What Are You Making Now 2: Electric Boogaloo

July 8, 2018 7:18 PM

Hey everyone! This seems like as good a time as any for another “show us a thing you’ve made lately” post. Are you sewing something awesome? Steadfastly baking even in the atrocious heat? Running a role playing campaign? Organizing a community for a better world? It’s time to proudly show off your creations against.

This post inspired by my newly completed cross-stitch, which is the most perfect pattern for its recipients that I could possibly find.

posted by ActionPopulated to MetaFilter-Related at 7:18 PM (132 comments total)

Well, I just cut a dog door in the wrong half of a door, which is going to be... interesting... to re-hang. But I painted the bathroom and it came out very nice! I should actually take some pictures for once, now that it's not a gross dim cave.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 7:18 PM on July 8, 2018 [10 favorites]

There's a subreddit dedicated to Roguelike Development which is running a fun/casual/we'reinthistogether event over a series of weeks, going through the main popular online tutorials together and providing support to each other. Real life has thrown me off the horse before I even mounted it though, which is annoying as it's something I really wanted to (re-)do.

On the other hand one of my mates posed a "Desert Island Games"-type question to us all and I'm having fun in my quiet moments thinking about weird, implausible, underappreciated and OH ALRIGHT THEN here's-a-few-bloody-popular-and-rightfully-so games for the list.

tl;dr: I have created nothing, save good vibrations
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 7:35 PM on July 8, 2018 [2 favorites]

I was going to say, Oh man, you guys are showing me up, I haven't made ANYTHING lately except food for my ungrateful children, but then I realized hey! I make a lot of food for my (sometimes-ungrateful) children!

I made a no-bake strawberry pie this weekend (delicious!) and I've been iterating on a lot of different pastas, experimenting with new sauces, etc.

And related to that, about 10 years ago I collected all my family recipes and put them in a book along with all the things I like to cook on the regular and had it printed up at one of those POD places, and all my relatives wanted one, and demand has gone up for a new edition since lots of people have new recipes to contribute and lots of people's copies are falling apart, so I'm working on putting that together, I'm up to "Chicken."
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 7:52 PM on July 8, 2018 [7 favorites]

A few months ago I ordered a bunch of shirts to screen and sell at a show I was playing. Unhelpfully, the shirts arrived several days after the show was over, despite several emails to the company (Wordans; don’t ever use them, they suck. Google and see.)
So I finally got around to screening them and they turned out lovely. Hand-screened bgm Sad Executive Boy logo, on a heathered blue ringspun shirt.
posted by chococat at 8:14 PM on July 8, 2018 [5 favorites]

Well, I just cut a dog door in the wrong half of a door, which is going to be... interesting... to re-hang

as in the dog will need a ladder or bespoke doggo staircase (and a slide on the other side, ideally) to use it? pls say yes
posted by poffin boffin at 8:18 PM on July 8, 2018 [11 favorites]

I took a basket weaving class at the North House Folk School here in MN this weekend. We went into the woods and collected native materials (willow and birchbark) and voila! we made baskets with 'em. (Okay, the willow was from a batch gathered last fall...takes time to dry and stuff. The rods we gathered today will be used later.) I now fancy myself a basket weaver extraordinaire.

The remainder of my birchbark is in the basket. Mefi postcard exchange people, be on the lookout for very cool postcards...
posted by Elly Vortex at 8:22 PM on July 8, 2018 [11 favorites]

Mod note: as in the dog will need a ladder or bespoke doggo staircase (and a slide on the other side, ideally) to use it? pls say yes

I promise if I go that route there will be video.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 8:24 PM on July 8, 2018 [10 favorites]

I’ve been trying to do more drawing lately, and so I’ve been doing really quick comics about daily life that I’ve been posting on my instagram.

Here’s one I did about my recent trip to Vermont. They’re all simple and loose — more storytelling practice than finished product.
posted by heurtebise at 8:54 PM on July 8, 2018 [6 favorites]

I’ve fallen into repairing audio stuff, except so far I haven’t successfully FINISHED repairing anything. I’m working on a stereo with a loose connection somewhere. At least it has some spiffy new capacitors and a few new transistors, along with clean inputs and switches. I just can’t find where the big problem is that’s killing one of the channels. I’m also fixing a friend’s turntable, but I’m getting held up figuring out how to clean corrosion off the board. To bolster my electronics-related self esteem, I’ve offered to build a guitar pedal for my girlfriend from a kit. I need to succeed at ONE electronics project so I don’t feel like I’m in such a slump.

Fortunately, the people at AudioKarma have been really nice. I’ve learned a ton since I started, and I’m constantly learning more still. Despite my, ahem, lack of success, I do actually feel a little more confident about diagnosing where problems might arise in audio electronics. Im even picking up a rudimentary understanding of electronics, which is something I’ve been trying to do for 20 years.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 9:33 PM on July 8, 2018 [5 favorites]

Been working on 1000 paper cranes for a sad friend on very, very small paper (gonna fit them all in a gallon mason jar), but I stalled out around 600-700 and will probably just send what I've got.
posted by mordax at 9:36 PM on July 8, 2018 [8 favorites]

I make art out of jigsaw puzzles* and it kind of ebbs and flows. Last week I managed to work on bits of seven of them, which was especially neat because I'd had a few months of nothing before that. (I do tend to work on several at once, because there's a few stages of gluing, in between which they sit drying on a side of my art table.)

*I am planning to post this to Projects at some point, I just want to get some more recent stuff on my webpage first.
posted by Margalo Epps at 10:18 PM on July 8, 2018 [5 favorites]

I made a whole bunch of pottery for a workshop, which I can't show you because it's inside a kiln being fired right now. If any of it is particularly good I'll post a photo after we open the kiln on Wednesday! I make functional stuff (mugs, pitchers, bowls, sometimes more interesting things). My mugs are a shape that's particularly comforting to hold during dark times, which I can verify after having a terrible year in which everyone I know gave me comforting beverages in mugs I made.
posted by centrifugal at 11:01 PM on July 8, 2018 [5 favorites]

I've got to get an imgur so I can show people here my garden. My shishito pepper plant is an eager beaver, and has TWO (2) flowers!!! So yay peppers! My green bean plants have itty bitty baby beans, except for the purple one that have beans already bigger than my fingers! I have two baby zucchinis, wont be pick-able for a few weeks, and just oceans of blue basil. My fava bean crop cover is doing really well- which is funny because it is supposed to be green compost for a late-fall to winter to spring spinach bed and whoops! I might actually get a dang crop out of it come August/September! So will prob throw up an ask me in a month about fava bean recipes lol. (no liver/chanti jokes my dad has been making those for a damn month!)
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 11:13 PM on July 8, 2018 [6 favorites]

My book from last year is fresh out in paperback, does that count? It's a handsome little volume and I'm kinda proud of it.
posted by adamgreenfield at 2:07 AM on July 9, 2018 [13 favorites]

One of my bands just released an Internet porn themed album on which I play the character of Masokiss, who plays bass. It's been great fun playing gigs (mildly NSFW picture) themed around it.

