A visit with Brian David Johnson

Brian David Johnson is this master woodworker... his work is so, SO beautiful.

And he designed such a quick but still very tinker-y project for the kids to do, it was so great. They all got to pick a piece of wood and design a little vase. Brian cut it with his mondo industrial bandsaw (that was so exciting and hypnotic to watch) and then the kids got to drill a hole in their piece, into which fit an adorable little glass test tube. Add water and flower and Voila! An exquisite little piece made out of beautiful materials that kids can really take pride in.

Purely, purely awesome all 'round!

Check out this guy's book, I know you will love it: you can read it in its entirety here.

As if that wasn't cool enough, now he travels the world doing readings and giving his book away for free:

Awesome Book Tour from Dallas Clayton on Vimeo.

And if THAT isn't cool ENOUGH, dude is coming to Austin to do a reading for Austin Tinkering School at 10 am on March 19th:

An Awesome Book of Thanks! from Dallas Clayton on Vimeo.

aHhhhhhhhh! Levels of awesome off the charts! Making my eyeballs melt, practically!

SO excited. And this happened really suddenly... I wrote him awhile ago and then suddenly a few days ago he wrote and said they'd be here at 10 am on March 19th. I had tried to tempt him to Austin and ATS by saying we'd do something cool and tinker-y like build him an awesome treehouse and we could do the reading up in the trees. Uhhh.... that is such Kami style to run off at the mouth and then wonder how in the heck she is going to deliver. I think I came up with a pretty cool plan, though. Reed Park is this awesome park in Austin, we always have our kids' birthday parties there. There are these beautiful live oaks with huge spreading branches over this sweet little meandering creek. I still have to go check it out and see if it'll work for my vision, but I'm imagining tricking it out kind of kid-Swiss Family Robinson, with rope ladders and swings hanging down, and maybe some structures or platforms we'll make with our beloved lashing technique. Anyway, not sure what I'll actually do, or if we'll be able to give Dallas a tinkering experience or not (I'm sure he's fine either way). But what is for sure is that you must mark your calendars right this instant, 'cause it's going to be SO. Much. FUN! And if you've never taken a tinkering class with me... that's OK, I forgive you, you're still invited. Come one come all! I'm sure this guy would never skimp on the awesome. See you there.

A visit with Hawkeye Glenn

He's creative, he's competent, he's confident, he's.... Hawkeye Glenn of Blacksmith Industries. The day we were there he and his friend were taking apart a whole entire truck and planning on cleaning it up and putting it back together again (!!!), good as new. I am so happy to have kids meet guys like this, who have a deep and intimate knowledge of How Things Work.

And DAMN, he's got some cool machines.

Some sort of blogging contest...

Top 25 Creative Moms - help me win!

Well, I've been nominated for this top 25 creative moms blogging contest and it's all kind of pleasantly excruciating... of course it is really nice to get attention about this little labor of love I got going on here but it kind of makes me cringe because my little labor of love is not really all that... let's be honest here, my photography skills are abominable and often I'm writing bleary-eyed at the end of a long day and don't have the will to critique the writing. Those blog posts that wrap up in kind of a tidy, satisfying way? Those aren't mine. And try as I might I can't fake that spark that really excellent writers seem to bandy about at every opportunity. Anyway, though I like to fly below the radar with this blog, for whatever reason it's being thrust into the spotlight a little, so if you feel so inclined, why dontcha go over there and rock the vote? I'm in the company of many, many other terrifically splendid blogs (Filth Wizardry! Irresistible Ideas for Play-based Learning! My friends!)and it seems that you can vote once a day, so feel free to spread the voting love around.

The top three will be announced on March 11th and will get to share their favorite craft or design with their active community of creative moms in a custom issue of their weekly digest. Wheeee!!

And, in typical Kami fashion, I seem to have accidentally created two profiles for myself on the site. Hopefully they'll fix it for me but if they don't, it's just one more example of how I'm SO not Soulemama (as if you had any doubt).

Concrete casting class with Eric Billig!

Such an amazing class. Eric really embraces the tinkering school ethos and was so up for anything, just playing and experimenting with his chosen medium. It was so cool that the folks who took the class just happened to be really accomplished makers in their own right (Christine Terrell has an awesome blog, adaptivereuser.net, and works with punched tin, Elena Eidelberg makes tiles and does mosaic work [she actually had me a little star-struck because I've seen her work around town and always been completely dazzled by it], and Astrid is just one of the most mature, intelligent, and cool ten year olds you could ever hope to meet) so they really took him to task, but he was up to the task and then some. A real tinkerer extraordinaire, that Eric.

Tinkering School Immersion Workshop!!!!

Uh..... so YEAH! I have no idea where to start. I've spent the last week livin' the tinkering dream.... staying at Gever Tulley and Julie Spiegler's house outside San Francisco with 6 other devotees: Josh from Tinkering School: Chicago, MaryBeth from ReDiscover in L.A (a reuse center!), Darrell and Dustin from Chicago Children's Museum, Chris from Sense of Wonder camp (an all-outdoor day camp!), Melissa from Buffalo Wants Tinkering, and the affable Chad of ThinFilms documenting the whole adventure. There's so much to say that I don't really know what to say... personally I feel like I need to spend a week staring at a single blade of grass and not saying a word. A little too much in the ol' queue right now. So right now I'll just share a few of these not too top-notch videos I shot... by the time I gain access to some of the better stuff that Chad shot maybe I'll be able to share some of my reflections and revelations. Because there were those aplenty. Just a quick over view: We spent the first day getting kind of the inside scoop on Tinkering School (my dream!). The second day we broke off into two groups. One was slated to do a 7 hour project with kids ages 6-9 on Saturday at the Studio for Urban Projects in San Francisco. I was in the second group and we worked with kids ages 10-14 at the same place on Sunday. We spent a day developing our projects and shopping for supplies. The first group chose a project called Playground. They built a real playground inside the studio space and left it totally up to the kids as to what to build.... it was amazing.

Our group decided with almost no debate on this guy Dustin's idea, SlingSled. It was based on an idea he'd been kicking around about a slingshot-type launch for a luging track he'd built down his front steps in Chicago. Now THAT is a winning idea if I ever heard one. It was so much fun. Nothing ever really sure fire developed around the launching idea, but the sleds were definitely a hit.

Heart shaped box

Yep, just like this....Dip some frutas in chocolate for extra fun... I discovered this year that chocolate-dipped clementine slices were extra tasty, and more seasonal than strawberries to boot....