Vicarious Thoughts » Craft

Daily Links for 9th April 2010

Strudel — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 11:50:39 +0000

Craft

Daisy Yellow has a link to instructions on how to do paper weaving with kids (via CraftyCrow). I remember doing this when I was a kid and it was more basic than these instructions. Then again with the plethora of coloured/textured/printed papers and other materials available as a result of the rise of scrapbooking I guess it’s not quite as surprising that the instructions are more involved and you have to admit the results speak for themselves. I’m keen to see what effects we can come up with.

This is a lovely idea to make dinnertimes a little more special. This short blogpost at The Wonder Years talks about how they created candleholders and that each child has their own candle at dinnertime that they get to blow out at the end of the meal.

Miscellaneous

I really enjoyed reading that an anthropologist in South Africa used Google Earth to map known caves and found fossils and then using the satellite maps found more possible cave locations and as a result uncovered 500 more caves to investigate from which he has so far found two partial australopithecus sediba skeletons. I bet they’re glad they went to the initial effort of entering in all their existing sites! (more info on the skeleton find at the BBC)

Zen Family Habits has a post entitled Is Today the day You Start Over? and everytime I’ve flicked to it it’s given me the warm fuzzies (awww!) so felt it needed to be shared.

Okay that’s all I have to share for this post. :)

Daily Links for 24th March 2010

Strudel — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 11:26:56 +0000

This’ll be a quick one as I need to hit the hay.

I attempted the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge at ProBlogger last year but never got further than Day 3. However, from all reports it’s a useful exercise that results in, well, results. I’m keen to complete it at some point and this guest post on ProBlogger has some useful tips for maximising the potential of some of the day’s tasks.

Keeping on the topic of blogging, Daily Blog Tips has an article on 10 Things Your Blog Doesn’t Need. From the obvious choices of animated gifs and auto-starting music, to the thought-provoking comment verification, there’s definitely a couple of entries I need to have a look into.

I love the crispness and simplicity of the designs on these dyed eggs (via The Crafty Crow), the instructions are nice and detailed and I can see me cheating and trying to use stickers instead since we don’t have a wide range of decorative punches in the house.

Daily Links for 23rd March 2010

Strudel — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 10:44:29 +0000

Crafty Stuff

These bunny finger puppets (via Craftzine.com) are cute and the instructions are clear and make it look like quite a simple project, even going to suggest a set of them can be knocked out in an evening. The materials look like they shouldn’t be hard to find at our closest Spotlight – though I suspect I’ll be buying acrylic rather than wool or wool-blend felt there.

Here’s a pattern for a knitted cowl scarf perfect for the coming winter months (via Craftzine.com). It’s a knock off of a $US750 Burberry scarf which seems a horrendous amount to pay for nearly any piece of clothing, let alone a scarf.

Homeschool Stuff

This site also falls into my 101 in 1001 category as one of my goals is to have a better idea as to where all the countries of the world are. PurposeGames (via The Homeschooler’s Notebook) has timed map quizzes which I’m using to drill myself on country locations but also so much more.

Misc Stuff

Three articles drew my attention today about writing and they came from three different perspectives. The first, is entitled the Rare Handwritten Note (when was the last time you sat down and wrote a letter to someone?), the second is from about How to Blog When You’re Not a Writer, and the final article is in a similar vein but from a scrapbooking perspective, But I’m Not a Writer.

If you’re looking for an alternative to Google Analytics for whatever reason, I suggest you have a look at GoingUp! (via SmashingApps) It’s a free site and you can utilise it to do most of what Analytics offers but also stuff it steers away from, for example, Google Pagerank and keyword ranking for alternative search engines.

This is getting a little eclectic but I wanted to make note of three more posts.

This one from CSS Tricks talks about changing the layout of web forms so that the information the user considers to be most important (eg the message containing the information they want to relay to you) at the top and the boring, standard inclusions at the bottom of the form. This helps apparently, to thwart user fatigue when filling out forms and makes a lot of sense to me.

This post is entitled The Missing Step in Planning and gives us a great rundown on what you should be thinking about and putting on paper before getting to the dreaded business plan. This list certainly would have helped me with my initial planning for my last venture and though I doubt the author will like my saying this, if all you get done is that list then you’re better off than procrastinating doing a business plan completely.

I’m a big fan of the semi-cartoon-y landscape-y :) website design that is often accompanied by flash. Ajaxian highlights a new jquery plugin called Spritely which acts as an alternative to using flash in these kind of designs and I have to say my fingers are itching to have a play with it.

