#makeShitMonday, #Lego edition...

I've tried several times to grow succulents in this one particular window, but it just doesn't get enough sun - they get all leggy trying to reach more light. The African violet I had in that window thrived for several years, but it crashed (probably my fault for not repotting it!), so I had these wonderful ceramic mushroom plant-pots from a local potter... Sitting there empty making me feel guilty.

Lego to the rescue!! I bought a used Lego succulents kit on eBay (A++, all three books and all pieces) and finally got off my tail and put it all together. The individual succulents came in their own bases, which I had to immediately dismantle to fit them into the pots... And they didn't all fit... But most of them do, and the last straggler gets to hang out on the windowsill.

Yay for small wins!

@cannibal

It's #makeShitMonday! I want to see your projects for the last week, cooking, hacking, crafting, coding, wood work, anything goes

I got a Music project off the ground and made the case for it in CAD, printed, and painted. Guts are an ESP32 and ugly code.

Show me what you got!

https://infosec.exchange/@cannibal/114843435888569623

It's #makeShitMonday! I want to see your projects for the last week, cooking, hacking, crafting, coding, wood work, anything goes

Did fireworks for a local city. I'm also working on a Defcon project that will be an ephemeral music server. More to come.

Show me what you got!

It's #makeShitMonday! I want to see your projects for the last week, cooking, hacking, crafting, coding, wood work, anything goes

I designed a sticker. This one will have contact info on the back, when I do photo at Defcon people ask how they can get their photo.

Show me what you got!

#MakeShitMonday, sewing/mending edition...

I have a pair of mountain biking shorts that had the front part of the snap break off. I took them with me to Michael's and found a sew-on snap that mates with the existing back half of the snap on the shorts. (Which minimizes my sewing. Yay!)

The night before I needed to wear the shorts for a big ride, I sewed the new snap on, and everything worked great! No shorts were lost or worn low during the ride. ;)

I might try to find a small embroidered patch to sew on over the front side to cover the stitching... Or, more likely, I'll just leave it as-is since it's functional, and they're mountain biking shorts so I don't care too much about how they look.

@cannibal

It's #makeShitMonday! I want to see your projects for the last week, cooking, hacking, crafting, coding, wood work, anything goes Went to

We went to Koroneberg this weekend, this may have been the last one. Photo credit goes to the wife.

Show me what you got!

I'm trying to be better about posting over here

#makeShitMonday, #crochet edition, in which I learn a sweet new yarn join...

I'm finally at the point in this wrap where I need to transition to the second skein - and my go-to minimal-complexity join (tie a double knot and weave in the ends) isn't suitable because the crochet lace is so open, I don't think the ends would stay woven.

So I asked in one of my online communities, and a more experienced fiber crafter recommended a [Russian splice](https://blog.berroco.com/2014/12/09/emily-explains-a-few-methods-of-yarn-splicing/). I've seen it mentioned before, but was concerned that 2-ply lace-weight yarn wasn't thick enough - she said it works even on single-ply cobweb yarns, so I gave it a shot, and it's *magic*. The splice is visibly thicker in the yarn strand, but it happened to coincide with a couple of double crochets in the pattern, and it's practically invisible!

I'm getting pretty close to my target width for this wrap, so hopefully I can finish it up this week...

@crochet
@cannibal

#makeShitMonday, #crochet edition...

Not much to report, just grinding away at this wrap! Making some good progress... I did have to frog and redo a couple rows when I thought I'd back-checked a row and must not have, but other than that it's been coming along nicely.

I took a swag at the math on this and so far I've made over 18,000 slip knots (pull throughs) and I'm only about 2/3rds done. That's a lotta knots!

@crochet
@cannibal

#MakeShitMonday, #Meshtastic edition...

I got a Heltec V3 Meshtastic radio a few weeks ago to experiment with at #CackalackyCon. I set it up and did initial config with a naked board, but I didn't want to carry it around that way, so I ended up #3DPrinting a case that was designed for this board.

Had to print with supports to get the structure and shapes to print well. After cleaning all of the support material off - including the one bit I originally missed that was keeping the board from seating correctly - it all fit together nicely. I really like how it turned out!

@cannibal

It's #makeShitMonday! I want to see your projects for the last week, cooking, hacking, crafting, coding, wood work, anything goes

Busy week, about all I got done was making an acai base at home and then a subsequent breakfast.

Show me what you got!

#makeShitMonday, #crochet edition, in which two new projects are begun, and the timer is ticking down...

I am Not Speedy at crochet. Small projects like slippers that say "easily completed in an evening" generally take me several days, and my frequency of working on projects is often sparse, so larger things like shawls or wraps generally take *months*.

So of course I've started two projects that I absolutely must finish by the end of June...

