In which Necessity is demonstated to be the Mother of . . .

I realized recently that my handbags keep increasing in size, and my ability to find anything in them keeps decreasing. It is like a black hole or a Bermuda Triangle--things go in and settle at the bottom and I finally end up dumping everything out of the handbag to get to my pen or my lip-balm or my USB. So I made a purse organizer from a placemat I had lying around.

The process is simple. First fold the placemat in half, so that you can see a crease in the middle. Then take the top and bottom sides and fold them so that they meet at the crease. Now line up the items you use on the top and bottom folds and pin in between so that you are creating a series of pockets. Sew along the lines made by pins. Then fold down "backward" along the middle, so that the pockets are back-to-back, not facing each other. Your pocket purse organizer is done! You can add a button and a strip of elastic to bring the ends together, if you like.

I have to say this thing works like a charm. I downsized to a smaller handbag because I can find things easily now.

Cuckoo in the Kitchen

So I finally got around to finishing my daughter's challenge--to add my own captions to Anne Taintor-style 50s housewife images. I did it and added a challenge from me to myself-- get free sounds online, choose a sound effect appropriate to the video, and add it to the movie. DONE! Yay!

Gods Gone Wild

"Gods Gone Wild" is my latest effort, inspired by the work of Anne Taintor. My daughter challenged me to re-do Taintor's images, adding my own original captions. But my process went the opposite way. As I looked through Taintor's site, my mind started bringing up the images of gods and goddesses that I had seen in Indian calendars in response to some of the captions on Taintor, and only then did "original images+captions" happen. Funny how creativity works. As Steven Johnson says, ideas are not like light bulbs turning on; they are more like balls on a pool table, colliding and bouncing off each other. They are born from association and collaboration.

22 Faces

SunSigns and KeyWords

I created this video after making a series of 12 Wordles--one for each sign of the zodiac-- using keywords for them and the Wordle app. I added an icon identifying the SunSign for each Wordle  and selected a color for the background that is tied to the color associated with that SunSign.


This is pretty basic, though. I just found a video tutorial on using Wordle in a more powerful way, and when I have time, I am going to tweak these Wordles. There's a lot more one could do.

Zap Zone Wordle

I love to read the astrology blog by Mystic Medusa. I have my doubts about astrology sometimes (the words "Confirmation Bias" "Confirmation Bias" "Confirmation Bias" float before my eyes) but even when I am most skeptical, I continue reading Mystic for her irreverent, amusing insights and the interesting community that has come together in the comments on her site.

This is a Wordle I made using the language from three of her posts about the Zap Zone (for those who aren't reading Mystic, the Zap Zone is a particular period of time in which the planets transiting the Cardinal signs square each other.) The Wordle turned out better than I expected-- and the best part is: I sent it to Mystic and she liked it too!

Adventures in Amdavad

 This is a map I made for Nate and Salli's website, They Draw and Travel. To my astonishment and delight, it was published on 22 July 2011 in Travel+Leisure Magazine.