Otherwise, I've been learning how to do a whole bunch of DIY to put the house back together after we had to more or less tear the entire interior out after a pipe burst in the attic at the beginning of March. The place is still a fucking mess, but we've been hanging out with a friend we don't see so often learning to hang lining paper (because fuck wallpaper, but we still need to literally paper over the cracks because we can't afford to have all the walls replastered) and it's been surprisingly fun and not as challenging as anticipated.
posted by Dysk at 2:23 AM on July 9, 2018 [7 favorites]

Back in February I had about 30k of the YA fantasy thing I'm writing down. Now I have about 50k of it down!

This is by far the longest it's ever taken me to work on something of this scale, but all the previous times involved denying myself food and sleep until I made words come out, and channelling some hypomania that in retrospect wasn't good for me.

So 10% of me is like "aww boo this is so slow" but 90% is like "hey look you can do a big complex thing without destroying yourself". Given that I've been working full time the whole time and dealing with some non-trivial mental health stuff since February, I'm pleased on the whole with the progress I've made.
posted by terretu at 3:59 AM on July 9, 2018 [14 favorites]

It's less of a creative thing and more of a work thing, but I'm in the middle of putting together an automated process/system that will eliminate a lot of tedious copying and pasting and emailing that a team downstairs from me does, and they'll be pretty happy about it by all accounts, so there's that.

On a slightly more artistic front, I got cast in the production of The Tempest I auditioned for. We start rehearsals tomorrow night.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 4:09 AM on July 9, 2018 [9 favorites]

I making a 4 song EP under the name “mottled blotches”. I’ve already posted a demo track to mefi music.

Hoping to be done by the end of July and have it posted to various places.
posted by nikaspark at 4:30 AM on July 9, 2018 [4 favorites]

10-14 hour days renovating the new (to us) condo before the drop dead move-in date, including a full kitchen, all new flooring and trim throughout, closet built-ins, and painting every room. My hands hurt, I don't sleep much. (Yes, this is all DIY. Can't afford contractors. See: "bought a condo.")

Today I'll go to Home Depot for sink escutcheon plates, almond coloured caulk, research baseboards, kitchen trim. I'll clean the rebuilt sink base cabinet, patch & putty, install shelves. Prime the dishwasher cubby, put dishwasher in, get hoses ready for sink installation. Attach countertop to fridge base cabinet. Hang shelving rails in the foyer and kitchen (after knocking on neighbour units to warn about hammer drill). Clean up the tile saw and put it and its workbench away. Patch holes in the concrete floor in the (now lilac coloured, that was yesterday) small bedroom. Probably other stuff as it comes up.
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:36 AM on July 9, 2018 [7 favorites]

I've been restoring furniture on the side for extra cash, and I've been getting the hang of doing dovetails which to my childhood self was wizardry! I'm also about to make the dubious decision of dying or possibly painting my upholstered rocking chair, which is comfy and awesome but very... yellowbrown. I'm going to re-upholster it eventually anyway, hence my devil-may-care, the-internet-said-I-could! attitude.

If it goes horribly wrong I promise to post pictures.
posted by stillnocturnal at 5:33 AM on July 9, 2018 [7 favorites]

On the 4th I made an icebox cake out of bananas, Biscoff cookies, whipped cream, and brown sugar syrup with coffee and bourbon. Flavor profile is good, but it’s too stiff when frozen and too squishy in the fridge. I’ve been eating it for breakfast.

I made a loaf of cheddar beer bread last night. It looks pretty good and I’ll tell you after my DSA meeting tonight if it was otherwise successful.
posted by clavicle at 5:48 AM on July 9, 2018 [4 favorites]

I'm just the central Canada person for this, but we're making community around open-source assistive technology: Makers Making Change
posted by scruss at 5:57 AM on July 9, 2018 [6 favorites]

I wrote a solo guitar piece and recorded myself playing it (badly) in my back garden.
posted by mahershalal at 6:02 AM on July 9, 2018 [6 favorites]

Still making guitars, but it might be a bit before I start another one. In the meantime I made a website for them.
posted by bondcliff at 6:08 AM on July 9, 2018 [9 favorites]

I made a prosciutto.

We signed up for a CSA this summer - first time in many years. Last time we were inundated with bitter greens and potatoes and a lot of it went to waste. This time I felt much more confident about using everything, so we signed up. We've been eating a lot of salads for the past month or so.

Anyway, we got some beets last week, and I am generally pretty down on beets. However, inspiration struck and I ended up with two pretty tasty things out of the beets - a beetroot puree with vermouth, sour cream, and smoked paprika; and another puree with the beet greens, heavy cream, and garlic. Spread them fancily over a plate and slap a piece of meat on it, and it looked just like a swanky restaurant meal.

On rereading this I am realizing that I basically made thick borscht and creamed spinach. But it was swooshed over a white plate, so it was fancy and luxurious!
posted by backseatpilot at 6:15 AM on July 9, 2018 [8 favorites]

Tree fort is coming together! We'll finish the walls once it's not so fucking hot outside. Special thanks to AskMe for helping me refine the design.
posted by saladin at 6:23 AM on July 9, 2018 [10 favorites]

I made and framed eight photographic prints for my first little "art show" on the wall of the little corner diner in my neighborhood. My one neighbor convinced the owner last year to dedicate one wall to local artists and asked me to install a set for the summer. Here's me and my dumb smile standing in front of the pictures. They're cheap IKEA frames so the glass is kind of glarey; I should try to get in there and take a shot with a polarized filter so that you can see all of the prints.
posted by octothorpe at 6:35 AM on July 9, 2018 [19 favorites]

I'm making a home.

We're about two weeks away from what has been months of detailed planning to my home with my kids. It's a huge financial investment for me, and I had to figure out how to take a tiny space and turn it into a living space for the next decade for six people and pets. We've been living out of boxes for nearly two months now, and watching the final pieces fall together from the plans I had in my head is amazing.

I bought so many small things in the past three years thinking about this house with ideas squirrelled away from here and there, and now it's surreal to go - oh wait, that is the coffee corner with the plate I picked up three months ago. There's the bird lamp rewired for the kitchen, the laundry trolley that fits just right, and so the wallpaper didn't work out, but that means I've got room to hang those five botanical prints permanantly right there...

Although, I was going to save the cardboard from the boxes for some crafts, but now I want to set fire to all the moving boxes.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 7:26 AM on July 9, 2018 [8 favorites]

Here's some yarn that I'm plying. It was a bit of an experiment, and I'm trying to figure out how I feel about it.

I'm also running a D&D campaign - the last session went poorly because I didn't quite take into account how much changes in party structure would affect gameplay, but I'm still looking forward to the next session. I'm also noodling on creating a game/RPG that would be all about the interpretation and reinterpretation of stories and foundational myths, but that's in the very early stages (also I need to look into what other people have done that might be similar).
posted by dinty_moore at 7:39 AM on July 9, 2018 [7 favorites]

I'm by myself a lot and have dumb interests, so most of the things I'm working on are personal art, writings, etc. that nobody cares about and I'm largely embarrassed by. A bit of esoteric ridiculousness: I'm in my twenties but I literally grew up on MU*s, and migrated from game to game as my friend group expanded, contracted, exploded, etc. Nowadays I run my own closed, private sandbox server right off my old, dying desktop. It used to be a PennMUSH game and currently runs Evennia, which is the backbone of Arx: The Reckoning, and it's more up to date than the 20+ year old softcode and C nightmares of my youth. I actually study Python now because it's still easier than learning a dying sublanguage on your own with no active mentorship.

