In case you were wondering why I was up until 3am last night, the reason is this: Felted Sonic Screwdriver, modeled after the 10th Doctor's (David Tennant's) own. It does not go beep. It was not made from a linear piece of metal; It was, in fact, made from a big ball of fuzzy-wuzzy, felty-welty, stuff.  More photos under the jump. EDIT: It's now up on for auction.

I am partial to this particular make and model of shoe, but since we do not provide free advertising here at The Steampunk Workshop, let's just call them "Cayce Pollards." But I have a problem, I always wear out the heel long before the rest of the shoe. Here's a quick fix with some dumpstered leather and contact cement.

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I'm rather endeared to the Bullova Accutron watch, which keeps time via a tuning fork mechanism (!) that drives the gear train. The watch also uses a one-transistor oscillator circuit, which qualifies it as the first 'electric watch'. As a special edition, Bullova released the 'SpaceView', with a clear face to see the mechanism. Incredibly lovely, don't you think?

The watch is far out of my price range (They go up on Ebay for $200-$300 in working order) and this is one time I'm questioning my instinctual response of 'too expensive? I'll just get a broken one and fix it!'.

I've done quite a few different types of e-textiles over the last couple years, but never done cross stitch. Of course, I can't make a project without a geek reference or a good pun (best case:both!) and the Ohm Sweet Ohm cross stitch was born.  

I've never done cross stitch before, but I decided I could teach myself. It's surprisingly satisfying- and not totally unlike drawing up circuit boards. In this 'board', the silver/grey colored thread is OhmSpun conductive thread, the batteries are underneath the battery symbol (lower left corner), ground plane goes off to the right (through the ground symbol) and up the right side. Both the 'Ohm' symbols are conductive thread. The positive follows up the red thread to the left. I'm selling the kits in my Etsy store.

Another photo and video after the jump.

This is wonderful and I love it very hard indeed! Via Sepiachord who can also be found on twitter.

Some time ago I rescued a Craftsman air compressor from a dumpster. It was one of the cheap oil-less compressor type and the silicone rubber seal around the air outlet tube was blown out. I managed to repair the connection several times but my fixes would never last.

I have been waiting to get my CNC machine running so I could make a new head that would use a threaded fitting instead of the original, less than durable slide in gasket, and that's what I did today.

In a whirlwind of music and airfaire I found myself in Seattle very suddenly this last week; riding tandem bikes through the rain and busking. Somewhere in there - a few places in there- I encountered the Petrojvic Blasting Co.; an L.A. based jazzy/balkan/gypsy group. Accordians, horns, lyrics of shark gutting- there's really nothing I don't love. I can't stop listening to 'Princess Andy' and dancing  myself excitedly around the room. It was fantastic to see them live, but until then, I highly recomend their first album, 'A History of Public Relations Dilemmae'. 

Link to their album on iTunes. 

Here are a set of links to the steampunk episode of WCVB Channel 5's Chronicle Magazine:

WCVB's Chronicle - Steampunk - Segment 1

WCVB's Chronicle - Steampunk - Segment 2

WCVB's Chronicle - Steampunk - Segment 3

WCVB's Chronicle - Steampunk - Segment 4

In the comments about my CNC mill project over at Hack-A-Day, Jarkman posted a link to this really beautiful CNC'd brass scarab brooch and I can't help thinking that this would make a lovely computer mouse too!