Making With Friends

Make! Make! Hooray!
Leo and his needle felted beard man!
When we are really lucky, we manage to get ourselves up to the best Maker Faire event of all, Maker Faire, Bay Area, otherwise we love hosting Bird House mini faires, here at home, any month of the year! We throw open the doors, bring out our works in progress and invite friends to bring and share their own projects. Between the potluck, and all of the creative energy, it never fails to be a productive and inspiring day.

We love requests for activities, questions, ideas. This time, Izzy wanted to bring out her wool felting... a craft she recently discovered and already excels at. We love wool... wet felting, needle felting! It was our very first exhibit and activity we ever shared at a Maker Faire, and we still love sharing our supplies and enthusiasm. We learned, in Wisconsin, how much fun friends and wool can be.

Simon getting in the needle felting zone... it's quite meditative.

Maria made a fat cat. We thought it was a cat's head, with a tail coming off the back, but she explained that the cat's body was so round and full, it looked as though it was only ball. I need to get a picture of the funny little guy!

With some old train rails, magnets, and metal balls, Alex set up a demonstration that all of us tested, experimented and played with, and thoroughly enjoyed. It's a Gauss rifle... and with the transference of energy from one marble, on the left, making contact with the magnets, the last marble on the right is projected forward, quickly. Simple. Smart.

Ido and Leslie, Simon, Bex, and Spencer arrived, with lots of great potluck food, and the makings for a brand new Junkcade project. Junk + Arcade: Ido's brilliant convergence of assorted household articles assembled and combined with video games, written in Scratch, to make an arcade game! It's ingenious, and loads of fun, to build and to play!

(Look for Junkcade, and many more awesome exhibits at the North County Mini Maker Faire, June 17-18.)

Geoff and William were recruited into the Junkcade build, and happily took to it... some wood working, wiring, assembling, William got a soldering lesson, and Geoff wrote code.



Love those spatula controllers! I think everyone is winning.

Since Scratch is open source, and everyone is encouraged to share, there are a lot of fun games to choose from, but possibly the coolest thing is that anyone using Scratch could develop their own games. Maybe BOoM Nerds will write a game specifically related to the Junkcade theme and aesthetic.

Speaking of everyone winning... Leslie discovered the Zen of needle felting. Trust me, the satisfaction and creativity that flows in needle felting wool is wonderful, compelling, good.

Bex agrees! Making, with friends, is the best excuse for opening your doors, and inviting everyone in.


It's fun to look back at some other Making with Friends events...

April 2012: Making the Most of Our Lemons!

December 2014: Think, Tinker, Play, Make, Program!

June 2015: Backyard Mini-Make

June 2016: Make Light: Start Fires