The Maker Faire Post

Here’s what my life looks like these days: I get up at 5:00 am. I go to the computer. I work. Ten minutes later, I notice that it’s 7:00 pm. I move the laundry to tomorrow’s To-Do list again. I fall onto the couch and can’t get up.

…Which is why I’m still so remiss in posting here. I’ll have my feet back under me soon enough. Thanks for your patience. But for now, let’s talk about Maker Faire, which happened last weekend!

Lordy lord lord, I love this event. K and I had planned to go to Maker Faire as our vacation this year, so getting to be there as part of the CRAFT team was a total bonus.

Part of me wishes it were more than two days long, but then I wonder if my head would explode from more than two days of tightly-packed awesome.

(That’s Bonnie Burton, leading a class in Star Wars crafts. I kid you not, a band of musicians in Bith costumes showed up halfway through and played the cantina song, live. Holy crap!)

The ever-luminous Moxie taught some very popular needle felting classes.

The main thing I love about Maker Faire is that it’s such a wide-ranging celebration of making, and all the exposure to different ideas really gets you thinking in new directions. In just two days, I was exposed to solar power, robotics, cheese-making, handmade musical instruments, giant soap bubbles, mushroom-growing, fire-breathing art cars, and as many crafts as you can name.

The two Crafting Your Online Presence panels were a lot of fun and great information. I wish we could have all gone out for coffee afterward and continued the discussion for another three hours.

(Incidentally, I’ll be doing a series of columns on CRAFT, covering what we talked about in these sessions. The first one is up now!)

Our demo stage was packed with talented crafters demonstrating interesting things all weekend. Here’s Lee, showing us how to make cool stuff from old T-shirts.

I always love events where I get to meet people I’ve grown to be good friends with online. I finally met Alice, and Veronique, and Cathe Holden. I met Steven from Spoonflower, too! And I saw so many lovely peeps I only get to see once a year if I’m lucky.

Speaking of Veronique, look at this! She brought me the most amazing Pushkin pin ever. EVER! She actually did a Google Image Search for “Pushkin Gilleland” and found a photo reference. I just love all the tiny stitching and details – right down to his little ear-fur tufts. What a treasure.

Meanwhile, all around us, all sorts of awesome geekery was going on. I loved this lit-up inflatable forest.

…And the LEGO Jeep, on which you can build any LEGO sculpture you like.

…And the Mechanical Swamp Kirin – probably the best piece of human puppetry ever.

There’s way more, of course. Check out my Flickr set, if you’re interested. And remember, there are Maker Faires coming up in Detroit and New York, and Mini Maker Faires in Ann Arbor, North Carolina, Kansas City, and Vancouver, BC. If you can get to any of these, you won’t regret going.