It usually runs when my computer is on, and it's basically my virtual home. I'm making small, unconnected grids, which is what we called connected virtual rooms (think, what do people use nowadays instead of IRC and Skype, multiple rooms in Discord, whereas a game is like a Discord server) back when I had actual human interaction. It's based on fictional interests, so I'll create a room for a character's apartment, or the S.H.I.E.L.D HQ from the Marvel Cinematic Universe in New York City. I write little descriptions, then I spend down time searching up how to code (see the Python studying above, plus reading Evennia's wiki articles) to make extras. I've been figuring out how to do weather code, which basically means lines of text that give you rainstorms, or wind, or temperature changes, on a timer, and vehicle code, which makes travelling between rooms a little more interesting. There's basically no point in this sort of effort if you aren't running an actual roleplaying game for other people -- there's commands that let you go anywhere on the grid, weather is just flavor -- it's essentially a coding and creative exercise, I guess.
posted by Freeze Peach at 7:47 AM on July 9, 2018 [9 favorites]

Sorry, the edit window closed before I could add a link: Python is another programming language that's been around for... longer than me, but I find it a lot easier to work with as a totally casual hobbyist, FWIW.
posted by Freeze Peach at 7:54 AM on July 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

octothorpe, those are great. Do you have any plans to put prints in the mefimall? Have you before?

I've been mostly making food and socks. I did the knitting for a wrap while I was out of the country. Now I need to block it and add buttons. I started a blanket that I am not enjoying knitting, but I want the blanket so much. It lives in the space where my weekly knitting group is held.

Made 15 jars of rhubarb jam over last week. Hoping to have more rhubarb this week. Ate so many salads, and have a system down for adding pickled carrots and then other interesting salad toppings (nuts, shredded cheese, sliced radishes).
posted by bilabial at 7:58 AM on July 9, 2018 [4 favorites]

I got a rye sourdough starter from a friend and have just baked my first loaf.
The sourdough‘s name is Waldemar. He‘s been shared among German expats for a few years now. There‘s even a WhatsApp group for troubleshooting.
posted by The Toad at 8:02 AM on July 9, 2018 [7 favorites]

The little side project about movies that I started on my regular blog is about to graduate and move into its own house. (I will be making a post about it in Projects when I get that set up.)

I've also made two kinds of ice cream thus far this year - most recently a cherry sherbet spiked with lemon verbena.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:16 AM on July 9, 2018 [4 favorites]

A couple of friends who've been instrumental supports in my ongoing sobriety/recovery have just (separately) started playing D&D, so I made them each a d20 capture necklace.
posted by hanov3r at 8:27 AM on July 9, 2018 [7 favorites]

I usually do a lot of baking (and I have the makings for a lemon curd tart sitting in the fridge, because the weird little grocery store around the corner from us, which mostly exists to soak the undergrads for every penny they can, has the cheapest Eureka lemons of anyone around here), but I haven't done much lately.

What I have done is make a lot of ice cream, because it's been brainmeltingly hot. We also have a rule of "ok, it's going to be > 90F today, let's just have coffee and ice cream for breakfast." Because we're adults and we can decide what that means.

I made a batch of black raspberry ice cream yesterday, which is the most amazing purple color.

In the last couple weeks, I've made a passionfruit/lime sorbet (yay for bottled passionfruit juice, boo for leaving lime zest in the mix, which clumps up when churned and is really unpleasant in the mouth when you get a clump). I've also made a passionfruit ice cream by mixing about a pint of passionfruit curd into my standard ice cream base. Also did a batch of fresh strawberry ice cream, which is amazing.

There have also been a couple batches of chocolate ice cream. One is straight-up labeled Maximum Chocolate, which might be because there's more cocoa powder than sugar by volume. It's like frozen chocolate pudding, and is really a bit much. I did a slightly less overkill batch and swirled passionfruit curd through the ice cream as I was taking it out of the churn, which didn't really work as well as I wanted.

I've got fresh raspberries, blueberries and redcurrants (!) in the fridge right now, so I'm probably going to make at least one more batch of fruit ice cream this week. Maybe several. The redcurrant is a really tempting idea, particularly with a little bit of vanilla in the ice cream base.
posted by Making You Bored For Science at 8:27 AM on July 9, 2018 [6 favorites]

I wrote and recently self-published a novella about a rural commune of trans people with magic powers!

I hadn't written any fiction since I was a kid, and it was a lot of fun, and I got lots of support and advice from other trans writer friends. Writing a book was something I've always wanted to do, and it feels like a lovely gift to myself to have done it.
posted by ITheCosmos at 8:37 AM on July 9, 2018 [13 favorites]

I'm working on a weird book that I hope will be ready one of these days. In the meantime I am continuing to paint HARDCORE WHIMSY.
posted by overeducated_alligator at 9:28 AM on July 9, 2018 [15 favorites]

I've had a set of guitar pickups that I've meant to install in a guitar for a while now. However, it seems I've just bought all the component parts to make a guitar to fit around them - they're a take on Wide Range Humbuckers that a British artisan pickup winder made almost as an experiment that I bought on a whim, and I've been interested to find out what they sound like. It looks like I'm going to build a Strat around them (they're more often found in Telecasters) and put a Strat pickup from the same winder in the middle position. I'm thinking of doing the Dan Armstrong blender pot mod.

This is insanity. I've never done any of this before.

However, if it works, I've got a set of experimental Filtertrons the same winder made.

Sorry. As the world becomes more and more dispiriting I'm becoming more and more obsessed with electric guitars. I realise that for a man of my advanced age this counts as Mid Life Crisis behaviour, but to be honest the crisis is everywhere and this is my happy place. Happy until I manage to set the whole thing alight with my soldering iron, anyway.
posted by Grangousier at 9:46 AM on July 9, 2018 [6 favorites]

I haven't managed to make anything lately due to executive function issues, but I have started playing Borderlands 2 again because I finally found a friend to play with. Unfortunately we're 9 hours apart, timezone-wise, but I'm not working at the moment, so we manage.
posted by elsietheeel at 9:59 AM on July 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

I made a Bakewell Tart yesterday, and it was a big hit at the dinner party I went to. It wasn't the most beautiful tart I've ever made, but a dusting of powdered sugar always helps hide some errors...
posted by suelac at 9:59 AM on July 9, 2018 [4 favorites]

I made a collage for my sister's birthday card that had many different patterns all together since that's their style! I also made a batch of Minimalist Baker's healthy oatmeal cookies (oh god they are so good, I add dried cherries and sunflower seeds) and brought some to a friend who's helping me with wedding planning stuff, fresh from the oven and still warm.
posted by fairlynearlyready at 10:12 AM on July 9, 2018 [3 favorites]

dinty_moore, the yarn colours are amazing, that looks like fun!

