Oh gracious, my poor neglected blog! Techshop Portland got their laser cutter, and ever since then I’ve been spending most of my spare moments over there, and not writing much of anything longer than a tweet! (And yes, if you do want to hear from me a bit more often, you can do so by following @Spiralshannon, or subscribing to my twitter rss feed.)
So, anyway, things have been pretty exciting over here. I’ll be selling at Crafty Wonderland this Sunday – my first craft fair! I have a new set of designs based on work I’ve been doing with Context Free Art – software that allows you to create images by writing algorithms, and which is pretty easy to learn if you have even the most basic programming background (which is all I have… I’ve done the barest touch of javascript coding, but I taught the “Advanced BASIC” class at a computer camp back in college.) I’ve only photographed one item out of the new set, and it was selected to appear in the promotional email for this weekend’s show, which has me a bit giddy.
There’s more to tell, but honestly I think I’ll have a better chance of getting back to posting regularly if I don’t force myself to sit here and write about it all right this minute. Besides, I have to finish getting everything ready for the craft show! So, if you’ll be in Portland on Sunday, come check out the show (11am to 4 pm at the Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside) and get to be among the first few people to see the rest of the new pieces. If not, sit tight and I’ll start posting them next week, and I promise I’ll be back to write more soon!
I made it over to have my sister take some video of the functioning circuit prototype tonight:
Lilypad Arduino prototype circuit from Shannon Henry on Vimeo.
(for more about what you are watching, see: A working prototype!)
How exciting! Pictured here is a functioning prototype for the motion sensing skirt that I’ve been planning. It uses a Lilypad Arduino, a microcontroller board designed specifically for use in textile electronics. The lilypad board takes readings from an accelerometer (the small board in the upper right of the photo) and translates information about the movement it is sensing into different colors of light from the RGB LEDs at the bottom.
Ok, so I know this doesn’t translate all that well to a still photo. I tried to take a video of it working, but my little point and shoot doesn’t handle the LED very well for videos – they made streaks all over the screen. I’ll see if I can get over to my parents’ house tomorrow and talk my little sister into playing videographer for me, though. In the meantime, I’m off to work more on the final design.
I just got some great new jewelry posted over at my shop today. One of the great features of etsy (where I have my shop) is the focus on community. And one of the ways they have to build community is through the creation of ‘teams’ of sellers that have something in common – whether that be background, media, style, or anything else. I have joined two etsy teams so far… PDX Etsy (for people from the Portland area) and Mad Scientists of Etsy (for those with a background or day job in science or whose work draws on science.)
The Mad Scientists run a monthly challenge where they provide a topic and everyone who wishes creates something that ties into that topic. The picture you’re looking at is one of my entries in the February challenge, which had the topic of Mycology. I had a couple of related ideas on this one, tried them all out, and liked them – so I ended up posting 3 separate items for the challenge. Two necklaces and one pair of earrings, all inspired by Amanita muscaria – the iconic toadstool also known as fly agaric.
This distinctive fungus pops up in all sorts of interesting cultural places, from the Super Mario Brothers 1-up mushroom, to Smurf houses, to fairy pedestals in European renaissance art. In my tributes, I combined elements of poplar that I had laser etched with an illustration of the gill pattern from Amanita muscaria with vivid red-and-white polka dotted lampwork beads and 14 karat gold-filled chain and toggle clasps. As I said, I really liked how they all turned out… the red and white is classic and fun, and even gives it a bit of retro-50s flair, in my opinion. What do you think?
I wrote previously about how inspired I was by the play about the life of Buckminster Fuller, and I mentioned that I was going to design some things in his honor. Well, I’ve just recently completed and posted the first few of those: the Bucky ball pendant pictured here, and a tetrahedron pendant (if you are curious as to why a tetrahedron, go ahead and look at that page, I explain it there). I’m quite happy how they turned out, and have some related things in the works.
I was already about to post to mention that, when this happened:
That’s my pendant, featured on the front page of etsy — how exciting! Thanks, Bucky!
