In what one might describe as as cockamamie idea, I wanted to send some stickers to Dan Lynch of Linux Outlaws and Rathole Radio fame to put on a few coffee cups at the Oggcast unconference (technically it's an audcast unconference, but I'll let it slide, this time). Unfortunately, I got caught up with writing a script for Scriptfrenzy and I failed to make the stickers in time to send them to Dan.

It is now the first of May, and the scriptfrenzy challenge has ended (I wrote my 100th page with 45 minutes left before the ending deadline) and it's time to finish the stickers.

1: Take picture of Jezra with a digital camera.
2: manipulate the image using GIMP to isolate and duplicate my head
3: put the image on a flash drive
4: print the image at a local image printing kiosk for ¢29
5: go to my buddy's house ( hey buddy, you should start a photo blog so I can link to it)

On the way to my buddy's house I was almost hit by a car while I was walking in a crosswalk. The driver of the car started yelling at me for walking in the crosswalk. For some reason, when I informed the driver that California state law requires automobiles to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks, the driver insisted that there was no such law. Wow! Apparently anyone can get a California Driver's license.

My buddy is, amongst other things, quite an image fanatic. Aside from taking a lot of pictures, he also likes to do things with pictures, and one of the things he does with pictures is turn them into stickers.

Here is my picture, my buddy's scissors (they are not lefthanded), and my buddy's roll of double sided adhesive that will turn any image into a sticker with a peel off back.

A properly sized piece of double sided tape was applied to the back of my image

Having one big sticker is not the desired outcome, so using the righthanded bastard scissors, I cut out one of the duplicated images of my head.

Awesome Possum!

After this picture was taken, I went home and used proper scissors to cut out the other two Jezra images.

So where does that leave me? I have three Jezra stickers that are too large to put on the bottom of a coffee cup and I don't plan on sending them to Dan Lynch.

OK, I'm going to give the stickers away in a pathetic contest type thing.
Here are the rules:
1. you must send me a post-card from your current city of residence
2. you must write your address on the post-card

now stop reading, and get a post-card.

oh.... errrr..... can't ... breathe ... need ... air.

I swear, every year my kilt shrinks just a smidgeon. Some naysayers may think that it is me getting girthier and not kilt shrinking that leads to the kilt not fitting anymore. Well, damn you naysayers! This is my blog and I can blame the kilt if I want to. Now get off my lawn!

It seems to me, that the kilt straps are just too damn short. Look at those sad little rinky dink straps.
My first thought was that I should cut open the kilt, replace the straps with longer straps and then sew everything back together. What a terrible idea! That would require semi-decent sewing skills and a lot of time. I certainly don't have that sort of kilt alteration skill.

Why not just bolt on some extensions?

$2 dollars, spent at a local thrift store, got me a leather belt that is just a tad bit wider than the straps on the kilt. Mix this with a leather punch and a few Chicago bolts that my buddy gave me (thanks buddy), and I was ready to start "fixing" the kilt.

For my kilt, I need three straps that are a few inches longer than the current straps.

Now I just need to cut the straps to my desired shape, punch a few holes in them, and bolt them to the current straps.


Well looky looky!

Cut,bolted in place, and working like a charm! Since the Chicago bolts are chromeplated just like the strap buckles, everything looks quite nice and the fit is absolutely perfect.


New kilt: $450
Adjusting kilt: $2 and some Chicago bolts
Looking good at my friends wedding: priceless, and by priceless, I mean $452
Feeling smug like Garak the Cardasian tailor on Deep Space Nine: priceless

now quit reading, and go alter some garments before the Dominion invades!

Why Yes; that is the Nokia N810 that I purchased on Ebay. Again, yes; the nokia is resting upon a torn black t-shirt and some ugly old shorts that no longer fit me.

The N810 has a wonderful screen that I fear will get scratched to hell if it stays in my pocket for too long. For portability reasons, I'm going to need a screen protector or, even better, a Nokia Coozie.

