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Here’s the completed three-inch badge for the Coworkout Wireless Router Cozy.

The third Coworkout yesterday was awesome; we were at the Brandywine River Museum, and got to visit N.C. Wyeth’s AMAZING studio, filled with lots of Two-Fisted Teddy Roosevelt Man Stuff (there’s a rack by the door filled with matchlocks and an actual TOMMY GUN, and an enormous chest filled with the pirate costumes used in the Treasure Island paintings):

You can read more about our visit on the Coworkout site.

I’ve always wanted to have actually-embroidered QRCodes on my p8tches, but commercial embroiderers laugh me off the phone once they learn that each unit has a UNIQUE code. The overhead involved in setting up a design for embroidery is not trivial, and it takes time to stitch each design (commercial embroiderers use fifty-head machines, making fifty of the same thing at once.)

Kate and I went to the Lancaster Quilt Show today, and I stumbled on the booth that sells home embroidery machines (the ones you usually use to make Tigger baby blankets, or whatever.) They also have the digitizing software, which I was very interested to see.

The fellow at the Brubaker’s Sewing booth was REALLY awesome and helpful — he showed me how the digitizing software works It’s kind of a hybrid of Illustrator, PaintShop Pro, and, um… embroidery; there are lots of special commands, like "rotate area fill stitch direction" that don’t have an analogue in other software that I’ve seen.

He also showed me the machines, which as you might expect, are essentially big robotic printers.

The software imported the QRCode with one click: I used the sample LAHBG p8tch QRcode mentioned on the homepage of www.p8tch.com (the file itself is here.)

Then, he exported it as a .dst file, put it on a thumb drive, and fed it to the machine. The machine dutifully stitched away, until, 19 minutes later, the finished QRcode had been stitched into the muslin.

It was really cool. Now I TOTALLY understand why an embroiderer can’t possibly do a run of 100 p8tches, each with a unique QRCode, and charge me less than an arm and a leg.

The home version of the digitizing software retails for $2,500.00(!), and the full commercial version is sold for about $15,000.00(!!!)

Riding home from Philly Emerging Tech yesterday (where I got to hear the CTO of the Obama campaign talk about their system, and where nerd hero Andy Hunt mentioned Nerd Merit Badges in his keynote, yay!), my sidecar rig started stumbling on acceleration. Dirty carbs? Water in the float bowls? Angry ghosts following me from Fort Mifflin? All three?

The problem got worse and worse, but it turned into the BEST BREAKDOWN EVER, as I was able to coast, spluttering and backfiring, with just enough momentum to roll down the service ramp into the underground volcano lair of Joe Litchko, master motorcycle mechanic and court magician at Main Line BMW. Joe was sitting up on his concrete dais, among his parts manuals, and he directed a friendly, bearded gaze at me as my bike died below his throne. Seriously, it’s like managing to collapse in the doorway of Hephaestus’ forge.

I’ve blogged about Joe before; last year, he was prepping an AWESOME Mercedes diesel for a round-the-world Great Race. Compare the picture of that car from last year with the beautiful, glossy, barn-burner below!

While I was waiting for Kate to come pick me up (thanks, Kate!) Joe showed me another project he had finished: a 1958 BMW Isetta, which is a single-piston microcar with one door that opens in the FRONT. The steering wheel is on a universal joint, so it swings out of the way:

Joe put the 300cc Isetta together from 22 boxes of parts, each box containing multiple ziploc baggies, each bag containing a dented, rusty Isetta Molecule. Joe stripped all the parts, cleaned them, painted or powdercoated them, and assembled the whole car by squinting at parts microfiches. The car looks brand-spanking new. It’s super, SUPER awesome.

You can see some more pictures I took of the Isetta on Flickr. (have a look at the cloaca on the back.) What an awesome car! And what a lucky breakdown!

Harold Ross sent this to me, and I couldn’t possibly agree more:

I finished my Lego Minifig motorcycle helmet visor skin, and I think it looks pretty great, even if I do say so myself!

It’s made of perforated vinyl, printed by Dave at Barking Dog Signs. If you’d like to see some more pictures, check out the photoset on Flickr.

On the incredibly balmy Sunday last weekend, Kate, Barb, Lydia and I drove down to Longwood Gardens. Lydia wanted to visit the topiary garden (which is where I really, really want to show Edward Scissorhands at the Guerilla Drive-In.) I took a picture using the Pano panorama-maker app for the iPhone. There’s a bigger version on Flickr:

On the way in, they told us that there would be a tour UNDERNEATH THE OPEN-AIR THEATER. If you’ve been to Longwood, that’s the theater where they put on Gilbert and Sullivan productions in the summers, and then during intermission and after the show, they clear the set and have a big illuminated fountain display. Here’s a picture from Longwood’s site:

Like many folks living in the area, I’ve been to Longwood many times since I was a kid; I remember seeing the Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado there, and I knew that the DuPonts had brought every A-list act down to perform at the theater: John Philip Sousa and Martha Graham are two that I remember. I wonder how Martha Graham’s company dealt with the slippery tiles that covered the stage at that time; since the stage is also a fountain display, I’d imagine that it’s like dancing on the bottom of a great big bathtub.

That’s a picture of the stage/fountain floor at left, which can be covered up with pie-shaped metal wedges when the play is going on. There are lots and lots and lots of brass nozzles, and lots of little glass windows with spotlights set behind them. Looking into the little windows, you imagine a two-foot light well back there; something with a hidden hinge that opens to reveal a little metal box.

And I had expected that, under the fountains, under the stage where Sousa Sous-ed and Graham dance, that there would be some pump rooms to power the fountains. And some drains, maybe. Maybe if the DuPonts were really going all out, they’d make the crawlways, like, five feet tall, so you could almost stand up in there.

