For our family, the Maker Faire this year was all about the soft stuff.
Last year's highlight was the time the kids spent in the Survival Research Labs junk art-making area, which resulted in the creation of the Blinglish Word Wide Web, among other things.
This year, though, despite the obvious attractions of the rockets,
mutant bicycles,
and giant cupcakes,
what really got us engaged was sewing. I'd post pictures of the creatures the children made at the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Folk Art booth, but they have taken them to bed with them.
I missed the fabric arts pavilion last year and was very glad to catch it this time. There were some great makers there. Ada loved the plush sub-atomic particles from Julie Peasley's Particle Zoo. My favorites were the felted creatures made by Jackie Huang of woolbuddy.com.
The other highlight for the kids was catching their Uncle Scott give a talk on the Center Stage about "Using the Body to Design the Body." He shared some background to his recent work in creating beautiful, customized, and (amazingly) printed prostheses. He even, very sweetly, slipped a slide of him creating art with his nephew and niece into his presentation, which had them pretty chuffed.
