Summer Beach Entertainment: Free Book Online

       Happy Monday everyone! It's back to school in a few weeks and we're having fun getting in some last minute summer reading before the break is over. Nash and I both love to read. If you're looking for another book to throw on your kindle or iPhone for a relaxing summer trip to the beach or mountains, may we recommend the free book Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson?
         He's our new favorite author. Since we don't get the time to read like we used to, the books we do read and enjoy have become very precious to us. Best of all, we get to tell you all about him and let you try him out for FREE online. His Mistborn Trilogy is where we first read him and we both couldn't put the books down for a month. It's always nice to find a new beloved author to read.
         Have a great week!

Brilliant Product Design/Marketing: Tile

              I recently saw this commercial and thought...this is an amazing product design/advertising. The first round of funding has already raised over $2 million dollars six months before shipping. It's a small simple RFID reader that allows you to find objects on the go. While the technology has been around for 20+ years, it has also largely been banned or pulled from  stores as being too invasive. This is the first time I've seen tracking presented as a positive instead of a negative for the consumer. A simple story: never lose your keys again.
               As Nash and most of my friends will attest, this is something I struggle with on a regular basis which has led to elaborate filing and storage systems to combat my absent-mindedness.  Now, for $25 there's a answer to my key problem. We're finally beginning to see the adoption of many early 1990s technology for the consumer market with the iPhone turning people into mobile information hubs. The things we feared are becoming the tools we use every day. So many times, you see product adoption fail in the market place, not because of the product itself, but a failure to tell a story the customer wants to hear.
           If you're not telling someone what they want to hear, can you really blame them for walking away instead of buying in? And how often do we fail to frame our attempts to connect with others in terms of not hearing their stories on what they need? Or want?

Website Overhaul

Hey guys, I am pleased to let you all know that Nash has finished the first of several upgrade overhauls to the website for our customers to better use the site. I must admit we have a horrible tendency to abuse  this as it doesn't really pay the bills so it tends to get bumped to the bottom of the honey-do-list. You getting any summer cleaning done? Please note, our e-mail is still sorting itself out. If you sent us an e-mail Monday or Tuesday we probably did not get it due to a server glitch. Please resend.

Whoot! Nash's Design Won First Prize in the Father's Day Contest!

             Hey everyone, we've been so flattered with how much you all like Nash's design and tutorial for the ice blanket. We've hit a little over 9,000 hits in a week and a half! Also, in a surprise win Nash won 1st Place in the Instructables Father's Day Contest.

                I think we get a free t-shirt and some books, but hey...bragging rights is bragging rights. Sometimes we forget to stop for a moment and look at what we've accomplished. In other news, next week I have some more custom projects to post (we've been getting a slew of them lately) that I've been working on which may or may not interest you our readers. One is a cool new design for a bar remodeling.....oh you will just have to wait to see it next week. :-)

Wonderful Shop Music: Lindsey Stirling

              Nash and I generally agree to disagree when it comes to music. We both tend to listen to music the other finds boring (me) or offensive (Nash). Imagine my utter delight when the other morning carpooling to work I was greeted not with another raunchy Irish pub song, but this....Lindsey Stirling. So nice. In case you are not familiar with this dub-step violinist, I encourage you to check out her youtube channel. A feast for the eyes and ears. And hopefully a few laughs. Yum, yum....now...to find another musical artist we can agree upon is awesome besides Lindsey and the Game of Thrones theme song. Warm travels and happy ears.

How to Make Fabric Buttons

Wow, we broke 200,000 views for the blog yesterday. Pretty awesome and kinda crazy.

To celebrate we're posting another Instructable on How To Make Fabric Buttons.

This is a classic tailoring tool for making custom women's suits. You don't see it much any more (probably too labor intensive or vintage), but I thought I would share a bit of classic knowledge.

Have a lovely day everyone else and may your day be full of wonder!

Up-dating E-mail Address: Dara Page

       Hey everyone, I know this news is about 7 months overdue since the wedding was in October, but I am officially posting on the blog that my new e-mail address is now: DaraPage@lisashay.com. You will still be able to reach me at my old e-mail address: dsmcginn1@lisashay.com, but the website/facebook, etc. have been updated to reflect the changes. Yeah, married life paperwork. Also, Nash and I are switching out sales duties (He took over that position last year while I was doing wedding planning) to give him more free time in his new design shop (Affectionately called the "man cave".) which is only fair after a year of him doing it. I can't wait to see what fun and twisted metal and wood creations come out of this.
        Have a great week everyone and may your life be full of joy and change. Also, today's photos are curtsy of my good friend, Mike Miller, who did the photography for our wedding.These are photos from my speed sewing session to throw together a last minute wedding dress in an hour and a half. I'm still a little amazed it all came together. While I've never been one for bridal as that niche was always filled by my grandfather and aunt when I came along, the experience has made me think some about adding it to my collection of custom services I offer one day.
         Mike's photos look so amazing, if you need a wow photographer, may I suggest him? His rates are reasonable and he's a lot of fun to be around. Plus, Nash and I just love him. Happy living today!
        

Best Barbeque Joint in Raleigh: Ole Time Barbeque

         This past week, Nash and I went out to Tigers Be Still, a hilarious play about depression and dealing with mental illness at Raleigh Little Theater. It was nice for a change to laugh about the topic instead of the standard sweeping under the rug for today's PC society. We don't do that enough I think. Face up to the stuff that scares us. However, this is not a play review, it's a post about barbeque. Specifically where to find the best stuff in town at Ole Time Barbeque down near NC State.
          The food is good, cheap, and the clientele is colorful. There's doctors rubbing knees with retired bikers, NC State students recovering from a late night party, and family kids out for a meal on the town at this family owned joint. A sure sign the food is good around here is when it crosses all races, ages, and stereotypes. You can get a great southern meal for $5-8 (even the legendary Nash can be fed for under $10.00). All of them come with complimentary hushpuppies.
          So next time you're headed out for a Friday night and want some good southern cooking, drop by. You'll be glad you did. It's the big yellow roof driving down Western from State towards Cary on the left. You can probably see a few bikes out front.

