Our life is just a rollercoaster, hold on tight because falling off is not an option.
Hubby sent me looking at these
.
It’s a pinhole camera that you can load with 35 mm film and it should really work.
And the fun part?
You make it yourself!
Just print it out onto stiff paper and tape/glue it together.
They even have little toys you can make to play with.
I might make these little guys to sit on my desk.
Our youngest niece is turning one this coming weekend. My sil has requested the same thing from me for each of her kids, so I wasn’t surprised when she wanted one for this child.
I started it sometime last summer (June or July maybe?), but I’m mailing it off tomorrow so it will get there in time.
Do you remember that our group performed A Midsummer Night’s Dream last year?
Well, I don’t think I’ve mentioned that we are in rehearsals to do another play by Shakespeare for this year. If everything goes as planned, we’ll be performing A Comedy of Errors in mid-April.
Yeah, you did hear a question in that. We are in the midst of finding a location to perform the play. Last year we did two performances - one at a local retirement home with a stage in their community room and then a second at an aged theater owned and run by the local men’s barbershop chorus.
I’m waiting for an answer from the retirement home on whether they want us to return, keep your fingers crossed! But the hang up is that the theater is excited to have us come back, but….. they want us to have liability insurance. YUCKO.
So, I’m in the midst of talking to the 4H agent (most of the kids are members and I’m fine with signing the rest up if we need to) about whether the 4H’s liability might cover us, and talking to an insurance agent about what event insurance might cost us, and looking for a back-up location.
I’ve found a back-up location at a local community center that’s run by the city, but they want to charge us to use it for one night. Not sure of the price (because they are in the midst of resetting those) but it may be as high as $300. And we have no budget.
So to cover that, or the insurance, we’ll need to collect some money some where. So, we’re discussing asking some local businesses to support us and pay our fees (the shows are free, so there’s no income there) - who wouldn’t want to support a youth-based Shakespeare company? or trying to do a bake sale or something to raise it.
Any way you slice it, I got some fun news this evening. Step-mom is making plane tickets to come up and see the show! Now I just have to get the show there.
I finished another bowl and I wanted to share it.
This one is for my sister, L.
I had it carved before we left for her house this summer, but between realizing that I had no idea of how I wanted to color it and that I didn’t really have enough time to completely finish it, I put it aside.
Her birthday is right after Christmas and so this will be her birthday present.
I’m also posting a picture of this bag (mostly so my mil can see it.)
Girl has a little friend who invited Girl to her 8th birthday party.
Instead of wrapping the gift, Girl wanted to create another bag like she did for 4H.
Hubby helped me decide on the theme for the third Map Club. He thought the kids would enjoy learning about non-Euclidean geometry and studying Taxicab geometry. It looked really fun, but at first I wasn’t sure how I was going to develop sessions at all three levels. It took a little playing with, but I finally came up with a structure for the classes.
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The pages’ abilities are all over the place. I decided before I could even introduce them to coordinate systems, I needed to work in one dimension. In fact, I ended up deciding their class goal would only be to introduce the girls to a coordinate system.
So we started off with a number line (I printed them each out a numbered strip) from 1 to 20. Our guessing game focused on the terms ‘greater than’ and ‘less than’. The person who was ‘it’ would chose a number and then we’d go around trying to guess what it was. After each guess, she’d tell us whether her number was greater or less than the guess. The girls enjoyed it and it gave them some idea of order and location.
From there I explained who Rene Descartes was and that he is credited with developing the Cartesian coordinate system. Earlier in the morning a couple of the older boys had drawn a large grid on the driveway and using it as a visual, I explained that each line represented the same distance.
We then used the grid to play an oversized version of Animal Crossing 
from Stenmark, Thompson, and Cossey’s book Family Math.
We first played it without any walls, so they could understand the what they were trying to do and then I drew in the walls and they played again until we ran out of time.
The idea of the game is that you roll a die that just has the numbers 1, 2, or 3 and then move in a straight line that number of spaces. When you run into a wall, you need to stop moving and then on your next turn change direction to continue on your way. The goal is to reach the opposite side.
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For the knights, I started with Descartes’s quote “I think, therefore I am.” and asked them what they thought it meant. After a short discussion, I explained he was a French philosopher and a mathematician (and even a lawyer) and that unlike today when we tend to think of these as separate areas, during the Renaissance period people would be interested in a board range of ideas.
We then went over the grid (which I had now added labels to the axis) and we discussed it’s 3 characteristics: origin, perpendicular axis, and a scale for measuring distance. We also went over how to name a point (x,y).
To use the grid, we first played another game from Family Math called Hurkle. For this game, whoever is ‘it’ chooses a point and then when another player guesses, they have to tell them what direction their point is from the guess (north, west, northeast…). The kids quickly figured out that by having everyone stand on the point they chose helped narrow down where the next choice should go.
After playing that for long enough for each kid to be ‘it’ once, I discussed that on typical grids the distance from two points is a straight line. But that wouldn’t work for a taxi in a city unless it could fly like a bird, so I explained how taxicab distances are measured. We then went around again, but this time instead of indicating direction, the person who was ‘it’ would give the taxicab distance to their chosen spot.
To finish coordinate systems we ended with a discussion of 3 dimensional systems that are used in ‘real’ life. They came up with examples from GPS systems to aircraft systems.
Since we had a few minutes left, I gave them another puzzle dealing with movement. The Konigsberg Bridges problem was solved by Euler (or actually not), but it kept them busy for their last 5 mins.
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By the time of the squires’ class it was getting hot. I think it actually hit close to 90 and we were in the sun. It definitely had me dragging a little.
But we jumped in with Descartes’s quote and why a Renaissance philosopher was also a mathematician. I started by introducing them to the grid by playing Animal Crossing and then we discussed the Cartesian coordinate system and how to name points. From there we played Hurkle, had a similar discussion about measuring distance, and then played taxicab.
And with that, their class was over.
My kids and I LOVE the IN-Home Conference up in Chicago. Last year I finally got the guts to put in a proposal to do a leatherworking workshop during the conference.
And they just contacted me and said it’s a GO!
At this point it’s only for the 4 to 7 year old age group, but she said they might change it as they follow up on other workshop proposals.
I’m so pysched!
BTW, the 2008 conference is March 7 and 8 and they moved it to Pheasant Run Resort.
Okay, I’ve got some stuff finished and now you get to see it.
First off, I finished the guitar strap. It’s (maybe) a little darker than I would have wanted, but otherwise it came out pretty much looking like I wanted. 
I’ve included three pictures, the one that’s been in Flickr for awhile of it unstained, and then the full length 
followed by a close-up detail. 
(You can click on the images to see them blown up.)
Next I did some modifications to 2 purses that I’ve made my mil. 
I didn’t have a picture of this purse on my leatherwork page, so It’s new to you. She wanted only a small modification of a clasp to keep the flap from coming open.
This purse, OTH, needed some thinking. The far right (assuming it posts the way I anticipate) is what it originally looked like. 
But she found that that little latch didn’t keep things from falling out, so I had to come up with a flap that wouldn’t cover up the carving, fit the design, and keep things from falling out. 
I think she’ll like it.
The last thing I haven’t put together yet, but I’m really pleased with it, so I’m going to post a picture. It’s the cover for a Dayplanner and it’s my first commission piece since I was a kid. 
Oh, I’ve also made Hubby a new black wallet. His old one was still holding together, but the sections for cards has been stretched out of shape. And I’ve been working on another bowl. This one is a Christmas present for my mil.
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