least an hour snapping pictures of all the displays, which include life sized models of four different TARDIS incarnations, a ton of villains, and many of your favorite companions. I can’t recommend The Doctor Who Experience enough. As we were going in, there was a boy about seven years old, dancing in circles and chanting about how excited he was for the exhibition–when we left, goodie bags full from the gift shop, I admit, I was behaving similarly.

It is a running exhibition with dates through (at least) November, so no reason to miss it, The Doctor is counting on you!

The Doctor Who Experience

Out of this World-British Library

There are at least a million different things a geek can do in London, and in my effort to do them all, alas, I failed. One major highlight was the current free exhibition at The British Library (for us yanks, it is like The Library of Congress), Out Of This World: Science Fiction, But Not as You Know it.

First, I am a bibliophile, so this was like Disneyland for me, except at Disneyland you can take pictures and touch things. Each section of the exhibition had a specific theme ranging from the birth of Science Fiction (in the 1600s!), Utopian societies, distopian societies, graphic novels, robots (did you know that the first “robots” in literature were actually synthetically made human slaves, and not machines?), and more. Among these were impeccable, perfect first editions, that made me drool, with some of the most beautiful, and outright cool cover art you will ever see. One major highlight was an original telegram sent from George Orwell to his publisher, lamenting that 1984 would have been “better” if it had not “been written under the influence of TB”, where he goes on to call Satre a “big bag of wind”.

I could write for days on the books on display and how amazing it was to see hand written pages of first drafts, books hundreds of years old, amazing posters (see?), but what really struck me were the interactives they had set up, for all age ranges. You (or your kid) can use an interactive touch screen to draw your own alien, and then watch it join other hand drawn aliens dancing around on the wall behind, there was a sleepy robot that was motion activated that carried on conversation about his favorite science fiction robots, a computer where you could challenge AI to the Turin’s Test, and at least five other things I didn’t have time for.

All in all, this would be an amazing stop in London (runs until September 25), even (or maybe especially) if you have kids in tow.

Fright Night UK Premiere

If there are two things I love, they are campy horror movies and David Tennant. And Colin Ferral. Wait…that’s three. For us Americans, Fright Night is coming out THIS FRIDAY.

For a few of us lucky to be in London this past Sunday, and get tickets to The Empire Big Screen event at the O2, Fright Night was an experience to remember. Hosted by David Tennant himself (adorable as always) and in RealD–it was an experience to remember. The crowd filled up fast, and the buzz was building long before they let us into the theatre.

As for the film itself, I was hesitant to view both a remake AND a 3D movie, even if it did feature two impossibly hot men doing hot things. First and foremost, they hit it out of the park with the 3D, I’ve never been impressed with how 3D is used in horror movies until Sunday night. The script was great, enough changes to make this it’s own, modern film, but close enough to the original that the only thing purists will have to whine about is “It’s supposed to take place in the eighties!”.

The film featured lots of great laughs and plenty of good suspense and jump out of your seat moments, a fantastic performance by David Tennant as Peter Vincent (don’t worry, he is only in that awful wig and fake goatee for a few minutes). For those of you reading who aren’t already familiar with the story line, a teenager discovers that a vampire is living next door, preying on his friends and neighbors, and enlists the help of a famed “vampire expert” to destroy him. I could go on and on about how fun this movie was. I am positive I will be buying another ticket to see it in theater (again) when I am stateside.

And, just because, here is a picture of me, my niece, and Martin Barry of Empire Magazine, a totally great guy, even if he was making fun of me a bit. Martin,if you’re reading–Hello!

READER SUBMISSION: Love Brick by Brick

If you love Legos, than there is only one place on the web you need to be. Or…rather, two places, as Love Brick by Brick is both an awesome blog full of tutorials on Lego jewelry and impossibly cool projects like the one pictured, but also a kickin’ Etsy shop where you can stock up on artfully made Lego jewelry.

And I promise I am not using “artfully made” generically, browsing Julia Morley‘s work was a surreal feeling, joining up the geeky child inside and the woman who loves cool, even beautiful jewelry, and reminding me they are both the same person.