Boy, was I completely wrong. You know what’s actually under there? PALATIAL UNDERGROUND DRESSING ROOMS. Palatial dressing rooms with SKYLIGHTS. Which, during intermissions, must have looked like SECRET UNDERGROUND DISCO CARWASHES, with the fountain water sluicing down over the windows, and the colored spotlights beaming away up through them. Here’s the men’s dressing room, directly under picture at the left:

The doors in the wings lead to staircases with what appear to be real mahogany bannisters, letting down on an underground theater rabbit-warren. A swanky one; the kind that you imagine Congress repairing to in the fifties, with real wood paneled doors and flags on gilt flagpoles all around.

I’d like to take a moment to thank the DuPonts. How many times in your life have you seen an interesting little cubbyhole door, and imagined what might be behind it, only to find that it’s just where the vacuum cleaner is kept? I feel like I opened the door under the sink, and instead of finding a rusty garbage disposal, found a combination Busby Berkeley musical and Motorcycle Sphere of Death going on under there. All with genuine mahogany trim. Hurrah!

If you’re interested, you can check Longwood’s site to find when the next tour is. There’s also a conservatory tunnels tour coming up. Though I’ve heard that sort of thing can be unsettling.

Brandywine Valley Association is an awesome local organization dedicated to preserving the sixty-mile Brandywine Creek. They have three hundred acres locally, which is full of hiking trails, awesome paths, and interesting things in the woods. The Guerilla Drive-In showed both Local Hero and Lair of the White Worm there.

Last Saturday, the BVA held their second “Polar Plunge”, which is a brisk, refreshing dip in the Brandywine, in February. Tikaro Interactive was a corporate sponsor, and I brought out the sidecar-mounted tattoo rig. We measured the water temperature at 33 degrees, so I put together a triathelete-style stencil reading “BVA 33”. Here’s the rig ready to go before the swimmers arrived:

The schedule of events makes perfect sense: registration, then awards for best costumes and most money raised, and THEN the swim as the very last thing on the schedule. 11:30:00 — go swimming. 11:30:01: OH GAWD GO HOME GO HOME!!! Here’s the awards ceremony, clustered around the bonfire. I think I heard that there were about 500 folks present.

I must have given maybe 250 tattoos, which made me very glad that I used a non-adhesive stencil. Just hold the stencil on, spray on a lot of ink, and done. The rule with the tattoos was that wherever you get it, you have to go in at LEAST that far. I did one bottom-of-the-foot tattoo, a couple of dozen leg tattoos, what seemed like a hundred tummy tattoos, a bunch of chest, shoulderblade, and bicep tattoos, five neck tattoos, and THREE forehead tattoos.

The neck tattoos were my favorite, as they were the most “dystopian futuristic convict asteroid miner.”

However, the best tattoo of all, as far as I’m concerned, was this fellow, who got it on the very tippity-top of his head. As my uncle Laird said, “Let’s give this fellow a big hand!”

You can learn more about the Brandywine Valley Assocation on their website at www.brandywinewatershed.org. If you’re in the area, I really recommend you check them out. It’s a great organization, doing important work (for instance, lots of city kids get bussed in to learn how to do leaf and insect censuses — remember that thing where you go over a patch of forest floor inch-by-inch?)

Oh, and the swim was a lot of fun. I did go in, waded across the Brandywine, touched the other side, and dunked myself all the way on the way back. It was surprisingly not all that bad — forcing yourself to get into a cold-water shower would be much harder. And then I felt comedically, almost megalomaniacally AWESOME the rest of the morning. Hmm, maybe there’s something to the whole “plunge yourself in an icy river” hermit regimen!”

I blogged recently about taking my friend Kenn Munk‘s whimsical “Barcode Griffins” design, and turning it into something that looks like it would be on the cover of the condom packets sold in the men’s room of a Lederhosen factory. I mean, it was a pretty powerful effect, and not ineffective… but not really something, you know, that I was necessarily going for.

While browsing Kenn’s store, I suddenly realized that the barcode griffins were not a one-off, but just one permutation of a WHOLE ENTIRE FONT SYSTEM for making little tiny heraldic designs. The font is called Wappenbee, and you can check it out on MyFonts. Vowels make the mythical shield-holding beasts (upper- and lower-case for right- and left-facing), consonants for the shields, and numbers for the shield crests. It is an AWESOME font.

Lydia and I played around with it, and Lydia picked out Pegasi (“O o”), a hamster (“h”), and the bone (9). Here’s “Oh9o” in Wappanbee font, which Lydia was very happy with:

I decided to stitch it up as another needlepoint two-inch-tall “twinchy”, and at first, as you can see on TwitPic, it started out very nice.

But then I decided that the hamster looked an awful lot like Tikaro (Tikaro himself; the red stuffed pig that my aunt Sylvia made for me when I was a baby), and I decided to stitch in the hamster in red. And then I thought I’d outline the design in the same red, to separate it from the background:

It turns out that heraldic needlepoint is pretty strong stuff. And heraldic needlepoint when combined with shiny, flame-red pearl cotton? Pretty much looks like a Death Metal Beer Stein.

Once again; I’m not really saying it looks BAD; I’m pretty sure that you could cut this canvas out, attach it to one of those blue denim three-ring notebooks from junior high, and make the METALLEST TRAPPER-KEEPER EVER out of it. There are worse things than that.

But It’s not what I was shooting for. Kenn, I’m sorry; I am cooking with powerful, powerful ingredients here, and I keep making strong, strong dishes. Maybe the third try will be the charm.

Meanwhile, Lydia is perfectly content with it. Maybe I will buy her a little denim jacket and sew this onto the back?