Maker Faire 2011

Maker Fair has been on my list for years. This year it happened to fall the weekend after my birthday so we made the trek to San Mateo this weekend. Happy Birthday to me! 

Maker Faire is incredible. There was a million people with kids and there was tons of stuff to see. Music, crafts, tons and tons of booths on DIY home, garden, food, electronics, crafts, music, gadgets, machines and the latest technology tools, splattered with odds and ends of steam punk stuff and just wild inventions. It's like nerd paradise.

 Colossus, this machine is huge and beneath the giant granite rocks is ropes that kids and adults pull to make the entire contraption spins.

A machine that draws incredibly detailed images.

Much to our delight, variations of bikes were everywhere.

This crazy fountain made of low brass instruments was sitting in a small canoe.

solar powered carousel

fantastic bike/scooters, this was in a test ride area, which was packed with kids.

more bike contraptions

This one had the pedals as the handlebars.

This one you had to bounce to keep moving.

my favorites were these half skateboard half bike variations. This little dude was racing full speed.

And then you have these guys. Wooden frames, later we saw these being ridden all over.

fantastic monster dolls.

Lunch time, Z. was chomping on a garlic fry.

nom, nom, nom. What a beautiful day!

puppets!!

bubbles!

Whiskey Drome

more pedal power

The wheels are seriously huge.

Lancer! AKA Witch mobile

detail of the Witch mobile

making music in a small room

The window instructs you to point to any instrument/object on the table and they will make music with it.

another personal fave. The typewriter museum,

Z. and I had a total blast and we will definitely plan on attending next year. You are totally invited.

Recent events and Maker Faire!

Ugh. So at this point I feel extremely behind in posting, so much has been happening around here.
I do still need to share images for the the Underground Gardens, and that will come soon, I promise. Get comfortable as I fill you in.

Recently Z. and I attended a beautiful wedding for our dear Modesto friends, Tina and Brad. Their wedding was in the loveliest of gardens, and as usual I was having too good a time to document much besides these sweet finches that kept fluttering around. B and T. requested an illustration from me so I spent some good time rendering their bikes with a sweet quote about marriage from old time French actress Simone Signoret.

I've been working ridiculously long hours and am surprised and proud that I managed to squeeze in some new work. I came across a pile of wooden triangles in one of the storage units at work and rescued them from  a trip to the dump.

Z. has been playing around with these glow sticks he found at the 99 cent store.













Lucky for us we just happened to come across these fantastic LED lights designed specifically for bikes at the Maker Faire this weekend.
See the next post for more on Maker Faire.

Ketchin'- up

This past month has been filled with some nice adventuring. Easter Sunday, Zach and I excused ourselves from the usual obligations and spent the day at the Fresno Chaffee Zoo. The zoo is about 1 mile from the house so we walked. I wish I would have taken a picture of Roeding Park because it was madness. It was the most crowded and insanely colorful day at the park I have ever seen. There were families with tents, badminton, barbecues, tables and tables of food, streamers, confetti, balloons, blankets, lawn chairs, bikes, dogs, lots of colorful easter baskets and eggs. Lucky for us none of that was in the zoo.

 Taking photo's in the zoo can be sad, so we looked with the intention of drawing and snapped just these few.

It was a great afternoon, we spent a lot of time watching the anteaters, the giraffes, the alligator and the fresh water spotted manta rays. oh and the two baby orangutans, we even caught a glimpse of the wolves relaxing and jogging around their hill.

In other news. I'm currently working with this amazing collection of Bakufu Ohno prints from the Fresno Art Museum's permanent collection. They were gifted by the Ikebana Society and apparently are part of a 72 woodcut series in which Bakufu went down in a submarine and saw these fish in person. So my job has been to correct the misnumbering, which involved actually looking for images of the real fish to confirm that the Japanese names matched what was supposed to be in our collection (snoozer) but I had a hard time finding these unnamed guys, and discovered that they are pinecone fish or pineapple fish. Incredible little guys with grumpy faces. I love them, they remind me of  serious business men of the sea!