pepperknit

“I tried to think of the most harmless thing. Something I loved from my childhood. Something that could never ever possibly destroy us. Mr. Stay Puft!”

It’s a classic (even the channel AMC (American Movie Classics) tells us so). It’s always on TV (just tune to AMC). It’s part of cultural consciousness like only a few other movies in our lifetimes. It’s Ghostbusters!

And it’s also Jason’s favorite movie. But I noticed, despite all the cool T-shirts Jason has and has even made himself, he was lacking in the Ghostbusters department. I had to fix that, didn’t I? Ectoplasmic goo isn’t so easily rendered, but the Stay Puft marshmallow man sure is.

I found an image online that I traced and tweaked to create space between his joints. The whole thing got traced onto freezer paper. Freezer-paper stencils are incredibly easy once you’ve got a plan—in fact, I once wrote out a short tutorial, the first time I gave it a shot. My only frustration was the paint itself. Opaque white is thick and gunky, and stenciling it on wasn’t the smoothest of operations. But I made it work (perhaps the homemade look helps—don’t want anyone to think he got this in a store, after all!). A second layer, in orange, was applied after the white was fully dry, and this guy was ready to ravage all of New York City!

Let me acknowledge the long silence round these parts and apologize. I said I was on a knitting break but that isn’t entirely true—I’ve actually knit a few things so far this year, and I’m overdue to share them with you. It’s a rededication to the blog, as I’m currently bursting over with crafty happiness!

Apologies in advance, guys. I just got a scanner, so I suspect I’m going to start scanning everything in sight . . .

We’ll start with this totally off-the-cuff fingerpainting that I made in college. I’m not sure why we were fingerpainting—some kind of hall-bonding activity? I think it was my senior year. At least, I remember having the picture hanging up that year. This was one of those things that I threw together without thinking, but when I saw the end result, I was totally proud of myself.

After all these years, I still really love this “painting.” I think if I sat down and tried to paint a true painting, I wouldn’t like it as much as I like this. Do you have things that you created on the fly but like better than some of your best efforts?

My apartment is overflowing with cardboard boxes these days—from ordering a printer, envelopes, etc. for setting up my home office to ordering groceries from Fresh Direct, I’ve got boxes all over the place. I need to break them down and throw them in the recycling, but I always wonder if they’re going to come in handy in the future.

Like the way cardboard boxes were an actual necessity for a project I did in architecture class in college. The challenge was to make a chair out of cardboard using a minimal amount of cardboard and no external fasteners—only cardboard. My friend Emily made an adorable little “hard-backed” chair. One woman made something that could only be described as a plush chair, and while she completely ignored the “minimal amount of cardboard” rule, it was downright comfy. I took the charge to use a minimum of material to heart and decided to make a pyramidal stool.

Part of the process was making a model at ¼-scale. I love the mini stool so much, I’ve held onto it, and it’s served as a stepstool, an end table, seat, and a planter over the years.

Two arced pieces of cardboard curve into each other and are tacked together with tabs. Each tab is kind of like the letter T, so it stays put. The understructure “pinwheels” and forms the tabs that hold the two pieces together along the x axis; along the y axis the tabs serve to hold the support in place and are a decorative element.

You can see some tape down there at the bottom, but believe me, it’s just tape that was remaining on the cardboard box I used (remember, too, this was the model—meant to be thrown together and used to ensure the design worked—the final was made out of clean cardboard). The top, which I was graded down for, especially in light of the fact that I kept calling it a “lid,” which made it all too clear that I hadn’t fully thought out how to incorporate the seat, is also attached with the same kinds of tabs.

It’s starting to look a little worse for the wear, 10 years after I made it, especially since it wasn’t made to last—the full-size model was really sturdy and is probably hard at work in a dump somewhere. I ultimately hated the final piece, though it worked perfectly well as a seat. The tabs seen here are so lovely and perfect—about ¾ inch tall. But when you multiply by 4 and have just 5 giant tabs down the sides, it looks . . . ugly. If I’d been more ambitious, having the tabs this same size on the larger model would have been fabulous.

But at 9 inches tall and with a 12 x 12 inch footprint, it works just great as a footstool. I keep it under my table where I work now—better than resting my feet on top of my printer!