Spoonflower

The actual fabric! (rotated)

The design

Spoonflower inspired me to start designing fabrics that I could use to make Arm Pillozzz. Spoonflower is a neat site that allows you to upload images and tile them to create patterns. Then you can order them or just post them online so that other people can order them. You get 10% of any sales and you get a 10% discount on your own fabrics. Ordering a pattern on the basic cotton fabric is $17.50 per yard length (the rolls are 42" wide), so it's expensive compared to commercial fabrics. But you can make pretty much anything you want. It's like a zazzle/cafepress type site for fabric.  Most of my patterns are rigidly geometric, but I think I'm a pretty creative geometrist (Geometrician? Geometer? Whatever, I like geometry.) I think pattern design is math intensive considering that to effectively repeat a unit block, the boundaries of the block have to be consistent when repeated. Also, there are a lot of colors, and the way they interact and compliment each other is very interesting. Here's my first pattern!

Kinekt Design Gear Ring

This gear ring actually moves! I'm generally not a fan of jewelry (I'm a dude), but this thing is pretty sweet. It would give me something to play with at all times, but I just wonder if the skin on my other fingers would ever get caught in the teeth. And I hope when it gets dirty (as it inevitably will) it doesn't seize, but it is made from  stainless steel so there are no worries about it rusting. All in all, a very neat idea that I would actually wear, for a reasonable price. Check it out at Kinekt Design.