First things first, cut out a large strip of fabric from the t-shirt. Follow this by cutting a large strip of that ghastly fabric from the shorts.

Pin the pieces of fabric together and then sew the fabric together. This will make it easier to handle.

That's a lot of pins. Hopefully the screen will respond to bloodied fingers.

After wrapping the fabric around the N810, it is possible to determine where to sew the fabric in order to make the beginning shape of the coozie. After sewing and cutting off the excess fabric, things are starting to really take shape.

I left plenty of extra fabric on the length-wise measurement so that I would have some slack to make hemming easier.

Putting the N810 in the almost coozie, I marked where I needed to fold and hem the opening, and like Riker does after Picard says "Make it so", I made is sew.
Yes, I made a Star Trek sewing joke. Engage!

After hemming the coozie, half of the extra fabric was removed and the other half was shaped and sewn to make a flap that I could tuck into the coozie after the device.

Originally, I wanted to use velcro to hold the opening shut, but I would have had to either sew the velcro on very early in the process or sew it on by hand, which I am too lazy to do.

Finally.

Here is the coozie with the N810 inside and the flap tucked in. It may not be pretty but it is pretty damn useful and pretty damn ugly.

Sweet, I've got Linux in my pocket.

Now quit reading, and go make something ugly and useful.

Oh man, how many times have you been in this situation?
There is a madman with a gun trying to kill you, and he keeps yelling "you're not carnival personnel" because, why trying to flee from the madman, you ran past a sign that clearly states "Carnival Personnel Only".
Damn, I hate when that happens.

What's with that sign? Don't they know that there is a madman after me? Perhaps running by that sign makes me a jerk, but I'll be damned if I'm going to stand around waiting for a madman to kill me. If only there was some way to alleviate the guilt associated with clearly violating the "carnival personnel only" rule.

A Ha I have the solution.....

For starters, I'm going to need a black t-shirt, some iron-on letters, an iron, and some sweet left-handed scissors. Some of the letters are missing because, for a toddler's birthday, I made a special birthday present tank-top that says "bullshit" on it.

Let's get crackin, shall we?
start by cutting out the letters needed for the shirt.

Carefully align the letters on the t-shirt. Since the letter on the paper are mirror images of what will show up on the shirt, special care is needed to make sure that the letters get placed right. This looks pretty good, so plug in the iron and move along to the next step.

( actually, this isn't that good, I'll explain later)

Make sure that the iron is dry. We don't want any steam to mess up our letters. With the iron set to "wool", press on the iron-ons for about 15 seconds. If you press too long, or use too high of a heat, you might burn the letters a bit; which is exactly what I did on the "bullshit" tank top.

Flip the tshirt over and iron the other side of the letters for about 5 seconds.

Hot Diggity! Problem solved.
Now, when the madman starts yelling "you're not carnival personnel", one can simply point to their shirt and say "Well actually, Yes I am".

The alignment issue: When I think of all of the issues that I've encountered while utilizing typography in a graphic, it amazes me that I didn't think about the kerning of the letters. The "V" and "A" in Carnival should be a lot closer together.

The best part: This isn't for me. This t-shirt is a gift for a friend. Hey buddy, when you read this give me a call, I have a gift for you.

Keep making stuff, and rock on.

Yes, the banjer is finished! Actually, the banjo has been finished for a few days and there was at least one weekend that I worked on the instrument but forgot to bring my camera to take pictures, so just pretend that I did all of this in a few hours last Sunday.


My friend with the wood shop has made a few stringed instruments before and he let me use some spare fret wire. Here is the 12th fret with fret markers. the markers are made from the same piece of bloodwood that I used to make the bridge,tuning pins, string saddle thing, and the pot rod. Speaking of blood, there are a few drops on the 7th fret from when I had to say "oops, that's finger", while hammering in the fret wire.

A forchner bit drilled the hole in the neck and a plug bit cut plugs of blood wood that I gently tapped into place. Well, it might not have been that gentle and two of the pegs broke just below the level of the neck. Hey! it adds personality.

