Geek Crafts

I really like this Mayan-esque calendar tea towel from pennycandy on Spoonflower. The circular design is perfect for 2012! One calendar (a fat quarter) is $11, and four (a yard) is $18.

• 2012 tea towel calendar by pennycandy

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Imagine my happiness when I was buying some books at my favorite Powell’s for Cooks and Gardeners (in SE Portland) on Tuesday, and saw this huge, super amazing Yoda-with-a-leashed-dinosaur terrarium in the shop window! Megan Walsh and her Powell’s co-workers made this Star Wars-meets-Land of the Lost world inside a large antiqued glass box with ferns and lots of other plants. It’s beautiful in person and they will even open the hinged doors so you can see the scene more closely!

I also got word that Megan has been working on a Star Trek: TNG terrarium (starring Captain Jean-Luc Picard, of course) and I’m sure hoping to see that one too… stay tuned.

• Yoda-Dinosaur Terrarium at Powell’s Books for Cooks and Gardeners

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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.

• Out of this World
• The British Library

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Sock Summit 2011 returns to Portland this weekend with tons of classes, events, and even a sock history museum (“a real-live exhibit of historically important and accurate sock replicas from the oldest pattern we can find, right up to the current time, all knit by people like you.”).

I went in 2009 and it was epic – there are a million vendors selling interesting yarn and knitting books and tools, and the museum is pretty cool too! Highly recommended, and not just for the excellent Star Wars subtitle…

• Sock Summit 2011
• Online Sock Museum (with interactive timeline)

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Strike fear into the hearts of those landlubbers at the playground with this ship-shape pirate onesie.

Made by hand by poet/crafty lady/new mama Dana Koster, this little treasure is appliqued with up-cycled fabric and felted sweaters.

If swashbuckling isn’t on your wee one’s list of extracurricular activities, Dana’s Esty shop, Stinkopotumus, carries other cute onesies with designs ranging from toadstools to neckties.

• Scurvy pirate ship onesie
• Stinkopotumus Etsy shop
• More pirate crafts on Geek Crafts
• More baby crafts on Geek Crafts

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I saw my friend LeBrie Rich of PenFelt at Crafty Wonderland this weekend and marveled at her intricate needle-felted Magritte tribute! Awesome. She also has a PenFelted Andy Warhol (a Campbell’s Soup can), a Picasso, a Matisse, and many other masterpieces of wool felt amazingness in her collection (behind a velvet rope, which was an especially awesome touch).

Meanwhile, John Lohman‘s Mario Magritte (a stellar contribution to World of Geekcraft) is one of my favorite cross-stitches ever. Just love it! See a whole lot more of his work at Sprite Stitch.

Today the World of Geekcraft tour heads to IndieFixx! Huge thanks to everyone who’s been supporting the book – I really appreciate it!

• PenFelt
• Sprite Stitch
• World of Geekcraft making its way to IndieFixx

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