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'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.

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. 

Reddit user somevelvetmorning created this absolutly stunning Dalek dress. I think I'll have to make one myself; and she and I can walk around accosting anyone in either a bowtie, trenchcoat, or long scarf. EXTERMINATE!

Link to the thread. 

I am so happy that Radio Shack has made the decision to return to it's roots and I'm even happier that they've tapped our own Meredith Scheff to help them tell the world about it!

Remember more than a year ago when I posted this? Well, since then I've partnered up with SparkFun (purveyers of enchanting electronics) and now they're finally available for sale! I still have my solderably conductive thread and will have special kits made up with StarBoards soon. 

I've been experimenting with materials for Etextiles for a long time, and one of the biggest issues is conductive thread. It's one of the most important parts of an Etextile project- but it's inevitable hard to work with, for several reasons. The thread by it's very nature is hard to sew and prone to fraying; and secondly the way it is produced leads it to having very high resistance, making lines more than a foot long very difficult to run power through. Lastly, since most of it is actually nylon (or some other synthetic) it's non-solderable, which leads to having to make knots to attach it to components.

So imagine my joy when I found this stuff! I found out about it through a friend who had gotten a sample, but he had written it off as unobtanium. I got it through almost a year of emailing back and forth with the company that makes it. They weren't keen on selling small amounts to an individual, but eventually I think they just sold me some to shut me up (this is a useful skill I've acquired). 

This stuff is great. It's actually extremely thin, flat strands of wire wrapped around a kevlar core- so It's solderable! The soldering melts the kevlar but the strands hold up nicely. It works OK in an industrial straight-stitch machine (what we have at Noisebridge) and I'm pretty sure It'd work OK in the bobbin of a home machine. The real kicker is that it has very low resistance- 2.5ohms a yard! 

Comparatively, Lamé Lifesaver (my former go-to for thread) has 36ohms a yard and AnioMagic (another good brand) is 24ohms a yard. It's making planning out things like dresses and skirts much easier, not having to figure in an extra couple hundred Ohms in the process. 

I have a bunch of 5 yard samples up for sale in my Etsy store. They're $5, but if you send me a really, really good story about what you're going to do with it and how it's going to be awesome and save the world, I'll send you one for the cost of shipping ($2). I'll only be doing 5 of these.

I spotted maker Tubetime wearing this beautiful DIY nixie tube necklace at Maker Faire. He made an interesting mechanism that enabled him to step up the voltage from a 3v coin cell battery to the 150v that the nixie needs to run(!). It's one of the most beautiful nixie projects I've seen. Great work- and check out the rest of his Flickr stream-  he's got some amazing projects, and he's a great photographer.