Photography Show

I don't think I have mentioned much about my photography in this blog but I wanted to share that I'll be participating in a group show in Hong Kong that opens August 22nd this year. I won't be there but my photos will.

So, if anyone will be in the neighborhood I'd love it if they dropped by and let me know how things went!

I'll update with the address as soon as the next step in the process is confirmed!

Modern Stone Age 2

In an earlier post I wrote about a project making "stone" tools from chunks of quartz glass. My thinking was, and still is, that using quartz glass is about the best material for making these tools. The concoidal fracture pattern in both man made glass and volcanic glass, obsidian, makes for incomparably sharp edges. While not the most durable they are arguably the sharpest blades around. As it becomes more of a reality I'm growing all the more attached to the idea of producing a conceptual art project that brings stone age and space age at least in some way full circle.

I finally got my hands on another, and larger, piece of quartz glass. It's not space industry salvage but it's a good starting place to hone the needed skills to use that salvage material if I can manage to acquire some. The piece I have looks like it is a cutoff from manufacturing some sort of large round lenses.

If anyone works for a glass manufacturer or the space industry, I'm still trying to source a piece of quartz glass from an observation portal!

Make A Drop Spindle

For my first Instructable I decided to do a how to guide for making the drop spindles I wrote about in some recent posts. So, now if you want a step by step guide to making your own you now have it! 

http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-An-Awesome-Drop-Spindle/ 

I've gathered more fiber recently and now have new motivation to re-hone my craft and get spinning. I'm hoping to be up to speed enough soon and able to put together another Instructable showing how to do that as well as washing and carding fibers. I did recently attend a sheep shearing where I was able to re-visit some things I had forgotten and hopefully improve my spinning. 

Please do have a look at the Instructable even if you are just curious. 

If there are any questions or comments or offers for a spinning workshop or three, please contact me here or through Instructables. 

Wet Caligae

Hiked cross town(San Francisco) in the caligae. Not all that far but a few miles anyway. As luck would have it, the walk home was in a pretty decent downpour. It was even a cold day so I was wearing thick wool socks and got a great window into wet weather usage.

While I was moving my feet stayed warm even with the wet socks. While I was soaked through to the skin I wouldn't say the soles of the sandals were saturated and my feet didn't slide around at all. Not sure if the lack of sliding was due to the wool or just that it was still sort of dry under my feet. Either way the caligae didn't stretch or lose shape as a thought might happen and I can say they passed the wet weather test pretty well.

Once they dried out I think they may have actually been improved by getting wet. They certainly molded more to my foot shape and they seem to have shrunk in all the right spots. They also dried slightly more rigid than they were. Had I used a thicker leather that might be undesirable but as noted before this pair was made of somewhat thinner material than the historic examples I've seen in museums and books.

This will be yet another chunk of good information to consider for the next pair.

Instructables.com

If you have yet to discover www.Instructables.com you no doubt be pleasantly surprised and can plan on spending a few hours(or days) taking it all in. It's a fantastic community of DYI minded folks doing all manor of projects.

One of those people is now me! I signed on as editor and started a couple days ago working at Squid Labs. So, some of the projects I post on here will now have companion how to instructions, or "instructables", over at the Insturctables website. I'll be sure to post links so anyone who is interested can see how to do their own versions.

It's also a great way to compare notes and get the help of countless experts. So, don't hesitate to make duplicate projects or comment on the ones you see!