I finished knitting a beautiful shawl that stretched my brain recently, and my mum has fallen in love with it and asked me to make her one. For most people, I'd dodge the request a little since it took so many hours and that's often a bit invisible, but my mum's great and will appreciate it, so I've been picking yarns with her and will be winding this beautiful pale blue soon.

I also finished some very simple socks (great plane and subway knitting) and will be sewing the sleeves on this jacket tonight to finish it.
posted by carbide at 10:18 AM on July 9, 2018 [7 favorites]

I wrote and recently self-published a novella about a rural commune of trans people with magic powers!

Purchased!
posted by nikaspark at 10:22 AM on July 9, 2018 [3 favorites]

I made an NSFW puppet video yesterday: Felt & Fur: Nice Guys (part one).

It's fairly innocuous, with one swear word.
posted by cjorgensen at 10:45 AM on July 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

I'm editing the thesis I wrote a couple months ago. I won an award for it, but I'm discovering, with horror, that the version I sent in for publication on the website is a rough draft complete with "insert quote here" at one point. Oops. We were informed that about 150 people per year download these papers, but I'm hoping it's mostly people who want to apply for the award. The good news is that it's long and most people probably don't get that far anyway.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 11:43 AM on July 9, 2018

An inkle-woven band. It's proving fiddly, but achievable.
posted by Otto the Magnificent at 11:49 AM on July 9, 2018 [6 favorites]

Profession-wise, I got some very positive feedback on an article and am now revising it. Because of the length and the subject matter, there are a grand total of two journals that it really suits, so I'm quite happy about the response.

Dollhouse-wise, I continue my very slow work (over a year now) on a fairly large English dollhouse that had been assembled, messed up, and then disassembled by a previous owner. I'm now bricking the exterior, which is useful for meditation but not exactly a speedy process.
posted by thomas j wise at 11:56 AM on July 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

@Freeze Peach, what you're doing seems like my sort of jam. It sounds quite fun. Though naturally, different interests and inclinations would probably go into my hypothetical version of a similar thing.


I'm in the middle of writing what's effectively chapter 6 in a story I've been working on. Open-ended premises being what they are, I'm feeling a bit of trepidation over whether I'll find a good conclusion for it. As it's a sleepy and slow regaining one's footing sort of narrative I wonder if it's ever going to find its purpose in life...

I tend to have a couple stories going at the same time, though that's more a factor of my attention issues than anything else. What's unusual about the above story is that I actually managed to work on it without swapping stories midway through a solid chunk of writing-- a good 20 000 words or so--, which, again, is more a factor of my attention issues than anything else.
posted by redrawturtle at 12:16 PM on July 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

I wrote a poem about the fact that the music I listen to sounds like something coughed up in the ancient world.
posted by maxsparber at 12:17 PM on July 9, 2018 [3 favorites]

I continue to do weekly radio shows, with two ongoing series.

The Final Countdown*
The reSEARCH series

the first is all over the map, Abba to Zappa with perhaps a little Merzbow in the middle, a countdown of the 1297 Greatest Records of All Time Right Now Right Here. The second is more resolutely moody, 49 minute non-stop mixes, movies without pictures, because in order to discover new lands, you need to lose sight of shore for a long time.
posted by philip-random at 12:17 PM on July 9, 2018 [3 favorites]

My book from last year is fresh out in paperback, does that count?

Counts well enough for me to buy it. Congrats; it looks very interesting.
posted by MovableBookLady at 12:49 PM on July 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

I refurbished the outdoor sign of a local institution -- a fish and chips shop that was around since the '50s, (the sign's not that old, but it's been there since the '80s) and closed last year -- over the last month. Got some friends coming over to mount it tomorrow night from the roof of our lounge.

I thought I'd just be pulling out the fluorescents and putting in some rope light, but decades of rust damage, old wasps nests, and the fact that all the blue... paint? Decal? Whatever? had faded entirely over and become completely transparent meant it was a much more involved project, including disassembly, multiple cleaning sessions, finding an appropriate translucent blue paint to create a new blue layer, realizing the paint was too translucent and applying a white backcoat, rewiring an extension cord into a junction box because the plug was too big for the side hole and I realized that the rope light has fuses built into its plug, and... more.

Here's a gallery!
posted by Shepherd at 12:50 PM on July 9, 2018 [6 favorites]

I continue to do weekly radio shows

Can I download these to my primitive mp3 player?
posted by pracowity at 1:10 PM on July 9, 2018 [1 favorite]

I continue to do weekly radio shows

Can I download these to my primitive mp3 player?

yes ... except I'm not up to date. Older mp3s are available here

My Mixcloud page is more up to date, streaming only in theory, but it's pretty simple to turn that into a download ... except those are m4as
posted by philip-random at 1:40 PM on July 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

I put together a modular synthesizer voice to accompany a sampler/drum machine. It's a mixture of synth elements, some that I bought and some that I built from circuit boards and kits. It has voltage-controlled oscillators & amplifiers, a chord voice (Music Thing Chord Organ), a buffered multiple, a step sequencer, a resonant lowpass filter, dual envelopes, and a midi interface. Picture on my instagram (which you can find on my profile). I use this to make really bad techno music and annoy the neighbors.
posted by gyusan at 1:42 PM on July 9, 2018 [3 favorites]

No picture, but my anniversary gift to my partner was a camera strap I sewed for her. I added a pocket which was not in the pattern, and thus got my first experience sewing a buttonhole! (I am still very much a neophyte.) It turned out pretty well as long as you don't look too closely.
posted by solotoro at 2:15 PM on July 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

A bit of esoteric ridiculousness: I'm in my twenties but I literally grew up on MU*s, and migrated from game to game as my friend group expanded, contracted, exploded, etc.

...yeah, that sounds like MUSHing. Wow, is it cool and also terrifying to discover that someone else from your incredibly niche hobby is hanging around on your relatively-niche usual website haunt.

I have been talking about building a web-based MUSH client for like the past five years and I finally have the skills to do it and I'm not actually playing anywhere anymore, but now I've started thinking about doing it again just to have a project. I want to have a project and I'm feeling like I have no creative spark at all lately and I don't now how people come up programming side projects because I can't think of anything to make that I'd actually use. But man, MUSHing got hard once I started trying to play from like four different devices, not all of which had real keyboards, and I kind of pine for a way to get back to that particular brand of roleplay without those inconveniences.
posted by Sequence at 2:31 PM on July 9, 2018 [3 favorites]

gyusan, synth looks good! I don't know Eurorack too well -- which modules were the ones you made from kits? I've been fantasizing about building a 5U/MU format synth, but I think I'm realistically a few years away from being able to build one. I'm only familiar with Paia and MFOS, but I know there are other companies out there.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 4:16 PM on July 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

Well, I finished and posted a fanfic I'd been working on for...quite a while; 15K, including guest appearances by the music of Brahms among others. One more in this sequence and then I will concentrate on original writing (in my copious spare time, sure).
I poached some apricots with red wine syrup (thanks, Mark Bittman) and succeeded sufficiently that I have to keep telling my husband no, you cannot have them for breakfast, they're alcoholic.
I'm growing some tasty cherry tomatoes.
I really love this thread. Please consider every single post favorited.
posted by huimangm at 4:16 PM on July 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

It is my birfday as I write this, so if you are the sort of person who likes/d such things as Harry Potter or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I demand that you give my dark YA fantasy writing project, The Neverending Conflict, a look. You might enjoy it.