Zombie Felties Book Review and Craft

I should start this review with honesty, I am not crafty. I know you are probably thinking, “But, the website is Geek CRAFTS?” Yes, it is, but I am just so geeky I only had to fulfil half the requirements to be allowed to write here, plus I love looking at all the fun crafts people across the web make. I am making this confession, as part of reviewing a craft book, is of course, making a craft from said book.

Zombie Felties by Nicola Tedman and Sarah Skate is a great book, each and every feltie project in it is a great mix of ghoulish and adorable that makes them very hard to resist. My favourite thing about these creatures, is they are as small and fun as amigurumi, but without the hassle of becoming really, really good at crocheting. Of course, being stubborn and a little stupid, I chose a 3 skull difficulty project from the book (1 skull=easiest, 4 skulls=most difficult).

First, the positive things about the project–they are very small, so if you are a regular crafter with felt, you will likely already have all the felt you need in your scrap pile. As a person who doesn’t sew at all, I managed to get all the felt I needed from a remnants bin in a fabric store near my mother-in-law’s house, I got more than I needed and still only spent about 70pence (not sure what that translates to in American, I am on vacation here and the exchange rate is still a mystery). For the other bits and pieces, I chose to use the supply list as a suggestion and not a rule, and so I managed to find the eye, monocle, and cord in a tin of random bits and pieces, so they were free. My mother in law had a good supply of embroidery thread already, so again, a regular crafter would have most things on hand, someone just starting out would have probably had to spend a few dollars on embroidery thread, but over all, very inexpensive to make.

In addition to being very inexpensive to make each craft, I found the patterns to be fairly simple (no need to resize them) and, a lot of fun. One suggestion would be not to use your regular sewing shears and opt for a sharp pair of smaller scissors, for the smaller patterns. The over stitch used on the outside is a very forgiving stitch for imperfect cuts and mistakes stitching, so I liked that a lot (I only pricked myself four times).

The only real negative I saw, was that while there are instructions in the front of the book for each of the required stitches, if you are a true beginner, you will probably find the instructions within each project to be fairly vague. One favourite was “embroider the nose in satin stitch, making a small heart shape”. When paired with the explanation of a satin stitch in the beginning, it didn’t make a lot of sense, and when compared to the picture of the finished project, it didn’t look possible they had used the stitch they described. A person experienced with embroidery wouldn’t have an issue–my mother in law saw what the issue was right away and we went about it slightly differently than the instructions implied, but got the intended results. The idea is that the book will provide a challenge for a novice or a veteran, but novices be warned, when attempting the more challenging projects, have someone around who knows the ins and outs.

As a non-crafty, non-sewer, I found a lot of frustration in making the vampire feltie, but it was obvious the issue was with my skill level and not the instructions (who knew stitching without inadvertently tying knots in your thread was so difficult?), and although I look forward to trying out a few other patterns from the book, I will probably restart with the one skull difficulty and invest in a thimble. Most of the issues I had with the pattern had to do with how incredibly tiny the finished dolls are, but, of course, that is really what makes them so adorable and inexpensive to make, so it’s a wash.

Here is a final picture of my Vampire feltie, over an Air Mail envelope (business sized) with a one pound coin on his left and a quarter on his right to show you the size:

Over all it was a great book, and even with my limited skill, talent and experience, I think i did okay, so that speaks to the quality of the instructions. I would definitely recommend it to friends interested in sewing fun feltie dolls. Look for it in August!

EDIT: We have one copy of Zombie Felties to give away! Just leave a comment here with your favorite zombie or vampire movie by Saturday at midnight ET and we’ll pick a random winner. Earn an extra entry by commenting on someone else’s post!

Buy Zombie Felties

Revenge of the Nerds Cake

“Come on Gilbert, let’s go to college!”

If you haven’t seen Revenge of the Nerds–shame on you! Bad geek! Stop reading and go watch it right now! Wait, scratch that. Finish reading this and then go watch it immediately after!

I was watching this comedic master-piece today, and thinking about cake, knowing I had a post due here, I turned to Google, to see if anyone had managed to combine these two wonderful and amazing things–and someone did. This is a Revenge of the Nerds Cake by Claude I stumbled across on Cake Central. I just love it.