A friend is turning 50, and my BFF from college and I are joining her on a celebratory trip. I decided I wanted a new light wrap for cool evenings - and then I thought my BFF might want one too - and of course I need to make one for the birthday girl!

So they chose fibers and colors, and I ordered some lovely silk/alpaca yarn at the beginning of April... not realizing it was on back-order and wouldn't arrive for over a month. Then I mixed up who gets what and started on the BFF wrap, rather than the birthday wrap, but I want to finish the birthday wrap first to make sure it's ready for, well, her birthday - so I switched mid-stream.

And it's my first time working with lace-weight yarn, so there was definitely a learning curve there on tension! But it's a [relatively simple pattern](https://www.mooglyblog.com/artfully-simple-angled-scarf/) and goes pretty quickly, as long as I pay attention and back-check each row to avoid having to frog a bunch if I make any mistakes. I'm optimistic that I'll at least get their gifts done in time... And then mine can be my travel project for the trip!

@crochet
@cannibal

#makeShitMonday, #crochet edition... In which I fail my way to success.

I got a couple skeins of bulky yarn (Berocco Remix Chunky) in an online sale and was thinking I'd make this [Honey Moon Bag](https://www.mooglyblog.com/honey-moon-bag/)... Saw in the pattern that the yarn gauge was bulky, but I didn't read closely enough to realize that she was using a specific tape yarn. The texture wasn't really showing up with the Remix Chunky, so I regretfully frogged it and went looking for another way to use the yarn...

These [cable slippers](https://www.mooglyblog.com/simple-chunky-cable-crochet-slippers/) looked like just the ticket - except that I misread the instructions! She says the initial chain-2 doesn't count as a stitch in the first row, and I extrapolated that (incorrectly!) to *all* the rows. So I was starting each subsequent row a stitch off, and my cables ended up going slightly sideways.

Mom likes soft slippers, so I figured I'd have her try these on for size and see if she wanted any changes to the width, length, or ankle opening before I frogged them and redid them correctly. She put them on, declared that they fit perfectly... and then decided she was keeping them as-is. I think her exact point was: "well, *I* don't see anything wrong with them!" which is hard to refute.

I have enough of the Remix Chunky left to make another pair of slippers, so eventually I *will* do them correctly - but in the meantime, my yarn order finally came in for a couple of time-sensitive spring projects, so the slipper remake is on hold until I get these gifts done!

@cannibal
@crochet

#MakeShitMonday, plant watering addition...

@llorenzin has her container garden going on the deck again but is going to be away sometime soon, so I put together the water system we used last year to test it to make sure it still gets the job done. Seems to be working!

@cannibal

Squeaking in another #MakeShitMonday, garage organizing edition...

@llorenzin and I finally got the corner of the garage with all the yard tools organized last week. We've had a hanging tool rack in our garage for a few years that we bought and hadn't put up. (Yeah, there's a theme here.) Well, we took the time to sort through the pile of yard tools, figure out what to keep, how to organize it on the rack, and where to hang the rack.

I got it all up on the wall and only had to move it over a couple inches from our original plan to get it to line up on the studs. (A simpler option than adding an extra 2x4 header to mount it on.)

I love how it turned out!

I took the extra yard tools plus a few other things we had in the basement to the salvage shed at the local recycling center so they can find new homes.

(The only thing left is to build a stand for the bike rack, but that will be a future post...)

@cannibal

#MakeShitMonday, #bluebird box edition...

We've had a bluebird box in our garage for years. I'm pretty sure someone gave it to us as a gift, but it's been so long I can't remember who. I've never put it up because (1) I never got a pole or post to mount it on., and (2) it doesn't open, so it would be impossible to clean it.

When my @llorenzin's mom moved last summer, she gave us her nice post from Wild Birds Unlimited, and last week I stopped by the local WBU shop and bought a mounting bracket. That took care of (1).

Then I finally took the time to modify the bluebird box so the front will hinge open for cleaning. That took care of (2).

Now we have a bluebird box in our yard!

(The bluebirds locally are just about to start their 3rd brood, so we might - or might not - get any nesting this year.)

@cannibal

#makeShitMonday, #baking edition...

Tried a new whole-wheat-crust recipe for my ongoing crostata experiments tonight. Did not compare it to my previous recipe, which I already overloaded with fruit as a matter of course, to see how much dough it made. And I had all the strawberries macerated already, so...

(Pre-baking, there's solidly 4" of strawberries mounded up in that crust - it was hard to get a truly representative picture of this ridiculousness.)

I wasn't sure whether the crostata walls could retain structural integrity if they're that short. But hey, anything worth doing is worth overdoing, right?

As it turned out, they utterly could not... so I transferred it to a casserole dish, and I'm calling it an upside-down strawberry sonker. #NCeats #IYKYK Still delicious!

@cannibal
#bakingfromscratch #strawberries #kitchenexperiments