What I Did On My Summer Vacation.

While we spent half the summer here in Los Angeles - doing those L.A. summer things (beach, camp, beach, swimming lessons, beach), we spent the other half at the cottage up in British Columbia.

Our favourite activity is always beachcombing - and the beaches of "our island" are ripe for this sort of thing. As we continued to collect rocks, driftwood and shells we pondered what we would do with it all. We started with jewellery. And windchimes. Then settled on mobiles.



The challenge of balance and movement added to the activity. And I am quite pleased with how they turned out.



The process wasn't complicated. We drilled holes in the wood, and shells at the positions we wanted things to hang. (The big kid loved this.) We then tied hemp twine onto the wood, hung the piece from a hook, and worked attaching shells to obtain the desired weight distribution for the mobile to work. We needed some extra weight on one side so added a rock, wrapping it in twine to attach. Balance and Motion. (Ahh! Science!)



We liked it so much, we made another to bring back to Cali - a reminder of wonderful summer days gone by, but not forgotten!

Electric Car - They Might Be Giants

Hysterical and adorable all at the same time!

They also have a wiki - I like these people.

University of Rhode Island Pattern Library

The University of Rhode Island is starting today a one week free trial of access to its pattern archive database. Click on Login in the top nav, use the username guest and the password pattern, and click on search to have a look around. It's a lot of fun.

Via Fashion Incubator

Mini Patchwork

No Two Green Chickens Shop update this weekend. Instead I got distracted by and spent my free time making this, inspired by this only mine is filled with dried lavender. It's 4"x 4".

Around Los Angeles

One of my all-time favorite shops, Eden's Green Closet, is closing. They are having a huge sale so if you are in Venice, California, any time soon go stock up on kid's clothes and say good bye.

I'm off to the Los Angeles premiere of Handmade Nation this Saturday and I have an extra ticket for the noon showing if anyone is interested...

Shed

Finding Michael Pollan's writing house (swoon) via Craft Lovely lead to a wander around Flickr and the discovery of the Writers' Rooms series at The Guardian.



1. Virgina Woolf's garden office, 2. Shed Delivery, 3. Old White Shed, 4. Abandoned in the Fog, 5. Along I-90, 6. Shed, 7. The Great Outdoors, 8. Hove beach huts, 9. Abandoned Cabin - White Mountains Arizona

Created with fd's Flickr Toys

Chickens on the Loose

This week I'm guest curating over at True Up and Tracy is talking chickens over at Sew Green.