My son was maybe 10 when I showed him the basics of stick whittling, how to do checkerboards, rope spirals and knobs and stuff. He turned out dozens of wands.
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I have to say the wand was a lot of fun. No real rules to it, so you just kinda mess around with the stick and see what looks interesting. It was a good way to relax after work.
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It is relaxing, even my grandfather, a master metalworker & chandelier maker, would carve walking sticks with bark-on decoration during summers in the Catskills. Watch out, don’t go down the rabbit hole like this guy.
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For our local Christmas parade I got with a neighbor and we entered a float with our families. In prior years we has done a “Christmas train” but this year we went for a “Christmas Pirates” entry, with a ship and tropical island.
I already had most of the ship built from an earlier project, but to make it a Pirate vessel I figured it should really have a cannon. I built one out of PVC along with an ice chest and bellows system. I filled the ice chest with dry ice and water, so that a squeeze of the bellows would shoot out a puff of smoke. I added a light inside the cannon that would turn on when the bellows was squeezed.
The sail worked well as a projection surface for our holiday messages that @brainspore animated for me.
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I made cheap, effective window draft stoppers. Easy peasy, completely customize-able (length, thickness), and almost invisible with white or off-white window frames (which most are unless they’re varnished).
My phone is old, so the photo is lousy:
Components:
Medical stockinette tubing (I used 2" width, in off-white, cost $10 for 75-feet at Amazon):
Pony/pigtail hair bands (no more than $2 for the packet):
Plus, a big bag of cheap white rice ($10 for 25 pounds at Costco).
Thanks to the hair bands and the stockinette already being a tube, there’s no sewing or gluing the seams to deal with, and if you decide to make the tube bigger or thinner for a different window in future, you can either unwind the hair band or just cut it and use a new one after you finish adjusting the rice fill. The white rice won’t go bad and is an excellent desiccant for any condensation too.
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Awesome idea, I could use one of these to stop the kitten from chasing her toys under the stove!
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Alternately, it might become the latest toy.
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Turning this wire and shrink tubing
…into extended cables so I can turn my headlights on and off without having to reach for buttons on lightsets that were made for upright bikes.
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Nice Lil tadpole yang got there
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Not directly my work, but the final projects for the animation class I just taught this semester. This was my first time teaching animation at a college level. There was a range of skill levels on display here and a couple of unfinished films but overall not bad for a bunch of first-timers. (Especially the “Devonia & Yubida” one. That kid is going places.)
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That is a super hack and I am totally using it. I have a whole bunch of 1920s windows and a 1940s bathroom window that are begging for a @anon67050589 draft stopper!
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Thankya kindly
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I just finished this coat in time for winter:
And I’m currently working on (and pretty bored with TBH) a white dress shirt for my husband. Next up is a tweed jacket I’ve been putting aside for awhile.
I love your embroidery, your chainstitch is especially lovely. I never take the time to embroider my projects and always regret it!
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Nice! I like the color combination of the tan exterior and plaid lining.
If you ever want to build a leather coat for somebody with unique requirements, talk to me 
.
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Nice work!
I’d love to see the tweed, if you’ve got pictures around…
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Background: Grandparents emigrated to the US from Sicily at the start of the 20th century. It took an embarrassing number of years before realizing that the reason I was always brutally disappointed with all incarnations of Italian sausage was due to being raised on the family recipe that was brought from the old country and always hand made.
In the last year, with the help of a remarkably supportive spouse, a sausage making class, and positive feedback from a few small batch attempts, I hunkered down and made the canonical recipe that my grandparents had fed me my entire upbringing. It starts with 60lb of ground pork.
Tonight, after a full day of labor, I have a refrigerator full of the family recipe that will be vacuum packed and delivered to friends, family, and co-workers after it sheds some water weight and dries out the casings a bit. I’ve never felt more connected to the fragile, difficult, problematic thing I call family than this moment.
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Pavlovian drooling over here. Does it have fennel in it?
BTW, I make my own tomato sauce from scratch. I wonder if they’d pair well…
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Of course, it has fennel in it. 
I can confirm that it does pair well with scratch tomato sauce. I like to either grill them or pan fry them before slicing them up and dashing them across top of the sauce at serving time. The exterior texture makes a nice contrast when paired against a pot of fresh tomato and basil goodness that’s been simmering on the stovetop late afternoon…
Now I’m drooling and yearning for the fresh tomatoes of next August. I can make do with canned between now and then but it seems a crime that the purest culinary magic can only be forged a few weeks out of every year. One more reason to keep going.
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Poeticalbot is feeling the holiday spirit! Kinda…
It’s been seeded with a bunch of Christmas-y stories.
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