Oh, yeah: I finally finished the dress for Jeanine, yesterday. I hate hand-sewing and avoid it whenever possible, but this is a semi-formal dress and not sportswear so hemming it via my usual “topstitch it with contrasting thread” strategy wouldn’t really have worked. It’s a lined dress, too, so I had to blind-stitch both the dupioni shell and the charmeuse lining. Ugh. I’m glad that’s over. It looks pretty – I made the lining just a little bit too long, on purpose, so you see a little flash of soft champagne gold at the bottom of the dress, for contrast. This project has taken a while; I was only about half done when I burned through my original stock of enthusiasm, so it’s been grinding along at a much slower pace for the last couple of months.

Current active project list:

• Radian, of course
• Electric motorcycle (still mostly just planning)
• Accelerometer-driven lighting system for “la petite piege” aka the spiderweb
• Floodland (next step: BLM permit)

That’s really it. Kind of a short list, but I think that’s OK: Floodland is the sort of thing that can suck up an arbitrary amount of time, and the electric motorcycle is a pretty large fabrication job too.

ALTSpace is supporting itself, and we’re going to have a first anniversary party on Saturday the 14th. It’s really satisfying to walk in there and see all the projects people are working on. There are clothes hanging on the wire shelves, bits of sculptures out on workbenches, an entire back corner taken over by painters… The Seattle Meshnet people come in every couple of weeks to hack on radios, and the last Dorkbot meeting happened here. I’m delighted to see the place functioning as a hub for creative & social activities.