It was quite a busy couple of days at Chez Polymath. We kicked things off with a WOMP at the Bassnectar concert at the Crystal Ballroom on Friday night. Can I just say that the Crystal’s floating floor is a lot of fun in a giant crowd of people bouncing and dancing their butts off? Actually, I can do just slightly better than that… here’s a very short video that includes some footage of the show. In fact, if you look closely you can even see Sean and I in the Portland segment!

I finished sewing everything together on the motion-responsive light-up skirt an hour or two before the concert started. Turns out that this particular iteration has some bugs – the first LED lights up SUPER-BRIGHT while the rest go between being either dim or off entirely. I was having trouble with the conductive thread shorting right at the LEDs (the leads are very close together) and with the level of resistance I was getting from the thread, so I actually set the skirt I had been working on aside and made another using ribbon cable (gained by cutting up an old floppy-drive cable) to make the connections. I think that this caused the problems… there were some issues with the stability of the conductive-thread-to-ribbon-cable connection (since I still used the conductive thread between the various boards and between the board and first LED), and not enough resistance in the re-done version. However, it worked well enough for me to wear, and I had a lot of fun with it. I consider this one to be a proof of concept, and will be refining from here. I just ordered a handful of the actual lilypad RGB LEDs to see if the connection placement works better for me than it did on the standard RGB LEDs I have been working with.

Saturday mostly consisted of sleeping in and getting all of the finishing touches done for Crafty Wonderland on Sunday. Even with the time I took off work last week to get ready I hadn’t gotten my sign done, so I changed the plans for that too. I had been planning to use the laser to cut my logo out of some fabric with fusible (iron-on) backing, and then apply it to another piece of fabric, but that seems a bit complex for a last minute thing – especially dealing with getting everything lined up right, so I ended up just printing it on 11×17 paper at Kinkos and backing it with some larger black mat board, and it looked fab. Wouldn’t hold up for anything outdoors, but it was great for an inside show. And now I’m thinking that I may actually try Spoonflower (the print on demand fabric service) when the time comes to put together a more permanent and outdoor-friendly booth sign.

Crafty Wonderland on Sunday was a lot of fun.  I meant to get pictures of my table and displays, but sadly I kept forgetting until highly inconvenient times, so that will have to wait for the next show. Anyway, everyone was very friendly and I got a lot of really great response to both my items and my displays. I ended up in a booth between Barbara of B. Hive Designs and Cate of Bee’s Knees Industries, both of whom were great neighbors. I even ended up trading with Barbara for a gorgeous new shirt, lucky me! And, it looks like I’ll have some more news to share soon that came out of Crafty Wonderland, but I don’t want to say anything until everything’s finalized, so you’ll just have to sit tight on that one until next week.

Oh, and I wanted to mention the photo on this entry – it’s one of my new set of laser cut acrylic bowls, heat formed by hand – this one is based on one form of diatom, a type of tiny algae with intricate, porous silicate cell walls.  It was my entry into the Mad Scientists of Etsy April challenge (theme: Cretaceous) because diatoms first appear in the fossil record when the developed their characteristic cell walls in the early Cretaceous period. MSOE is now running a contest for each monthly challenge, and I’d love if you’d stop by the blog and vote for my entry! Of course, you can also buy the bowl – available through both Etsy and Ponoko.