I don’t remember how I came across Boris Mocka, but I found out that he has invented many ways to tie a tie. I found his official website and saw that he has a few books that he wrote with step-by-step images on how to tie some really cool tie knots. Though the price was quite high, I decided to treat myself and buy his second book, “One Million Plus Ways to Tie a Tie”.

I didn’t realise that it was going to be a digital file instead of an actual physical book, so I was surprised when I immediately received a pdf attachment to my email upon payment. After a brief moment of shock, I remembered that I had done book binding before and saw this as a new project to work on!

I started playing Monster Hunter Now (after starting with Ingress and then Pokemon Go) and my daughter then wanted to play too.

I wasn’t aware of the other mainline Monster Hunter games, but I somehow came across Monster Hunter World the board game. So, because we both like MH Now, we bought the board game.

We played a few times on the floor, and the last time we played it, our cat sat down in the middle of our game. We were not able to continue, so I started to think of how to avoid this problem again. I had heard of fancy custom table top gaming tables which did look good, but there was nowhere in the house to put a large custom table. I kept thinking, then came to the idea of a folding table that can be put away under the couch.

My daughter discovered “Spidey and His Amazing Friends” on Youtube Kids. She still has the Spiderman and Spider-Gwen soft toys I made her in 2016, but she wanted new ones that look like the new animated series spider characters. So, we went to Spotlight and bought more sheets of felt in all the required colours. While we were in Spotlight she also saw a mermaid scale print fabric that she really liked and wanted a mermaid outfit. That resulted in us looking through catalogues and then finding the patterns for a skirt and top (maybe I’ll write another post with pictures).

Back to Spidey and his Amazing Friends. I modified the pattern for Spider Gwen’s hood to be bigger so that the ends could connect down under her chin. The previous Spider Gwen’s eye outlines were sewn with thread, so to make them stand out more this time, I cut and sewed on felt. For the spider icons on their fronts and backs, I ended up cutting these free hand while looking at the images. I found it too difficult to use chalk to draw the outlines first.

I started with Spidey and I tried to sew this as neat as possible by sewing him entirely inside out using a sewing machine. I left a small opening (too small) with which to turn him inside out. I managed to do it, but the tight fit and forceful pushing damaged the felt. So for Spider Gwen and Miles, I sewed the head and body inside out separately, then attached the heads to the bodies sewing by hand from the outside. Some of the spider icons ended up wonky, and Spidey’s spider on his back has a detached leg that occurred while turning him inside out.

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Now after almost a year, we decided we needed stands to hold our sheets with the guitar chords. Also, for a few months now, my wife has been telling me to remove a art station I had made (unfortunately I did not take photos of that stand). That art station was made from a pallet with metal standing frame that was from transporting a Microsoft Surface Hub. I was able to take this home from work, and I modified it to hold a large roll of paper with a flat vertical board so that my daughter could paint or draw on the paper, and then I would rip it off and pull down another sheet ready for her to start again. Some of these paintings and drawings were then used as wrapping paper.

As my daughter was not really using the art station much anymore, I gave in and took the stand apart. Removing the boards from the stand left the large pallet at the bottom, along with two metal stands. I have now turned the two metal stands into two music sheet holders. I grabbed some pallet wood offcuts and started making a holder that I could bolt to the stand via some existing holes on the stands. Then when I described to my wife what I was going to build, she said she would like it to be adjustable to seating at different heights. After thinking for some minutes, I came up with a minor modification to my original design.

The mechanism consists of three bits of wood: panel to attach to the metal frame with slide adjustment, protruding piece to allow the board (for the sheets of paper to lay on) to be angled, and the final piece to stop the board from sliding off. In order to be height adjustable, I had to cut a slot in the main panel to fit a bolt through with a wingnut for easy adjustment.

The metal frame also has 4 existing holes so that the panel can be attached via any of these holes for the major height adjustment. Minor height adjustment is made via the wingnuts and slot in the panel piece.

The next images shows the stand at high position for seated at a dining chair, or low position for seated on a short stool.

It also turns out that the back of the metal frame can be used to hold the guitar, though not very well. I am thinking of how to make this better.

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I quite like the Loki knot, especially viewed from the side. I think that the knot does look like the horns from Loki’s crown, and the two colours I tried this knot in reminded me of artwork for Loki from a mobile game, Marvel Puzzle Quest.

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When I was watching the video on Elli’s Waterfall, my daughter initially suggested I use a blue tie. Then almost instantly, she changed her mind and told me instead to use my orange tie. She told me that orange would be the perfect colour for a waterfall in the setting sun. I told her it was a great idea, which led me to remember that I had heard of a lava waterfall somewhere before. An online search quickly brought up the Yosemite Firefall.

. Yosemite firefall image found from the Travel Caffeine website.

