Category Archives: Other Projects

Last fall I saved the pits from some peaches and plums to see if I could get them to grow. For those fruits you have to 'stratify' the seeds in the refrigerator for several months in order to get the seeds to sprout. I just checked on them a week or so ago, and low and behold they were sprouting! I've since moved them to the windowsill and they are 3-4 inches tall already. Once they get big enough I'm hoping to harden them off and plant them outside.

I read an article online about how to grow cool crystals at home using fertilizer, and Carter and I thought we'd give it a try. Our first attempt failed, but did something really interesting. The article mentioned this might happen if the water was allowed to evaporate too quickly. It grew this amazing structure that looks almost like white broccoli.

Made this for Carter for Christmas on the laser cutter. Each panel is one of the elemental symbols from Avatar, and there is a remote-controlled LED puck inside of it.

Our science collection cabinet was getting a bit crowded and unorganized, so I came up with some display stands that I could cut with the laser. I even incorporated labels onto some of them, which makes it a lot nicer (when you know what you are looking at). I probably could still use to make some item-specific one-off stands, for some of the bigger items. But for now it looks much better.

This one is sort of an inside joke at work. At one point someone made a joke about putting it on a t-shirt, and I threatened to do it for real. Then suddenly I've been stuck working from home for months and decided, "why the hell not?", and actual made some real shirts. Once it's safe to go back into the office I plan to hand them out to everybody in the know.

Carter and I try new root beers every chance we get - especially on our road trips, when we might get a chance to try one from a local small 'brewery'. We've been saving the bottlecaps every time we try a new one (and the bottlecap isn't blank), and have just been storing them in a jar. I finally got around to building a display board for all of them. I made sure to build it oversized, so it has room for our collection to continue to grow.

I made a couple more patches on the embroidery machine - the one on the left is Mario in the Megaman suit (found the image online), and the one on the right is a motto I can really appreciate - "built not bought".

Carter and I have continued to try lots of different types of root beer from all over the country. The last time I posted, we had tried about 20 varieties. Now, we're up to nearly 80! I've had to build more shelves. :)

Those who follow this blog know that I love patches - my daily-carry backpack is covered with dozens of them. Because of that, I've always been interested in machine embroidery - as I'd love to have some personal, custom patches to put on my stuff. Make Magazine recently reviewed an entry-level hobbyist embroidery machine and that was basically all it took to convince me to give this a shot. I'm really just getting started and learning, but I've already made the Millennium Falcon patch you see in the bottom right photo. Pretty cool!