Where does one put their bearding flair?

At various bearding events, it's quite common to pick up some sweet pins either as part of the competition, or handed out by the various clubs attending the events. Some people put the pins on their hat, while others might choose to put their collected pins on their jacket or on their competition outfit. So where do I put my collected pins?

Hey! If I put the pins on something I can easily remove from my jacket, I'll be able to rock the pins on just about any outfit I wear. Damn, the "dork" is strong with this one.

To the sewing machine

Digging through my collection of scraps, I found some black fabric that would suit the purpose ideally. After a bit of folding and sewing, I had the start of what I was hoping to make.

Ideally, I'll end up with a sort of vertical epaulet that I can button to my jacket and cover with event pins.

Add some button holes

At both ends and in the center of my bling holder, I added button holes. This was my first time making button holes and they came out looking like crap. That's fine. It is more important that they work.

This is the second button hole that I made and it is probably the best of the three button holes that I made.

Button it

All finished. The top button hole on the bling thing goes over the jacket's pocket button and two new buttons were sewn to the jacket to match up with the middle and bottom button holes of the bling thing.

It is purely coincidental that the Austin Facial Hair Club patch is in the armpit of my jacket.

See you at the next comp.

Cue the Dramatic Music

It was Lancaster PA, October something something 2011 and in a stunning turn of events that rocked my world to it's very foundation.... I didn't make the cut. Obviously I need quite a bit more training.

Pffftttt stop being so dramatic; let me spin you a yarn: In mid-August, I suffered some fairly debilitating muscle spasms that rendered my right arm mostly useless. By the end of September (6 weeks later), the pain had subsided to the point where I was finally able to drive a car.

Now, at about 8 weeks later, I can look in the mirror and see a noticeable lack of muscle mass in my right shoulder and arm. Apparently the muscles had atrophied from lack of use. Time to bring those muscles back!

The 3 Point Plan to be Hella Sick Rippin

Oh yea!!!!!!
To put my plan into action, I needed to cut up some ugly old shorts so that I could sort of make cubes of fabric. Once I had my basic pattern, I sewed that crap up into little bags and filled the bags with the filling from some diving weights.

The final product: three soft fabric bags that weight one pound each and are ugly eye-sores.

Put the Plan to Work

Since I have already typed the word "plan" a few times, you should now have the theme to the A-Team playing in your head. if you don't have the theme playing in your head, something is wrong with you.

The Training

1. Put on a sweet wizard cap (any hat with a feather in it: feathers make everything magical)
2. Take off your shoes
3. juggle while walking around Petaluma

How is this a 3 point plan? I'm glad you asked.

1. juggling improves my hand eye coordination
2. juggling 3 one pound bags for 10 minutes is quite a nice workout for my shoulder
3. walking around barefoot will toughen up my feet (Lancaster gave me blisters)

How exactly is this training for a Beard and Mustache championship? Hey! Just because it isn't related in any way, shape, or form, doesn't mean wuggling (walking and juggling) isn't an important aspect of training for a facial hair contest.... and most importantly, it is fun.

Now quit reading and go do something completely unrelated to anything you should be preparing for.

Bad Craftsmanship and a Terrible Design

My crappy bicycle seat bag had a zipper that stopped closing properly and would pop open on occasion. I blame the terrible design of the bag that puts far too much stress on the zipper. What I found most distasteful about the failing zipper is that I made the bag. To be fair, the bag did work well for two years and it survived at least one hooligan attack. Hopefully, the next bag will last longer...

Time to retire those shorts

A long ago, I turned my favorite biking pants into a cap and a pair of shorts, and last Fall, those favorite shorts were retired to the scrap fabric pile after tearing in a non-duct-tape-repairable way. bummer.

Hack and Sew

My plan was to be able to put my biking needs in the bag, roll the bag up tight, and then affix the bag to my bike. After hurting my thumb trying to cut the shorts with some degenerate right-handed scissors, I found some decent scissors and hacked the shorts into a usable bit of fabric which was then sewn into the form of a pocket with a very large flap.

At this time, I had no idea how I was going to keep the bag closed or how I was going to attach the bag to my bike. So I relaxed and did some other crap for the rest of the evening.

Velcro!

After having my morning coffee, I stitched some velco to the inside of the flap as well as the outside/back of the pocket in order to keep the damn thing closed. More velcro was sewn to side of the pocket and to the base of the flap so that I could have some loopy-doos to keep the bag connected to my bikey.

Really?

For some reason, when I went to put the bag on my bike, it attached quite easily with the velcro loopy-doos and I thought something must be wrong. Nope, it was all good. weird

Inside of the bag:

• an adjustable wrench
• two patch kits
• two tire irons
• a pair of plastic chopsticks

Since I had the sewing machine out, I figured i should throw that Löwenbräu and sweet California Republic patch on my patch jacket.

Testing the Bag

The best way to test the bag, at least in my opinion, is to take a ride to the beautiful Shollenberger Park, which is a 7 to 10 mile ride depending upon the route one takes. However, while trying to adjust my speedometer the other day, I accidentally reset the device, erasing my recorded miles. At the same time, I broke the adjusting button and the speedometer now records in kilometers. That's cool, the metric system is better anyway.

On my 16 kilometer trip, I saw various birds(including a White Tailed Kite) and two snakes. It had been about 3 years since I have seen a California Kingsnake and I unfortunately only managed to take a picture of it's tail as the snake slithered into a burrow on the side of the path. The other snake was a Gopher snake that was hogging the path. Get out of the way bub!

All things considered, I'd say the bag test was a complete success.
Now quit reading, and go recycle some old clothing

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.

I was recently made aware of a free sewing pattern for making a stuffed penguin (available from http://www.free-penguin.org/) and, since I haven't sewn a stuffed anything since the pillow debacle in my junior-high home-economics class, I simply had to make the penguin. A quick jaunt to the local craft store resulted in not quite the ideal fabric. My penguin is made from jersey cotton, which is very soft and pleasant to the touch, but is far too stretchy for my poor sewing skills. The end result is a penguin that is... well... a penguin, albeit a rather wonky penguin.

Now that I had an odd penguin, I needed to decide to whom I should bestow said wonky penguin. Fortunately, my nephew has not yet reached the age where he will be able to discern good sewing from bad sewing, and since this will be his first holiday season and he can't read this; a penguin will be heading his way shortly.

How wonky is the penguin? pictures don't do it justice.