This is the string saddle thing in a vice. After the glue dried, I sanded and smoothed the thing, drilled some pilot holes and attached some brass screws to attach the strings to. The whole thing slips on over the pot rod, so if I ever find a nicer tin or my tin needs to be replaced, I can slide the saddle thing off with little hassle.

The tin was cut with a dremel tool and the flanges from the cut were folded into the tin to run parallel to the pot rod.

Two hose clamps and a bit of old bicycle innertube keep the tin in place on the potrod. These aren't really needed because string tension on the saddle thing keeps everything quite snug.

Hey it's the bloodwood bridge!

There is something about the reflection of the bridge on the tin that I find quite mesmerizing. Don't forget to look at the string holder thingy with the brass screws.

And finally.....the finished product.

For reason's that most people probably wouldn't understand, she has been affectionately named Shemp in honor of Shemp Howard: my favorite of the six Three Stooges.

After sitting down and taking the time to properly tune Shemp, she sounds quite nice and hopefully, in a few weeks, I'll have gained enough skill on the banjer to make a recording to share (it will be 'Banks and Braes'; I love that tune ).

For the next banjo, should I decide to make another, I'll use a dark wood for the fretboard as it is currently hard to see the strings against the light wood; especially with the grain going with the strings. I would also like to make a wooden pot, although I don't think I'll make a proper banjo head. Hmmm, my buddy does have a lathe.......


I'd like to thank my buddy for the use of his shop, Pat and Patrick Costello for inspiring and teaching me through their blog posts, books, and videos. Frail on!

Well that's all for now, time to get back to banjo practice!

A few more hours in the shop and a bit more progress. For the most part, I did a lot of sanding and rasping and more sanding and then I sanded some more. For a "quick and simple" cookie tin banjo, this sure is taking quite a long time.

The first thing that needed to be done was the creation of the last tuning peg. Since all of the pegs are quite unique in shape, I decided to etch numbers in the peg face so that it would be easier to keep track of which peg should go where when I taper the tuning pegs holes in the neck.

Where the potrod was glued to the neck, I rasped and sanded to get the shape just the way I wanted it. After the neck and potrod was shaped, I sanded with various grits to get the neck as smooth as possible.

The tails were trimmed off of the tuning pegs and the corners where rounded with a rough grit sand paper. At this point, I simply had to see what the finished banjer would look like with my new cookie tin banjo pot. Since the potrod is quite a bit longer than the diameter of the tin, in the future I will probably make a wooden banjo pot with a drum head. It could be a neverending project.
Next up (in theory): fret dot inlays, cutting the pot to fit the potrod, crafting the nut and bridge, figuring out the tailpiece/saddle.

Hot diggity! It had been a while since I got to spend some time in my buddy's shop and I forgot to take my digital camera with me last time. Luckily, a few hours of wood-craft took place on Sunday and I managed to get a few shots of the banjo progress.

There is a certain level of "how the crap am I going to do that?" when I get to each step of making pieces of the banjer. Sometimes, the problem is solved with a bit of woodshop instruction from my buddy and the use of a jig that he has made. Other times, well, there is probably a tool to do what I need, but it isn't in the woodshop.

A 2" by 12" by 1" piece of bloodwood was glued to the base of the neck. The bloodwood piece will pass through the pot and hold the pot in place, as well as being an anchor for the saddle and strap. It is going to take a lot of rasping to round the heel of the potrod.

The pegs are also made of bloodwood, and they are semi-typical friction pegs. Friction pegs need to have a slight taper in order to work properly. The basic shape of the peg was hand cut with a coping saw and a small tail was left on the top. The tail of the peg was rounded with a rasp and placed in a drill press. As the peg spun in the drill, a block of wood, with a 1 degree cut on one face, was covered with sandpaper and used to create the taper of the peg. For some reason, the 1 degree cut in the block was done by my friend and it is the only part of the banjo creation that I didn't do myself.

After a bit more time with the coping saw, rasp, and custom taper maker, I now had a total of 4 pegs, enough for the head. Damn that rasp! I was just too tired to create the 5th tuning peg so I relaxed in my buddy's backyard and looked for ducks.