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I never thought that I would become a cat owner. I had always been a bit afraid of cats in the sense that they would scratch me. I’ve had experiences of cats climbing onto my lap and putting their claws into my leg! Throughout 2020 we had been talking as a family about having a pet, and in particular, a puppy. I like dogs (I had one when I was a kid) but I didn’t want the responsibility of owning and training a dog. So I kept saying no to a dog. I don’t remember how, but one day, my daughter changed her mind and decided she wanted a kitten. At first I was against the idea, but eventually I came around to the idea, and we started actively looking for a kitten. What finally convinced me, was the thought that having a cat around would mean no rats and mice. Earlier during the year, we had to get Rentokill in to catch rats in the roof space. At the time of writing this post, our cat has caught and killed one rat, so he has earned his keep!

I told a friend from work that I was looking for a kitten, then sometime in late October 2020, she told me her sister had come across 3 abondoned newborn kittens in a field on her farm. My daughter picked out one she liked, and they helped to raise the kittens to a bit bigger, before bringing “Beany” to us (my daughter came up with the name). He was still very small and incredibly cute when he came to us in December 2020.

Despite not being a cat person in the past, I had always thought that if I ever did end up with a cat, I would want to build some climbing shelves for the cat. So, as Beany started to get bigger and learn to jump and climb, I started to plan then build the shelves. I looked up many design options, and settled on a simple design of a ramp then offset shelves, with the highest shelf to have a hole cut out for Beanmy to climp up through.

Beany watched me build the shelves and was very curious as it was going up. Once it was up, he was a bit hesitant to start with, but after some encouragement, he was away racing up and down. Recently I put a mat up on the top shelf, and from time to time, he will climb all the way up to sleep, possibly to get away from the constant attention of my daughter!

Beany has recently been bypassing the ramp, and instead jumps directly onto the lowest shelf, so I have removed the ramp.

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When using my personal laptop, I have been using it on top of a box while sitting on the floor. The sitting on the floor is not too bad, as I don’t tend to use my laptop for much apart from updating this blog. However, I’ve been thinking for a while now that it would be nice to replace the box with a better mini desk (but I would still be sitting on the floor). I could then make a platform to be able to use a keyboard (and not just the laptop keyboard).

I hunted around my garden shed to find suitable pallet wood, and my plan had to be designed based on what was available. I sketched out a few designs before settling on one, from which I then colour coded the sketch based on the three different pallet wood thicknesses I had.

The blue planks were the thinner planks that make up the pallet loading surface. I only had 3 of these planks and I needed 6 for this table, so I had to make the width of the table half the length of these planks in order to have enough. The orange and purple were the structural braces from pallets, but the purple ones are slightly thicker (and denser) than the orange.

Now I can use this set up to write future blog posts!

Update: My daughter discovered that she could sit on the keyboard stand to play games.

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With a normal length tie, the cobra knot will end up a bit short.

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I somehow came across 8pen in 2011 and have never gone back to a standard layout keyboard on an Android device. Over the years, I kept searching for even more alternative keyboards, and have come across five in total. I switch between most of the keyboards, and I am listing them below in the order of most usage. I also always turn off word prediction on any keyboard I use as I have just never found it useful.

However, despite Gentleman Jim’s advice, I decided to buy a pattern from Spotlight; Simplicity 9192. I also purchased some thin interface fabric and a length of cotton fabric with Pukekos printed on. I chose cotton as I heard that it is easier to work with for a beginner (as opposed to common tie fabrics of polyester or silk), and I decided on thin interface as I wanted a thinner tie (hard to buy ties that are thin). From the pattern, I cut out the smaller width tie pattern (there were two patterns of different widths) and then traced the outlines of all pattern pieces onto thick cardboard. I then cut the cardboard pattern using a craft knife.

The cardboard patterns were then placed onto the fabric following the instructions to cut on the bias (on the 45-degree angle). The bias cut of the fabric is stretchy and therefore will drape around the neck nicely. The same was done for the interface material. I then machine sewed the three pieces of the tie and also the ends. Next was to sew the two pieces of interfacing, again using the sewing machine.

The next step was challenging. I probably should have overlaid the paper pattern and folded along the indicated fold lines, but I didn’t. Instead, I plowed ahead and eyed up where to fold the tie. Ironing the folds helped to crease the fabric and keep the tie folded. However, I had trouble getting the tie symmetric along the length, and I had to re-iron mulitple times. The end result was that I managed to get the front of the tie fairly symmetrical, but the folded edges at the back of the tie did not meet in the centre.

I placed the interface into the tie and it managed to fit in just fine. The final step was to then slip stitch up the length of the tie to keep the stitches as invisible as possible. I followed the hand stitching part of the following tie making video.

I wanted to use only one length of thread, to avoid having to knot off and start again part way up the tie. I applied beeswax lip balm to the thread to try and prevent the thread from tangling. I think it did help, but I did end up tangling the thread twice. The first time I had to tie it off and start again. The second time, I reduced the tangle as small as possible, then forcibly pulled the tangle through each stitch. Both times were near the end of the tie, so I was probably tired by then and was losing concentration.

