Thing-a-day.com

I have this quilt from my grandmother-in-law that I keep meaning to hang, but I didn’t have any quilt hangers until the other day.  I stumbled upon some unfinished ones, and decided this morning that some black paint is just what they needed.

It’s not the best paint job, but people won’t be looking too close at them.  They’ll be looking at the quilt instead.

And speaking of painting, my paper beads are drying faster than expected.  I let them out for some sunshine in the afternoon and hopefully they’ll be dry enough by tomorrow to start painting.

Yes, it’s another rotten stick! But no walnuts this time. It’s a saxophone of sorts, using reeds made out of coke cans, subway passes, and whatever else I had lying around. Here’s what it sounds like with three different reeds.

Construction details: I cut the stick in half the long way and chiseled out a rectangular trench in one half. I clamped the two halves together while I made the mouthpiece (which is coated with lemon oil and olive oil to protect it from spit) and tested the first reed. Then I glued the halves together and drilled the finger holes, and made a bunch more reeds.

(mouthpiece)

(reeds)

Bart Hopkin calls it a boo - a tongue drum made from a tube of bamboo or a box. It might not seem complicated compared to some of my earlier instruments, but for me, cutting and attaching these five pieces of wood was like brain surgery. Notice that no two sides are the same length, and the notches for the tongue are all slanted. Anyway, it goes a little bit like this.

Inspired by these fabric letters I bought at Anthropologie:

I decoupaged some wooden letters with some of the new scrapbook paper I picked up in Berkeley last weekend:

I worked on it while I was watching the Oscars which was a good thing because the awards were pretty boring.

I was inspired when I saw coconuts for 99c at the bodega, but when I got home it took me half an hour just to get all the delicious meat out of the nut.

I keep making instruments that are too long for my short arms to play comfortably. You’d think I would’ve learned from the rotten stick guitar.

The frets are bamboo skewers - I tuned them by ear so the tuning is kind of shaky. I might add more frets later. Note how the bamboo bridge rests on a point on the membrane (architectural vellum)- this helps to transfer the vibrations of the string. The pick is made of two layers of vellum glued together.

The coconut banjo sounds like this.

Gambang kayu is a xylophone used in gamelan orchestras. This thing isn’t really that much like a gambang. It’s made from rotten sticks (my favorite ingredient!), string, and a bamboo windchime that was on sale at Rite-Aid for $3.49. It sounds like this.

I carved this bowl out of some waste wood I found on the street. When I roll walnuts around in it, it sounds like this.

But the real reason I carved it is to use for hammering sheet metal into gong or cymbal shapes. Unfortunately, I don’t seem to have any sheet metal.

I only had a few minutes to play today, and my first attempt at an instrument today broke, so here’s a teeny tiny little wooden whistle. It sounds like this.

I’m proud of myself for drilling a 1/8" hole in a 1/4" dowel without breaking it!

Made of discarded wood from a nearby street construction project. It sounds like this

These are so much fun to do…wood letters decorated with paint, paper, and other embellishments.

These particular letters are heading off to a blog to be be reviewed and featured.  I’m hoping it will bring some sales my way.  Wouldn’t that be cool?

This elephant headed figure is my Day 4 creation. the wood is from Philadelphia and he reminds me of Ganesh. Maybe he has magical powers to remove obstacles! He’s only about 2 3/8″ tall.  Here’s another shot of him.

So I really like Arthur Ganson and I just wanted to play with some wire and maybe one day get to making a wire machine. You can see the potential for the crank/handle for turning. It’s about 8 inches tall and 4.5 inches wide without the crank. Wire is incredibly fun to play with.