4: geek clock
jun 22, 2013

i’d first seen this geek clock in a cafe not far from MIT’s campus (go figure) and had been enamored with it ever since. ben expressed, let us say, muted enthusiasm over decorating our house with a geek clock, so i settled for ordering one for my office. i came to doubt the clock’s geek cred, however, when i discovered that it couldn’t keep time. but $12 and an hour of my time (did you know that clock movements have like, 17 different measurements?) brought me a replacement movement from klockkit.com*. six months later i finally had a free hour to install it. it wasn’t exactly a flawless installation, but nothing that a little sandpaper, rasp, gorilla glue, leatherman, scissors, and a replacement washer couldn’t fix.

now we’ll see how it long it takes me to get around to hanging it…

*doesn’t anyone realize that replacing c’s with k’s actually DECREASES consumer confidence?

3: the left glove
mar 26, 2013

…and the other mitten. Same repair. Winter has to end, right??

2: the right glove
feb 25, 2013

the thumb on my glove was unraveling, so i grabbed some yarn and re-knit it. the purple yarn doesn’t match, but it made it easier to fix and now when i look down at my thumb i am reminded that i can fix things instead of just replacing them.

1: ironing board cover
feb 16, 2013

i’ll freely admit that i ruin things all the time by ignoring the “do not launder”, “dry clean only” or “spot wash” instructions. i also save a lot of money and chemicals by not dry cleaning things that just need a little woolite and a drying rack. but, let’s be honest, i also get impatient and stuff things in the dryer that ought not go in the dryer all the time. [cf. the great barbie hair-drying disaster of 1984]

the ironing board cover didn’t exactly disintegrate in the wash, it just developed a strange sort of lump at one end. i put it back on the ironing board and tried ignoring it but the lump wasn’t just hard to iron over, it also had a tendency to knock the iron over. and that seemed like a fire hazard. and one more reason not to iron, which is one more reason i fail to look like a grownup when i dress myself for work.

i actually went and bought a new cover from target, grumbling over the $25 price tag for the Michael Graves fabric print just because that’s the one that fits my brand of ironing board. but when i went to change the cover i got curious about The Lump. with some scissors i sliced in between the two layers of fabric and discovered it was just this wad of disintegrating foam. so i made the hole larger, turned the whole thing inside out, picked all the rotten foam out, reassembled minus that layer of foam, and poof! fixed. now if only i could make the damn thing stop wobbling.