Daily Links for 22nd March 2010

Strudel — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 10:51:36 +0000

Well, this is actually favourite links from my rss reader for the last two days :)

Homeschool Stuff

Sam likes to jump around while counting so the idea of making a lifesize number line to practise addition and subtraction is sure to appeal to her.

I’m not a big fan of Easter as it seems a bit incongruous celebrating it in autumn, but at the same time it feels wrong to completely deny our daughter the chance to enjoy the holiday. So, activities like growing grass in eggshells (via craftycrow) seems like an interesting way to acknowledge the holiday of easter.

I’m not sure how close Sam is to being ready for this easter themed cvc reading activity, but it’s one idea for the pile of plastic eggs I picked up for a couple of dollars last year.

These Salt Crystal Trees look like a lot of fun to watch grow and I’m guessing with a bit of experimenting you could get a brilliant effect.

Misc

Trying to reduce our grocery bill by baking more is all well and good – but finding things to bake that are savoury isn’t easy. Luckily, Lifehacker highlighted this site which has a number of savoury recipes to try.

I came across this origami site a while ago but it got lost in my bookmarks, so Lifehacker again is to thank for this link. It’s a brilliant site to remind yourself how to fold the traditional origami designs and has a few I haven’t come across before as well.

Making a Geoboard

Strudel — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 12:17:01 +0000

What is a Geoboard?
Well, to paraphrase the Wikipedia entry, A Geoboard is a tool often used to explore basic concepts in geometry such as perimeter, area or the characteristics of triangles and other shapes. It’s generally a board with nails partly driven in, and students are encouraged to place rubber bands around the nails to model various geometric concepts or to solve other mathematical puzzles.
Bit of trivia from the same entry: Geoboards were invented and popularised by Egyptian mathematician Caleb Gattegno in the 1950s.

Different Types of Geoboards

Basic Square Grid (the most common for squares/rectangles/oblongs, triangles, octagons, kites, rhombus etc)

Isometric (for hexagons, triangles, 3 dimensional representations)

Circular (for representing the parts of the circle: segments, chord, diameter etc)

Virtual Geoboards (program or website where you can click and drag “rubber bands” around without the worry of getting stung by one)

Paper Geoboards (graph paper with just the dot grid, or a rubber stamp of just the dot grid – generally just the Basic Square Grid but Isometric can be found)

Materials
The end result will be a 9×9 nail board that’s pretty utilitarian and it didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it would.

I’ve mentioned brand names and the stores I purchased them from in the hope this helps someone in New Zealand.

1x KaiserWood Standard Square Plaque ($2.99 from Spotlight)

81x Zenith Bullet Head Diamond Point Nails with Plain Shanks 1.2x25mm ($3.87 for a packet of 375 from Bunnings) If you don’t like how tall the nails I used turned out, don’t hesitate to choose a shorter nail.

1x sheet of graph paper (14K8 I had on hand – it’s 2mm Graph Paper with stronger lines every 1cm)

Assorted Coloured Rubberbands ($2 from our local Itzadeal). Warehouse Stationery didn’t have coloured ones. I suspect many dollar stores will have something similar.

How to make this Geoboard

1. Taking the sheet of graph paper, fold it along two perpendicular sides along one the strong lines so you end up with a square folded corner. Then take the square corner made, place it over one of the front surface corners of the wooden plaque and tape it in place. The end result is the top surface of the plaque is covered in graph paper so that the strong lines of the graph paper line up with all the edges and the graph paper doesn’t move around (though if it’s not taut it isn’t a problem).

3. Remove the tape holding down the graph paper and ease it up the nails and then rip it off. There’ll be a few fragments of graph paper left.

4. Voilà – your Geoboard is complete! Get out the rubberbands and have at it :)

There are a ton of activities, ideas and lesson plans available on the web so I won’t be elaborating on how to fully utilise your new Geoboard.

I have a circular plaque ready for making a Circular Geoboard which should be an interesting adventure. And for an extra challenge I could be convinced to make an Isometric Geoboard.

Thanks to Mama Jenn via The Crafty Crow for the inspiration to make my own version. :)
And if neither my version, or Mama Jenn‘s, suits your needs – there are plenty of tutorials on making Geoboards out there. Not to mention pre-made plastic Geoboards generally seem quite inexpensive.