Shop Laughter: Pandora Comedy

             In the past month, Nash has left Techshop to get a new job up the street working with one of his best friends, Ian. He's loving the change and Ian is a virtual force of mayhem. Lately, I get to come home to a whole series of new quirky jokes as they have discovered the new comedy section on Pandora. For those of you like me who are new to the upgrade, roughly a year and a half ago Pandora added roughly 10,000 comedian voice clips with jokes and stand-up routines. As someone who is always searching for more music and shop noise to add to my work day, this has been a lot of fun. So I'm passing my joy along. Click one or more of these 12 stations to add a little laughter to your day:

Today's Comedy
Raw Comedy
Comedy Icons
Urban Comedy
PG Comedy
2000s Comedy
Latino Comedy
Musical Comedy
Women-in-Comedy
Golden Oldies Comedy
LGBT Comedy
Jewish Comedy

This Week I'm Thankful For

         Thanksgiving is just around the corner this week and I'm busy getting ready for Nash and my first official holiday together as a married couple. I bought all the traditional things to make Thursday: turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. The entire thing will either turn out well or blow-up with smoking turkey wreckage in my kitchen. Oh well, what's life without a little adventure.
         A number of my friends and family have been doing this daily, "I'm thankful for..." this month for the season which I've really enjoyed reading on Facebook. Seeing the things small and large that matter to my friends has been enlightening. It's also caused me to ask myself what am I truly thankful for. My own list would be embarrassing to post here, but can be summed up by saying, I'm am really truly grateful for the family and friends in my life. And for Nash, I love having someone to wake up to every day who the first and last thing I hear is, "I love you."
         So my question to you this week is, what are you grateful for in your life?

Nash Having Fun Sparring

       This week Nash is taking over to add some fun to your day. Last week, he put together a bunch of sparring practice weapons with his groomsmen (So Hot!) and so this week....he is posting up How-To-Guides on Instructables for people who want to make their own practice weapons. Because you can never have enough wearpons! I hope you enjoy too! And if you want to join in the sparring...just listen for the sound of clashing on a Thursday night near NC State Campus. Have a great day everyone!

Day Twelve: Pieceables: 3D Fabric Design

Have an idea over your morning coffee? Want to program your bag with your iPhone? Now you can.

Nash and I love to do prototyping design, especially e-textiles.  For Christmas, we thought we would share our joy with you by creating modular fabric design kits called Pieceables. Simply snap the Pieceables together and program any electronics with your smartphone. Voila, the resulting art pieces are washable and can be endlessly modified to suit your taste.

We've taken a lot of the heavy lifting out of understanding various fabrics and connections to allow you to focus on the fun part of design...making. I love watching friends and family surprise me with their inventions, ideas, and coffee creations.Over thanksgiving we took a bunch home to family, a lot of fun cat toys were made. Not what I expected, but hey...if lol cats can take over the internet, then I don't see any reason they can't take over Pieceables. :-)

Over the next few Fridays, you are welcome to drop by Techshop's conference room and try out Pieceables for yourself. We are marketing these for Christmas on Kickstarter where you can pick up one of 3 basic Pieceable kits: Standard (Machine Washable/CPSIA compliant), Beginner Electronics (smartphone light programming), and Advanced Electronics (allows you to also program buttons, sound, directions, and temperature). You can also program these electronics with any computer screen in case you prefer to use a desktop or laptop instead of smartphone. Simply answer the simple 4 question order form so we know what fabrics and colors you would like shipped.

The last day to order one of the kits for Christmas is Monday, December 23rd. After ordering, simply print the gift certificate. The gift certificates may be redeemed any time in the next 6 months. We plan to start shipping Jan 1, 2012. 

We hope you enjoy your Pieceables! Happy Holidays everyone. And thank you so much for your support over the past year.

You can check out the brand new website here:
Pieceables


Copyright 2011 Li Sashay
Patent Rights Reserved

Day Ten: Seige Warfare

This week it's war in our neck of the woods with the Avalon Reenactments coming to town. Techshop is getting involved building small and large scale trebuchets. Trebuchets are an ancient launching device that armies used to target cities under attack. Pretty cool. This means that Nash has basically died and gone to heaven. Actually, most of the guys in the studios have. So where you may ask does fabric come into this? It's easy to see the wood and metal, but what a lot of people miss is the fact that the slingshot mechanism is made of rope and a fabric cup. Yes, fabric is everywhere around you. When you can cut your own desktop trebuchet in a few minutes on the laser cutter, or a larger seige size in a few hours (car drums are popular counterweights), you get a lot of fun fielding requests for how to make the fabric cups to place the projectiles in. The laser program is available saved on the epilog upstairs, or if you are doing a larger scale model, the measurements are 12 inches by 6 inches as follows to make a huge polygon on a larger standing model.

Simply place a hole in each end and sew the sides. We will be field-testing each division this coming weekend for the open house. I will be competing in the small division, Nash in the large. Good luck everyone who is putting theirs together this week. If you have any questions, you can find Nash at Techshop. Oh, and I will be launching flaming fire projectiles from mine so fair warning to the opposing team :-).

This is great week for mayhem.