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Third time’s the charm

When you automate Firefox, a little robot icon shows up in the address bar to let you know the browser is being controlled by software. I love browser automation and that charming robot and wanted to be able to show off my affection to the world with a keychain version. A deep dive into the Mozilla gecko-dev git repository found the icon file, and three attempts at representing it in fiber gave me the keychain I wanted.

First I thought I could make a crochet version, with perle cotton in the appropriate colors, but it was obvious early on that it wasn’t going to have the effect I wanted and I only half-finished it. For my second attempt I turned to needle-felting, buying 100% non-superwash wool yarn for the body color, and got along well until the end, when it was pointed out by my husband that the proportions were off enough that adding the red arms/ears/fins was not going to go well. For the third attempt I bought 100% wool flat felt and rolled up a strip of it to form the core, so I would have more control over the proportions, and that time it all went swimmingly!

(So it’s a little lopsy-faced. I’m okay with that.)

Note: This robot is not one of Mozilla’s trademarks, but the icon file is subject to the Mozilla Public License.

I’ve got a fever!

And the only prescription is… more Mod Podge!

It started with the silver notebook. I got it for free at work but it had a big ol’ vendor logo across the front. I wanted to cover it, and pulled out a magazine clipping from my stash – but my Mod Podge was nowhere to be found (it probably dried up). After procuring new Podge, I covered that, but then thought, “what other notebooks could I decorate?”

I wasn’t so keen on the tan plaid notebook to begin with; it came in a set. The chickens, from the back cover of a calendar, dress it up nicely, despite one likely being 90 degrees incorrectly positioned. The gopher-y creature was the front of a birthday card received from my parents years ago. I liked that notebook fine, but the whole back cover still has the zig-zag lines so there’s no real loss.

At that point I thought my supply had dried up – my remaining notebooks were too attractive to decoupage some random paper onto. Then I had a meeting and took the pinkish notebook – and realized I’d been using it for two years and was only maybe 1/4 through. Boring! Addition time. I do wish I’d trimmed out some of the white between the leaves near the bottom of the image, but it’s nice nonetheless.

Decoupage: highly recommended for instant gratification.

Narwhal!

At work we use the program Asana for project management, and one of the extra features you can activate is “celebrations” – occasionally, when you check off a task, a creature will shoot across the screen diagonally, Superman-style. There are a unicorn, narwhal, phoenix, and yeti.

One of my coworkers just had a birthday, and I thought it would be fun to find him a magnet of one of those creatures. Striking out of suitable magnets, I thought maybe I could glue a magnet onto the back of a small toy. Striking out on suitable small toys, I decided to needle felt one: the narwhal. 90 minutes later…

The magnet is embedded in the back side, and there is a doubled length of light wire running from the tip of the horn to the tips of the tailfins.

I have some other projects pending photos, so there will probably be a flurry of posts here eventually. Meanwhile I added a big batch of new photos to the Fun with Vintage Patterns album on Facebook.