I've been working on revising act 2, which I hope I'll be able to start putting up early next year. It's been going... okay. I've been down lately, what with vast swaths of the world being terrible, which slows the writing. And I've also decided I should probably figure out how to improve my non-writing career because I don't see moving the writing project into the realm of making money anytime soon, so I've been checking out python myself to see if I could put my long ago math minor to work for me as a data analyst of some sort, and that's what codecademy suggests an aspiring data scientist study.
posted by Caduceus at 4:19 PM on July 9, 2018 [3 favorites]

Well, I just made a short series of macro photos of crustose lichens that all came from the same extremely unremarkable boulder I saw yesterday. Lichens are one of those things which are absolutely amazing on multiple levels and which are all around us even if we live in dense cities, and yet which almost nobody ever looks at. They're worth looking at though, I think.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 4:42 PM on July 9, 2018 [6 favorites]

Still working on lashing a bamboo chair. It doesn't take long when I get a chunk of time and am in the right place and it isn't raining, but those things don't happen often enough.
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:54 PM on July 9, 2018 [3 favorites]

I haven't made much lately but there is cross stitch stuff from April and May on my instagram when I thought I'd (haha lolol) be able to do the 100 day project this year.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 5:06 PM on July 9, 2018

there is no cabal
posted by robocop is bleeding at 5:09 PM on July 9, 2018 [7 favorites]

which modules were the ones you made from kits?

- Ljunggren Audio Penta sequencer and Aperture filter (brilliant old-school kits, well made & straightforward to build)
- Ian Fritz' dual AD/AR (short run of boards from a guy in europe, need to source your own components)
- Music Thing Modular Chord Organ (great arduino based module, easy build)
- LFO and Dual VCA (from a company with terrible customer service, would not recommend)
posted by gyusan at 5:14 PM on July 9, 2018 [1 favorite]

I’ve recovered enough from various physical traumas that I’m writing and drawing again! Is it good work? Maybe not, but it’s work, and I’m very happy!

Also, this post has made me happy. And shown me several new Instagram accounts from mefites to follow!
posted by Nancy_LockIsLit_Palmer at 5:27 PM on July 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

I'm still photographing the gardens where I work on an almost daily basis. Some of the only time I have to do this is while walking around in the early morning opening gates while carrying my 2.5 year old in a baby carrier on my back (38lbs if you're wondering). This is not conducive to any camera angles that involve squatting down - actually it is totally conducive to squatting down; it is getting up again that causes trouble.
posted by sciencegeek at 5:53 PM on July 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

I've turned my loft into an appointment-only retail store, selling rare or interesting records, furniture, and, soon, books and art. I made a site and launched 3 weeks ago after first asking about such a business on Ask. I've had customers every day since opening.
posted by dobbs at 6:06 PM on July 9, 2018 [9 favorites]

I’m growing a baby- due in January, a girl. Lots of sleeps and barfs have contributed to the effort.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 6:30 PM on July 9, 2018 [28 favorites]

I've been getting back into drawing and design for roughly the first time since high school. I've been doing Meat Day (Niku No Hi, because 29 in Japanese can be read as ni-ku, and niku=meat, so the 29th of the month=meat day) pop-up events for my old restaurant at a place in Tokyo owned by friends, and I started the first one off with a take on the Punk's Not Dead album cover. My place was called Magical Animal, and our mascot was a pig with wings and a unicorn horn, and I put it into the design as Pig's not Dead. Since then, I've been making new event posters based off of punk and ska album covers: Niku No Hi Calling, Niku No Hi Madness (a Movember tie up), Hello Barbecue, and most recently, Double Nick Burgers on the Grill.

My main job has also let me start doing some design stuff, mostly window art with whiteboard markers, though they've recently had me add some illustration to promotional paper fans and I'm designing the upcoming anniversary t-shirt, so that's kind of fun. Not a lot of those things online, but that's another project to work on (getting shop relevant stuff on the daily blog, since, y'know, it's a bar serving food and beer, and maybe we should focus on that...), but there's this one (scroll way down).

All in all, I'd forgotten how much I enjoy this stuff, and it's been good for me to get back into it.
posted by Ghidorah at 6:30 PM on July 9, 2018 [1 favorite]

I'm making picnic tables, benches, desks, bookshelves, target stands, and other misc tables and stuff; all in the glorious support of the GWOT. Can't show any pics of these items, no photography. 2x4s and plywood at its finest; make no mistake.
I'm suppose to be doing HVAC, plumbing, and electrical. Oh yeah.
posted by Afghan Stan at 6:32 PM on July 9, 2018 [1 favorite]

I've been working on Basque entries on English Wiktionary for the past couple of weeks. Though it's a sister project to Wikipedia, the culture there there seems nicer – friendlier and better organized. When I've asked for help there, people have been genuinely helpful. I haven't been there long enough to make reliable observations about the culture or really start thinking through why it's different.

I'll probably be doing this for a while, maybe long while. It's a minority language that's gotten little attention on English Wiktionary. There's tons of basic vocabulary that isn't covered. So there's lots to do, even at a very basic level. I'm the only person working on Basque entries on English Wiktionary right now. When I started, the last time anybody had made a new Basque verb entry was in 2015. Since my comprehension is limited, I'm double checking everything I do to make sure it's right, and there's lot's to learn about formatting entries and how to use Wiktionary's templates, so my progress making entries is slow.

I was going to say more, but decided I didn't want to go on forever. I'm about to do a major reorganization and expansion of an entry on a Basque auxiliary verb, or a set of verbs, depending on how you count them. I asked advice about doing this on Wiktionary early last week, now I think it's about ready to go. It'll still be inadequate, but this verb needs a better entry, and this will be a start. I'm hoping to get feedback from other people on Wiktionary when I do it.

I'll probably post link here when it goes up, so y'all can see what I've been up to, if anybody's interested.
posted by nangar at 6:35 PM on July 9, 2018 [5 favorites]

I've added USB charger ports to the car, swapped in a new (leather!) steering wheel, and painted the spark plug cover. Showed my nephew how to do some simple house wiring, replacing outlets and switches.

I'm trying to draw some Frank Lloyd Wright tiles, the local library has a 3d printer. Trying to get a car load of stuff together for the Sunday flea market.

