The soft precision that is accomplished by skilled felt sculptors always catches my eye, so I was mesmerized this week by the Things That Fly collection. Ms. Davis, the artist, has a range of crazy-cute felted items and it was hard to pick one to display, so I tried to err on the geekiest side. Check out her collection and see if you agree.
This weekend was Maker Faire at Union Station in Kansas City and my daughter and I happily attended. To be honest, it was more of the same from last year – 3D printers, robotics, Arc Attack, and artisians of various forms and varieties. But we enjoyed ourselves, and were pleased to see some new chainmaille vendors, and some sort of hand-to-hand combat demos going on outside the Station.
One interesting booth was the Urban Farming Guys, which was a demonstration in aquaponics. I hardly know how to explain it, but it was cool. They had this planter with a large water tank beneath it. Tilapia fish in the tank poop in the water, then the poop water feeds the plants above. The plants filter the water through their roots, and it cycles back down to the fish tank. When the fish get big enough, you can eat them. A complete recyclable system. Very interesting.
Other interesting booths/displays: a woman who made art from junk mail, numerous 3D printers and “printed” items, a Titanic ship made from Legos, a solar-powered car, robotics demos, and a craft gallery with lots of jewelry, knitting, and chainmaille examples.
Check out this cell phone decorated with adorable chibi Katniss, Gale and Peeta! Everyone seems to be a bit obsessed with bars lately. Can you use your cell phone here…or here…no, maybe just outside of this door and to the left. We go through some weird antics just to be able to send a quick text, tweet or make that important phone call. At least while we wander around like a person possessed trying to find that elusive bar, we can look good.
Can you hear me now? Do I care? My cell phone looks AWESOME!
How did I not know this was a thing? There’s a whole TARDIS Builders Forum. That is kinda rad. More specifically rad: this half-scale TARDIS user Astromark built for his very lucky cat, Kaylee. I just adopted a kitty myself (her name is Fiona and she’s adorable), and I totally want to build her a TARDIS now. Will I? Nooo. I have a bit much on my plate right now. Do I want to? Of course!
I’ve got a daily vegetarian burrito rotation going for lunches at work, but I’m looking to break out of the tortilla wrap. This has lead me to explore the possibility of packing bento boxes for lunch. I’ve found recipes for quick, vegetarian bentos for adults, as I want to be practical about it. But it hasn’t stopped me from admiring the more elaborate, artistic bentos out there.
I submit, for your approval, this design by Anna the Red. Amazing. This is 100% edible and you can find the recipe up on her website. This is only the tip of the rice cake. She’s got tons of designs that will make your geeky heart giggle, and she provides heavily annotated images on her Flickr pages. Take a look, but word of caution, you might not want to do so on an empty stomach.