With my tie finished, I tried it on, and then realised why ties are normally made from polyester or silk; cotton ties do not slide very well, so it is difficult to tie the knots. So, I came up with my own knot that is loose and airy. My colleague came up with the name for the knot: Supernova. The circular shaped shell of the knot reminded him of a supernova nebula.

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My ties were just draped over the clothes rail in the walk in wardrobe in a big mess that made it hard to grab a tie without causing most of the others to fall off. I decided that what I needed was a tie rack; and it had to be custom made to fit in an available space that couldn’t be used for anything else. I wanted it to take up minimal space when stored away, but with the ability to access the ties with ease. I looked on Pinterest for ideas, and saw many different types of tie storage options. I settled on a design of a slide out rack with wooden pegs forming two rows to drape the ties. Due to the orientation of the walk in wardrobe, when stored away, the ties face towards the clothes rail; the rack needs to slide out and then swing around.

Construction materials:

• Plank of pallet wood cut into two pieces
• Hinge
• Ball bearing runner
• 8 mm diameter wooden dowel rod
• smaller diameter wooden dowel rod
• wooden beads
• various screws

To make the rods to drape the ties, I used the wooden beads and the two widths of wooden dowels. I widened the holes in the wooden beads for the smaller diameter dowel to fit into, and also drilled out the centre of the larger dowel for the smaller diameter dowel to fit into.

The wooden plank was cut into two pieces and joined with the hinge. Holes were drilled into one of the wooden planks for the tie rods to insert into. The ball bearing runner was attached to the wardrobe wall, before finally attaching the tie rack to the runner.

There was just enough space for two rows of 8 rods, which was just enough for my 16 ties. When my tie collection grows, I will need to construct another storage rack.

• Trinity
• Eldredge

I then found a number of variations on these, as well as a combination Trinity-Eldredge.

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• Shaping difficulty factor (shaping_diff)
• Number of ties (no_ties)
• Number of steps (no_steps)
• Number of times looping through (no_loops)
• Fold in half (fold_in_half)
• End tied with (end_tied)

The equation takes the form of base (modified shaping difficulty) modified by multipliers (all the other input parameters):

The difficulties are then normalised and multiplied by ten to give a rating out of 10.

Below are tables detailing the base and multipliers applied to each tie knot.

This idea started from McDonalds Happy Meals. Two of the “gifts” with the meals were the books:

• Ten Kooky Kiwis
• Ten Plucky Penguins

My daughter liked these books, and I found out that there were two more in the series. So I purchased the following books from Books for Kids.

• Ten Goofy Geckos
• Ten Greedy Goats

These two books came with CDs, but I didn’t have a CD player. 💡 So the idea was born to make a CD player out of parts I had lying around the garage. I found enough parts to make 2 CD players, so that is what I did. These parts were from other interests and things I used to do (as well as some fortunate and unfortunate events).

I used to remove factory installed stereo head units from cars (my own and family members), and install head units that had CD players and USB ports. I learnt 2 important lessons early on when installing head units.

I used to have my own desktop PC and was lucky enough to inherit PC’s from other people who no longer required them. I kept these going for as long as possible by upgrading components. Eventually, these all died, and now I am left with only a 10 year old laptop (which I am using to write this blog). One PC died when the motherboard caught on 🔥 (probably too much dust), and others just due to old age. So, I had more components lying around that I could make use of.

I have also had some mishaps with mobile phones. One particular fateful day, I had two mobile phones in my pocket when I was at the beach (specifically at Cathedral Cove on day 1 of a 5 day getaway). I had my back turned to the water, so I did not notice a big wave coming. This knocked me off my feet, and of course, sea water and mobile phones don’t go well together! 😢

These interests, benefits, and mishaps gave me the components that I needed for this project.

For the first CD player, the list of components were:

• Car stereo head unit
• Car speaker
• PC power supply unit

The trick to be able to use a PC power supply unit outside of a PC (not connected to a motherboard) is to connect the green wire (power on) to one of the black wires (ground). I was then able to make use of the 12V cables to power the head unit (good info on how to convert a power supply unit can be found here).

For the second CD player, the list of components were:

• Car stereo head unit
• PC power supply unit
• Android robot usb speaker
• PC USB socket
• Audio jack (from the dead Samsung Galaxy S2)
• Audio extension cable

I didn’t want to cut the wires from the android speaker (it requires 5V power via USB and has a 3.5mm audio plug), so I had to scavenge a PC USB socket and connect that to a 5V supply set of cables from the power supply unit. Then I needed to find a 3.5mm audo jack for the android speaker to plug into. I initially investigated the use of the audio jacks from the PCs, but they were all part of sound cards or motherboards and were not easy to remove and use. Then I remembered I had some dead mobile phones, and disassembling one revealed that the audio jack was on a small circuit board of it’s own (not part of the main phone circuit board). I was able to solder the audio output wires from the head unit to this audio jack circuit boad, but I still needed an extension for it. Fortunately, I also had an audio extension cable lying around which was perfect for this project.

🎉, 2 CD players! One in my daughters room for her to use, and one on my pallet stand up desk to raise my laptop on.

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