Sorting, shredding or filing 10 years of medical/financial paperwork.
posted by Marky at 6:59 PM on July 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

I've started a story-telling class and I'm working on a story to tell at an event next week about forcing the boys to let me play football, and how that helped me handle stupid sexist academia boys. I'm having a lot of fun, and it's nice having a venue where people are actually there specifically to hear me tell a story about a thing.
posted by ChuraChura at 7:24 PM on July 9, 2018 [3 favorites]

my band has a new-ish album and it's been getting pretty good reviews and we just finished a short tour this weekend. one of the shows was opening for Frank Turner and it was one of the biggest non-festival shows we've ever played and he said that we were amazing and he wants to take us on a world tour or something. (i'd act more excited but you know how it is, chickens before hatched something something)

i know i sound weird and jaded (life stuff is tempering my enthusiasm right this very moment) but it really is amazing to go to a different town and have people know all your lyrics and sing them back to you and stuff like that. People that you've never met. and also -- seeing so many young women and lgbtq folks standing up front at a huge show, feeling safe to take up space. THIS IS NOT SOMETHING I MADE ON MY OWN but it is something i feel like i've had at least a small part in lately.
posted by capnsue at 7:29 PM on July 9, 2018 [8 favorites]

I'm apparently possibly working myself into a new job and gently failing upwards? Or something?

Cow-orker/manager may be leaving. Which, uh, I've been fearing and mentally preparing myself for. That and the eventuality of "Oh, shit, you're going to ask me to go full time, aren't you?" which may not actually be feasible if I want to keep my insurance.

This is definitely one of those things though where if I don't step up to the job I may hate my new boss, and if I do I may hate my new job.

It may actually be a better job for me, but I'm not sure about the hours and responsibility.
posted by loquacious at 7:40 PM on July 9, 2018 [4 favorites]

And for once I don't have anything shiny/creative/artistic that I'm really working on to share. Yay, look at me being happily boring!
posted by loquacious at 7:42 PM on July 9, 2018 [1 favorite]

loquacious, you are never boring.
posted by monopas at 8:52 PM on July 9, 2018 [4 favorites]

I made a baby! Six weeks of parenting that little peanut and my ability to form coherent sentences has suffered but she’s started to figure out smiling and there’s nothing better in the world.
posted by beandip at 8:54 PM on July 9, 2018 [17 favorites]

I never ever cook since it doesn't seem worth it living alone but a few weeks ago I went camping and made a Dutch oven lasagna. I was thinking it would be pretty good but I used about twice as much cheese as the recipe called for and it was so incredibly good.

I've even been considering making lasagna for myself...
posted by bendy at 9:17 PM on July 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

I have no major projects of recent history. And the few have been FAIL or MEH... I tried to tell the shop across the street that their black aluminum door handles were blistering in this 120 degree heat catching the afternoon sun and all they needed to do was wrap a shop towel aroung the handles so they wouldn't burn people... they ignored me... meh.

I'm still trying to make an ersatz Beef Sushi... second try... making a roll instead of trying for form proper susi format. My previous guesswork at sushi rice was better, following recipe was not tangy enough... rice too sticky, should wash and use less water (generic California short-grain no-wash rice and rice-cooker). Got the wasabi right this time! Tangier rice, more meat, use plastic-wrap, roll better, start with the LONG knife because you want that thing done in one slice. It was still yummy if messy. (It's too hot to actually cook things).

I have some long term projects that sometimes take a step forwars. Family cooking skipped a generation and my mother (bless her hear) can not cook granny food. I'll have to go home and photo/scan the recipe drawer. I asked for granny meatloaf and got a Methodist Cookbook (yes there is a Dead Milkmen Joke in there) that was published only a couple of years before she passed away.... WRONG THING MOM. I'm also trying to find of all things home made Pickled Beets, I gobbled them up as a kid, nothing has ever matched.... that and what I call Country Ham which is another thing that MOM tries but fails. (guess I miss granny cooking).

Making things wise... I'm constrained by apartment living and not having a basement/tools/noise and city/neighbors living. I sorta wish I had a shop or people were far enough away for power tools and such... c'est la vie.
posted by zengargoyle at 9:24 PM on July 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

Oh, and if anybody knows of good chocolate with a cross between rice-puffs and pop-rocks with intense raspberry flavor that literally explodes in your mouth.... I've been trying to recreate that for a couple of decades (I think it was an import and discontinued, but that was like heroin and soooooo yummy, I've tried many times to re-create it and failed).
posted by zengargoyle at 9:29 PM on July 9, 2018

Happy birthday for yesterday Caduceus!
posted by ellieBOA at 11:25 PM on July 9, 2018 [3 favorites]

Here’s the second demo track for the EP I’m working on: Gloucester Street
posted by nikaspark at 11:37 PM on July 9, 2018 [4 favorites]

The last project I finished was a cigar box ukulele that I was pretty proud of (which you can see on Instagram).

Right now, I am making the 1979 arcade game Asteroids, which you can see a few early sketches for also on Instagram. Given all the events that have gone on since the 1970s, I am finding it to be a nearly impossible task, but I have had a few fragmentary successes, and hope to be finished soon.
posted by surlyben at 12:13 AM on July 10, 2018 [4 favorites]

I've been growing bones! You can't see them, but I'll see if I can get a copy of my ankle X-rays when I have my follow-up appointment next week.

It's taken a lot of flashbacks (pretty sure I've been enjoying some orthopedic injury PTSD) and a lot of sleeping on my back and muscle atrophy in the calf on the affected side, so I hope it's all working! I can say that pulling myself up onto my walker when I got to the bottom of my front stairs, heading to the car for physical therapy on Friday, was so much faster and easier than when I did it the first time weeks ago. My core strength is much better than it was a month ago, and I had thought it had been getting to be decent before this all happened.

So that is not nothing, even though this is gonna remain very annoying for a few more weeks, then probably still annoying, but in new ways, for a long time thereafter.

I'm also proud that a day ago, I successfully diagnosed and began treatment of a minor foot issue (opposite foot) caused by all this, using a military textbook I found online. That's also not nothing!

Also, 1. déjà vu, and 2. mice have been waking me up and/or keeping me awake at some point most nights, but 3. I finally am largely off major pain meds and it feels like my brain is slowly clarifying, the fog lifting, more complex trains of thought able to leave the station, and so I called and made a pest-control appointment for later this week, as well as my first therapist's appointment in a while (since I'm still mostly unable to leave the house). Then I actually managed to concentrate on some work for decent periods of time today.

Gonna try to sleep, but yay doing things! Maybe sometime in the next few weeks I'll also be able to summon the energy to get back into some of my non-sports hobbies.
posted by limeonaire at 12:22 AM on July 10, 2018 [6 favorites]

nikaspark - I really hope you do more in that vein, that's a beautiful song/track.
posted by unearthed at 1:22 AM on July 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

Those Ant chairs are gorgeous, dobbs. Best of luck with the retail-shebeen concept.
posted by adamgreenfield at 4:19 AM on July 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

Thanks, adamgreenfield!
posted by dobbs at 5:20 AM on July 10, 2018

I've just about finished turning the old sail locker of my boat into a bedroom.

