From traditional crafts to modern crafts, we’re covering news and interesting projects to educate you and keep you inspired. Design trends and pop culture related projects are here to inspire.
All knitters know how painstaking a task winding yarn is on your poor wrists. There’s also a lot dexterity you need to keep the yarn from tangling into a big mess. (This unfortunate mess has happened to me many times.) Craftster.org’s multitude of project forums saves the day with a DIY Lego Yarn Winder. Powered by two motors and an RCX unit, this automatic yarn winder is just the excuse we need to go out and buy a new box of Legos. Thanks Leah! Link
Right now, you can use an iPod nano to boot in to Linux – and more is on the way… Students at Eastside Preparatory School in Kirkland, Wash., are getting class materials in a new way this year: on a tiny flash-memory drive that plugs into a computer’s USB port. Small enough to wear on a necklace, this “digital backpack” can hold textbooks, novels, plays, study aids, the dictionary, graphing-calculator software — almost anything, really. [via] Link.
Mikey writes “The project describes how the average person can rip out a pocket from a pair of jeans and replace it with a cotton like fabric which contains enough conductive material to block most RFID tag frequencies. Watch the video.” Link.
We’ve posted about Etsy before, but I wanted to throw another link their way as the site has changed a little since I last visited (lots of new ways to use the site). Etsy is a marketplace for handmade goods, from the creators of GetCrafty. Kinda eBay like, but prices are fixed (no auctions) and goods must be handmade. Insanely cool ways of browsing/finding the items up for sale, like shopping by color or time. Thanks Stewart!
Robots have taken over! Knitted robots, that is. Jess Hutchison takes her love of knitting into realms of technology with these cute, cuddy and we think “friendly” robots. Perfect for pinics or just chillin’ on the sofa. Contact Jess if you want to purchase one or make one yourself. Link
Mike writes “I thought you’d like to learn about the new phenomenon of “camera tossing” started by Ryan Gallagher on Flickr. This is tossing cheap digital cameras into the air with shutter open to generate cool streaky time exposures of city lights at night. Here’s my moblog post about it with links. Someone has even tossed their Canon 10D! Link. The pictures are really neat looking.
Here’s a 3D version of one of the pixel ducks from Duck Hunt someone made – The Maker designed in 3D Studio Max and then contructed it out of a ton of wood blocks: Blocks used in 3D model: 1785, Blocks used in build: 1240, Approximate Weight: 17-20 ilbs, Length: 24″, Width: 17.25″, Height: 21″ Approximate Number of Hours to Create: 35-40. [via] Link.