Next up: making the 5th tuning peg, tapering the peg holes on the neck, shaping the neck and potrod, making a nut and bridge and string saddle, attaching the pot to the potrod, learning to play the banjo.

A few months ago, I visited archive.org in search of public domain music. What I found that grabbed my interest was quite a bit of old-timey Appalachian songs with a banjo for accompaniment. Fast forward to a few weeks ago when an evening of watching youtube videos was comprised entirely of introduction and instruction on playing the banjo in the clawhammer or frailing style. This was followed by watching videos of people playing their homemade banjers. I think you know where this is going........

I am a fortunate person with good crafty friends.

A very good friend of mine happens to enjoy crafting wood and he agreed to let me make a banjo in his wood shop during the weekends. First thing first, select a piece of wood for the neck. To be honest, the first thing that I did was to purchase a candy tin from a local thrift store to be the pot of my banjo. Back to the neck. While searching through the scrap wood in the shop I found a piece of maple that my friend said was a poor choice because it was sap wood. Oh the poor rejected piece of wood. Just kidding, I chose the sap wood piece. It was about 35"x3"x1". There were probably a few 16ths, 32nds,8ths, or quarters that should be included in the measurement but I don't like fractions. Metric System; for the win!

Anyway, after a lecture on shop safety and instruction on power tool usage, I was ready to start making the neck. A few passes on the joiner and the planer and the neck was squared up nicely and it was time to sand what would be the fret board ( I'm not actually using a seperate board for the fret board).


After cutting the channels for the frets, I needed to design a head stock. Thanks to inkscape, I soon had a nice printable vector graphic of my headstock.

The rough cut shape with the tin that will be the banjo pot.

With a lot of rasp work, the neck is really starting to take shape. Someone should call Indiana Jones because I think the grail has been found.

The base of the neck needed to be rounded in order to sit flush against the pot and a "strum area" was routed out.

Later that day, these two ducks decided to visit my friends back yard in search of bugs.

That's it for part 1. Next weekend is tuning pegs and other assorted nick-nacks.

Every year, on Bike To Work day, I stop at the Bike To Work station to get a cup of coffee, a bagel and a goody-bag. The goody-bag is a nice canvas bag containing band-aids, tube repair kits, a blinky light and informational fliers. The canvas bag, although quite nice, isn't exactly ideal for carrying stuff while riding. Fortunately, a little bit of cutting and stitching can repurpose a canvas bag into a bike-seat bag that holds:
an adjustable wrench
a spare tube
a patch kit
a spoke wrench
a tire pump
a pen
a lighter
a swiss army knife
a set of tire irons
a folder plastic bag

I should really get a small bike lock for the bag, as well as a some allen wrenches.

The start of it all
While riding my bicycle home from a friends house, I look down and saw that my right pant leg was not rolled up and I thought, "I should pull over and roll up my pant leg". Being three blocks from home, the pant leg rolling never took place, as I opted to just head home.

Can you guess where this is going?

Seconds later, I felt an extremely strong tug on my leg and heard a loud ripping sound in the vicinity of my right leg....... My pants, my favorite bike riding pants, my comfortable light pants, torn from ankle to knee were missing a large chunk of fabric that disappeared mysteriously. The damage was irreparable.

Looking on the bright side
A few months ago, a sewing machine that was destined for the thrift store, was diverted to my humble abode. Now, thanks to the sewing machine, my former favorite pants are my favorite shorts. But the fun doesn't stop there. After cutting of the pant legs to make shorts, I was left with some perfectly good black fabric. hmmmmm....
Thanks to a sewing pattern for a cycling cap, I now have a favorite cycling cap. Actually, it is a good all around cap, but the bill needs to be a bit wider. So without further ado, I present, "The Cap".


Ah.... the award winning sideburns.


Moving straight from Degoba and into our hearts.

Just in case you where wondering what the cap would look like on a small bunya pine fruit.