So when we bought the boat the sail locker was behind a steel bulkhead, accessible by a hatch and filled with (amongst other things)

• 60 Life jackets made of cork and last certified in 1967
• A hexagonal cylinder of concrete , roughly 50 cm high and weighing a ton
• wall to wall rotten wood covering up rusted walls
• Nazi Bullet Dents
• half a gazebo
• Miscellaneous random tins of tars, paints, bizarre tools and other things from 100 years of being a boat.

I've just about finished converting it into a nice clean bright childs bedroom.
Figuring out shapes and curves in all sorts of directions has been very difficult. The walls are made from interlocking arcs of plywood curved in three directions.
It has carpet. Shelves. Underfloor Heating.
It has a nice little bed ladder which I built whilst cooking some pizza.

Now I need to make everything else as nice.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 6:48 AM on July 10, 2018 [8 favorites]

I spent half a lifetime learning how to create software, making a living at it and
progressing beyond worker bee ranks to boss level.

A few years back I left it all to try something completely different.

While I love the something different part, I really missed working in the tech world. So, for the past couple of months I’ve been in a front end web development class.

I’m creating a website for a class project.

Learning is fun!
posted by SteveInMaine at 7:15 AM on July 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

I've started a podcast with a friend where we talk our way through the catalog of the band Uncle Tupelo, song by song. We, naturally, wind up talking about Wilco and Son Volt a fair bit as well.
posted by the phlegmatic king at 7:24 AM on July 10, 2018 [3 favorites]

Just today I mailed out the (finally) finished baby name/stats cross stitch I made for my sister who just had her first, and included a baby blanket I taught myself how to sew (thanks to youtube).
posted by Captain_Science at 8:27 AM on July 10, 2018

I saw this amazing poem "To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall" by Kim Addonizio on Twitter and as I've been doing a bit of performing recently I'm feeling a bit confident with my readings so I made this.
posted by h00py at 8:29 AM on July 10, 2018 [3 favorites]

I'm knitting again for the first time in years! I have a start on a lovely orange/pink/gray (her favorite colors) blanket for a friend who just finished college and is starting her first big kid job.
posted by joycehealy at 8:45 AM on July 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

im forming a vanguard party to advance the revolutionary overthrow of the state
posted by poffin boffin at 9:12 AM on July 10, 2018 [3 favorites]

I'm working on some really good rhetoric which is sure to be effective, so I'll have that available for all reactionary conflicts local to me.
posted by h00py at 9:28 AM on July 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

loquacious, you are never boring.

Boring is highly underrated. It's good for me to be a little boring. Granted, my job is nuts and anything but boring.

OTOH I don't know many people my age who partied till dawn... at least four of the last eight nights. And then went to work. Heeeelp.

Hey, look at me getting ready for my first day of management training, heh. And then I'm going hammock camping at my friends land immediately after.
posted by loquacious at 9:34 AM on July 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

I think I've posted about this before (it's taking a long time to make) but here is a photo of the hexagon quilt top I am making (English paper piecing). It is entirely from scraps and fabric from a quilt fail that I took apart and am now slooowly cutting into hexies. I'm still unemployed so I am both pleased at the progress I've made and a bit worried this is going to go on forever?

(It is not attached to that backing, it's just resting on top so I know how long the rows need to be).
posted by janepanic at 9:42 AM on July 10, 2018 [3 favorites]

Update: the bread was great. It's this, a Smitten Kitchen recipe adapted to be super easy.

My meeting also ruled, we broke an attendance record and met lots of new people and it was all extremely exciting.
posted by clavicle at 9:56 AM on July 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

I just printed a shit-ton of black and white photos, including some lith process prints. I managed to sell one (a copy of this 35mm shot) and am now trying to actually get my website shit in order to be able to sell more.
posted by klangklangston at 10:18 AM on July 10, 2018 [3 favorites]

...yeah, that sounds like MUSHing. Wow, is it cool and also terrifying to discover that someone else from your incredibly niche hobby is hanging around on your relatively-niche usual website haunt.

_{There are dozens of us! Dozens!}

But seriously, hey! This is pretty funny, honestly. I'm glad to see someone who knows what I was going on about up there! You should try your hand at that client. I use Mukluk on Android on the go, and it's kind of terrible, but it's the best you can do because everything else is dead/worse, or geared toward MUDs. Evennia actually has a built in web client thing, but it's not super robust, plus it's game specific. That could be a starting point, though! Good luck, I'm rooting for you, even if you decide to do something entirely different.
posted by Freeze Peach at 10:44 AM on July 10, 2018

I've completed two cross-stitch items which I am preparing to mount back to back (on separate pieces of foam core which I will somehow sandwich), then somehow attach an s-hook or similar and hang from the ceiling so both can be read. These are my second and third cross stitches ever. I never had a hobby anything like this and it is weird/good. They miiiight read, "my therapist was right about you" in pretty pastels with hearts and "how does that make you feel" in Very Bright Colours with a question mark border.
posted by wellred at 10:54 AM on July 10, 2018 [3 favorites]

I'm working on an alternative calendar and accompanying narrative for 2019 for anyone who who is weary of the same-old, same-old of typical heteropatriarchal and church-centric celebrations year after year and it will be available as an email subscription starting in December. It's been far more cathartic than I anticipated. I also made some kitchen curtains.
posted by missmobtown at 2:32 PM on July 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

I am a bookbinder by trade, but just like the cobbler's children have no shoes, I don't often get to make things for myself. However, to tempt myself back into sketching and 2-D creative work, I recently made myself a sketchbook using some of my old favorite jeans as bookcloth. Holler at your MeFi girl if you ever need a custom book made!
posted by ikahime at 3:50 PM on July 10, 2018 [5 favorites]

Well, it's Tour de Fleece season, so I'm making yarn! (This is my first fractal spin, in case any fellow spinners are curious.) Which I do sometimes anyway, but the external motivation was helpful in getting me to finish a frustrating project that had been stagnating, allowing me to move onto something much more fun! And the social aspects are also nice, particularly since I am really still getting to know my wheel.
posted by cellar door at 3:54 PM on July 10, 2018 [4 favorites]

I worry that outside of work, the only creative thing I ever do anymore is bury carefully composed and vulnerable comments near the end of very long Metatalk threads.
posted by Stanczyk at 4:15 PM on July 10, 2018 [9 favorites]

I drilled through two walls in my rented apartment to put up a groovy new wifi access point. I even bought a new drill to do it!

In the grand scheme I'm making some kind of college degree. I'm taking trigonometry this summer, which is kind of kicking my butt and is quite a "stuff I knew once" feeling. I've also already told one kid in a group once to get off my lawn, so I'm blending in nicely. The real classes start in the fall, which will be fun and cool.

