When I came across these pictures, I was instantly in love. This is a collection of portraits of famous scientists by artist Simon Bent. I imagine making a quilt out of one of these. How great would it be if your baby’s blankets was a big picture of Isaac Newton.
With yet another holiday season behind us, it is nice to reflect on some of the quality time spent with family and friends. I was fortunate enough to have my wonderful in-laws visit us from Milawaukee for a few days around the New Year’s holiday. One of our favorite things to do together is play the game Carcassonne. If you are not familiar with Carcassonne, it is a tile-based German-style board game that has been lauded, by some, as one of the best-designed board games out there. So fun, you guys.
Today’s craft comes by way of Laura Hatrich’s embroidery of one of the Carcassonne tiles on a T-shirt for her husband. You can see the side-by-side comparison of the embroidery and tile in the image. Really smart use of the various thread colors to bring out the detail in the tile! I have no doubt Laura’s husband incited envy among Carcassonne lovers wherever he went!
This week I present to you this totally awesome messenger bag from Artsi Bitsi. What I think is extra cool about the design is that Albert’s face is on top of text. It gives it that extra bit of geeky flair. Artsi Bitsi’s photostream is full of bags like this!
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.
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.
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.