Trying something different

Strudel — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 10:42:03 +0000

I’ve been trying to do this kind of post “for quite some time now” (sorry, The Matrix is playing in the next room) and try and move away from my content-thin blogposts of late (and early).

So without further ado, I bring you my rss feed picks for today!

Craft

These Goodie Bags look quite simple to make (which is always an important factor for me. I can see they could have other purposes – she says looking at a number of plastic bags containing home education resources. (link via WhipUp.net)

There are plenty of tote patterns available if you go hunting around the innumerable craft blogs. I particularly like this one from Film in the Fridge because the directions are particularly clear, it looks easy to construct but at the same time has a nice pocket and a removable solid base. (link via WhipUp.net)

Home Education

The theme for next week’s Unplugged Project is Happy. I hope we can organise a project to fit with this theme. Perhaps something that induces happiness like blowing bubbles, or an activity involving emotions.

I’m including this link to this nicely laid out Lapbook on Racoons from Classical Homeschooling while Hawaiian Dreaming in this post to remind me that Lapbooking (or our own twist on it) might be a good way of combining and storing the work we’re doing each unit)

Misc

This weekend we’re definitely going to try making Mozarella, and possibly Ricotta. I’m going to admit to being quite plebian and say I don’t remember ever using Ricotta so this should be interesting. This recipe from Living Green is the one a couple of people I know have used and will probably be slightly more helpful being a New Zealand based tutorial.

After reading this post from WebWorkerDaily, I’m going to remove some of the things I receive via email and receive them via rss instead.

This post at Harvard Business is well worth reading. The three main points are: Choose three important tasks to complete each day, Turn off your email client, and Set up a weekly 20-minute meeting with yourself. I’m already doing the last one (though more like 3 hours), and can testify that it helps define the week and gives a time to reflect on the past week, how you did, and what to concentrate on in the coming week. I’m finding it also helps me to realise I’ve only got a certain amount of time til I will be sitting down and doing this reflection so there better be something decent done to reflect upon.
Limiting the distractions while getting work done and Choosing only 3 taks is something I need work on. I’ve been trialing using post-it notes to score what I need to do next – creating a small stack of 5 or 6 small tasks and then having the satisfaction of unveiling the next task and chucking the just-finished post-it. (via unclutterer)

My 101 in 1001 list has an entry that I’d like to give podcasting a whirl, so this post from Perfomancing was a useful read. I’m spending quite a bit of time doing stuff while listening to various podcasts especially while getting the dreaded housework done, and have been doing some recording of my voice whilst I verbally jot down some ideas, but I’m not sure about listening live as I don’t get to spend a great deal of time uninterrupted at my desk these days.

And lastly, I just had to link to this post from BoingBoing called Big Tent Atheism as it resonated with the antics of some people I come into contact with regularly. Certainly the sentiment can be applied to more than just political parties and atheists. I’m sure there are many people who can identify this behaviour in all sectors of society.

Lifehack had an interesting post today about Assuming Positive Intent. This is something I really struggle with, and combine my cynicism with my sarcasm and I can appear to be quite a negative person. Ironically, I would estimate I spend just as much time being cynical as I do amused at the vagaries of life and I laugh, at the very least, once a day.

Well, this leaves my rss finds for the day down to 4 programming posts which I need to read and digest more, and 1 post that really needs a post of it’s own if I get round to it this week. Yay! This has also taken at least 2 hours (the counter may be out of whack due to a browser restart).

I’m going to have to do some research into how legal it is to include photos from the blogposts I’ve mentioned as this is just a mass of text! I also need to consider breaking this up into several posts based on categories. I know very few visit this blog but I am interested in, if this becomes a regular thing for me, how to present it. One worry I have is that presenting each blogpost I come across as it’s own blogpost on my blog smacks of big blog wannabe.

Research on Journalling

Strudel — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 12:07:19 +0000

I wanted to do make my Mum a Memory Book for Christmas so I scoured the net for inspiration on how to start and found:
Make a Memory Book for Mum

But in the end, I didn’t want to take the chance of making her a book that she wouldn’t enjoy so I just made her a blank book, using the instructions found here:
DIY Planner – Bookmaking
I modified the spine so it is covered and doesn’t require decoration.

I also spent some time looking for DIY Gifts and came across these two sites, here and here.

So then I got sidetracked and did some research to get into journalling and found:

10 Ways to Create Content for your Weblog
Joy of Journal Writing
Found this image here