I'm also in the sketching stages of an ersatz protest song based on The Ramones' "The KKK Took My Baby Away."
posted by rhizome at 5:12 PM on July 10, 2018 [3 favorites]

My garden is growing, These pics are a couple weeks old when things were starting to flower. Now I have a couple cherry tomatoes getting pink, yay. I love this thread, love being in the company of all you productive, creative people making stuff.
posted by theora55 at 8:27 PM on July 10, 2018 [3 favorites]

I made a 44 yard long tapestry (and finally got some nice pictures of it from the gallery)!
posted by moonmilk at 8:54 PM on July 10, 2018 [8 favorites]

So I finally got around to screening them and they turned out lovely. Hand-screened bgm Sad Executive Boy logo, on a heathered blue ringspun shirt.

chococat, is that the young Josh character from the movie Big (1988)? Either way, love that shirt it is rad and a half!
posted by carsonb at 9:25 PM on July 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

Thanks carsonb!
It's actually my son from several years ago; it's a still from this music video I made.
posted by chococat at 9:39 PM on July 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

I'm in a really weird place right now as I'm sort of unemployed this summer so I have a lot of time on my hands. Also my beloved best friend Wittgenstein the Cat died very suddenly recently. And also everything in the world is terrible. So I've been doing a lot of cooking and baking things I always have wanted to master but never did. I've eat Eggs Benny like 10 times in the past 2 weeks and if I do say so myself I've gotten pretty good at it.
posted by Lutoslawski at 10:33 AM on July 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

My band, Bottlecap Mountain, just put out our third (and finest, if I do say so myself) album, Claws Sharp. Available on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and various other streaming services. In a few weeks you'll even be able to buy it on vinyl, if you're into that sort of thing.
posted by dirtdirt at 1:04 PM on July 11, 2018 [2 favorites]

One of my weekly social dances had a cake contest, and I've established a reputation as a baker, so I felt I had to step up. My cake won the contest, I am pleased to say, and was a nice exercise in learning new technique.

Also I got to make a deeply satisfying video of pouring mirror glaze.
posted by VeritableSaintOfBrevity at 1:49 PM on July 11, 2018 [2 favorites]

I decided to use up as much of my stashed sock yarn as I can, so I've been knitting hats industriously from leftover yarn. Hoping to empty most of my yarn bins and keep heads warm.

Edit: cellar door, fractals are so fun to spin!
posted by catlet at 2:13 PM on July 11, 2018 [2 favorites]

Not making much of anything lately, unless you count food. But I did make new hummingbird food yesterday, got dive-bombed by a male hummer as I was putting it back up. Came inside, and got a picture of the little bugger (by holding my thumb down on the photo button for burst mode). So I guess you could say I made a hummingbird happy.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 2:29 PM on July 11, 2018 [6 favorites]

I am wrapping up the 3rd of 4 board games I'm planning on demoing for feedback at GenCon early next month. Nothing like a deadline approaching to light a fire under one's ass.
posted by isauteikisa at 3:17 PM on July 11, 2018 [2 favorites]

I wish I lived near some of you spinners. I bought a wheel several months ago and have barely used it because I'm a hands-on learner and I need someone to show me.
posted by elsietheeel at 3:32 PM on July 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

Fellow mefite leesh and I co-smithed a Learned League one-day special on the Brat Pack that starts this Saturday, July 14th.
posted by mogget at 9:25 AM on July 12, 2018 [1 favorite]

I got the door hung! Alas, there is no doggy slide involved - I managed to reverse the hinges and re-hang it essentially upside-down and it works fine. I am also the proud owner of a chisel and a set of spade bits, to add to my haphazard but growing tool collection. Next step: clean the hideous mess in my workspace before it catches fire!
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 12:44 PM on July 12, 2018 [7 favorites]

restless_nomad, I told the story of your topside dog door to my family the other day, and the giggles were much needed and appreciated.

thanks!
posted by freethefeet at 10:19 PM on July 12, 2018

@Freeze Peach: Thanks. :)

Evennia does tickle my interest. It might be a little steep for me at the moment, since I tend to hit a wall after a certain point while trying to teach myself to code. But I have always meant to find some excuse to learn more.

Before I dabbled in the somewhat adjacent activity of making text adventures. They became less adventure-ry and more an odd collection of rooms, if you get what I mean.
posted by redrawturtle at 2:41 AM on July 13, 2018

I'm doing some 3D printing stuff, and my current project is a D&D dice tray with insert to hold dice. I've got it finally to a stage I like, and the printing of a good one is happening now.

The Tray Itself

Previous iteration of the insert. (used a large layer height and minimal internal fill to get it done faster, so it's not as pretty.)

And a couple of templates I need, one for the fabric to line the insert and to paint a logo onto the outside of the insert.

Some sanding, some painting, and it should be good to go. I had to run a GoFundMe recently due to medical bills, so I think I may make a few of these and send it to some of the people who donated as a thank-you gift.
posted by mephron at 7:01 AM on July 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

I made a toilet paper holder holder to go in our vintage toilet paper holder. It was my first time working with a lathe. I feel pretty great about this.
posted by Too-Ticky at 2:59 AM on July 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

That's a really good looking TPHH! Now I'm looking at my cheap plastic TPHH and thinking that I want to learn to use a lathe too...
posted by moonmilk at 4:12 AM on July 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

Sounds like it may be time to look up your local hacker/makerspace!
posted by Too-Ticky at 4:19 AM on July 15, 2018

Okay, obvious brain fart here: of course I did not make a toilet paper holder holder to go in our vintage toilet paper holder. I made a toilet paper holder to go in our vintage toilet paper holder holder.
Probably instantly clear to everyone here, as all y'all know all the things about toilet paper, its holders and their holders, but I figured it would be best to avoid any possible confusion. Sorry about that! 😵
posted by Too-Ticky at 4:25 AM on July 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

This is bookmarked reading for me because I am excited to catch up on what everybody's been getting up to. But I wanted to pop in to formally note our recent refreshing of the Projects guidelines, because it's super on point for the spirit of these threads which is part of why I like 'em so much.

Go give that a read if you have had a "well, I don't know if this really qualifies..." feeling about making a Projects post about something you're working on or have made in the past. Because the short answer is: hey, it probably would in fact make a nice Projects post, either as-is or with a little bit of a writeup depending on the project, and it doesn't have to be something brand new.

Making stuff is rad, sharing it is rad, and I'd love to see y'all doing so on Projects more often. (And very much want these threads to keep rolling, too. They're great.)
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:09 AM on July 15, 2018 [3 favorites]

I've been working on a card game for a couple of years. It's a two player vs battling game, a little like mtg, but developed with all the things about mtg that I don't like. There's no Mana, you can play a card every turn no matter what, and there's 6 valid strategic ways to play each card instead of just one. Since I first tweeted about it after printing up the first edition, I've made 7 revisions and it seems like this might be the version that does it. I'll be looking for beta testers soon, as I've exhausted the good will and interest of my friend pool, and I need the opinion of people who won't just say "it's fun" out of friendship. It's the most enjoyable thing I've ever put my efforts into, even if it never goes anywhere.
posted by TheNegativeInfluence at 7:08 PM on July 15, 2018 [2 favorites]

The book ITheCosmos wrote arrived this week! It is fabulous. So much queer and trans goodness, and very thoughtful about community care. (With land acknowledgments, too!)

I’ve also realized that knitting projects for babies go way faster than for adults. And since my friends had several new babies, I’ve been making sweaters and toques and other cozy stuff.
posted by Banknote of the year at 10:55 AM on July 21, 2018 [1 favorite]