I know what you are thinking. "where the hell is bike trailer part 1?" Well... um.... I didn't take any pictures so I'll give you a quick run down of part one.

A friend gave me an old baby stroller that he no longer needed. With hacksaw in hand, I chopped up the aluminum frame into what I envisioned to be workable pieces. A few PVC pipe fittings and a few nuts and bolts later, I had a working frame. Sweet sweet duct tape made the platform of the trailer.
Done.

On to part 2:
As much as I love duct tape, a more firm trailer bed seemed to be in order so the duct tape was stripped off, leaving the frame in all of it's aluminium glory. ha, I said "aluminium". Previous to removing the duct tape, I had decided to use plywood slats for the bed of the trailer. Since I only needed about 2' by 2' piece of wood, I felt it would be best to ask the woodworkers that I know if they have any scrap wood that I could use. Being polite is the first step in asking a friend's father for some scrap plywood. In a show of pure awesomeness, my buddy's father not only gave me some scrap, but he cut and sanded the wood as well. A quick jaunt to my local Ace Hardware for some nuts,bolts, washers and brackets, and BOOYAH! One mighty fine trailer.

And here is the trailer attached to "The Green Squeaker" and ready for action.

Every once in a great while, one might get the urge to create something nice for another person. Recently, I had the aforementioned urge and decided to make a hair pretty for a particular someone. In case you don't know what a hair pretty is I will give you the basic description. A hair pretty is something that one puts in their hair to add a bit a pizazz to their coif.



For this particular hair pretty, I used the following:

• a hair thingy that holds hair in place


• orange, yellow, and white plastic flowers
  (do not use real flowers, no one wants rotting flowers in their hair.)


• some plastic leaves
  (a little bit of foliage goes a long way)


• orange ribbon
  (I like orange )

To bind all of the components, I chose hot glue. Hot glue comes from a hot glue gun. It's called hot glue because it is hot, as the burns on my fingers prove.

Anyway, I wrapped the ribbon around the top and glued it in place. Next, the flowers were added and finally, the leaves where added to cover up the ugly glue joints at the base of the flowers. About an hour later, I presented the hair pretty to a special someone and got quite a nice smile, hug and kiss in return. BOOYAH!

On a recent trip to the FNBG(friendly neighborhood bicycle graveyard), I came across a horribly weathered Brooks B15 saddle. By horribly weathered, I mean that the years of neglect in rain, and heat had turned the leather into a torn, dried out, shrunk, crumbling, decrepit piece of jerky on a rusted steel frame.

First I used duct-tape to hold the old leather in what I figured was it's original shape. I then traced the shape onto some leather that was graciously supplied by my buddies father, who happens to be quite a leather crafter. In case you were wondering, it is 13-15# vegetable tanned butt leather.

The leather was soaked in room temperature water for about an hour and then wrapped in a plastic grocery bag and the whole thing was placed in the fridge overnight. The next day, the leather was quite malleable and easily molded over the old leather. Duct-tape held the molded leather in place while it dried.

Here is the molded leather and the frame with the old leather removed. 220 grit garnet paper cleaned the frame up to some of it's former glory.

Not every project that I start gets finished. Perhaps that is not the best way to say it; how about "because I have so many projects going at the same time, it takes a long long time for some of them to be completed". Yes, that is much better.

Many years ago, I had read about a style of stitching that is used when making a flag. Move forward to the mid-oughts: pirates are all the rage and the skull and cross-bones abound. Boring. It is the pirata generica of our times, lacking flair and individuality. So what happens when I mix fabric, flag stitching, and an idea for Jezra's pirate flag? Not a whole hell of a lot. The memories of the stitch had drifted to obscurity, and I lost motivation.

Tick tock, tick tock; welcome to the present. Fondly remembering the image of my pirate flag as I saw it in my minds eye, fluttering on the breeze of memories, I can't help but smile. Oh what the hell, I grab some canvas and paint and make my little pirate flag. It's not perfect, it's not the best; but it is mine, and it beautifully adorns the base drone of my Dunbars.