Stainless Steel Juggling Balls. Theyre Made Of A Japanese Style Chainmail Weave, Normally A Flat Sheet,

Stainless steel juggling balls. They’re made of a Japanese style chainmail weave, normally a flat sheet, extrapolated up into three dimensions. The weave has a crystalline sort of nature, making a cubical form. They’re solid all the way through. Each cube contains 504 rings (I did the math) and takes quite some time to weave. I think this set of five took a bit longer to make than one of my dragon tails usually do.

I made a set for myself years ago, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed them. They’re fairly heavy, about a half pound each, which I know lots of jugglers wouldn’t go for, but I really like. They make a super satisfying jingling sound when you juggle. But the really great thing about them was that they’re totally indestructible. Before making these, I would wear out a set of juggling balls every year or two. I’ve been dropping juggling my set for over five years now, with no end in sight.

I’ve had these listed for order on my Etsy page for a while, and the listing sat unnoticed for quite some time. But someone recently bought a set of 5! So I got to make a big pile of them.

hi how are you?

I am well! Kind of sleepy, but that’s to be expected.

I love you.

d’awww. Shucks.

RELEASE THE KRAKEN!

This tentacular mask was designed for the MIT Mystery Hunt, which this year the theme was 20,000 Puzzles Under the Sea. (I was on the writing team because my team won the last year's hunt.) 

The entire weekend-long event was ocean-themed. The final bit, if a team solved all of the puzzles, was a series of activities and puzzles to be done in person on campus, and revolved around convincing the Kraken to allow you to take a piece of technological unobtanium from the Marianas Trench. 

I made the mask, while another member of the team made the rest of the super-spiky and awesome costume. 

I will be putting this design up for sale soon, but not immediately. This mask set the record for the most intricate leather piece I'd hand-cut, and I still need to take my paper template sketches for the pattern and transfer them to the computer so I can laser-cut future versions of this mask. 

But I wanted to share some photos of the costume in its final location.

For other tidbits from Hunt, check out drnautilus!

This sea serpent crown I also designed for the MIT Mystery Hunt. It's another installment in my ongoing efforts to design cool masks (or mask-like items) that work for people who wear glasses!

The fins ended up working better than I had dared hope when I drew this pattern out. They sweep way back, covering most of the side of your head. And the horns curving above them do a good job of complementing the image. For color, I stained it green and then painted over it with an iridescent blue acrylic paint, giving it the look of shallow water in the sun.

I just put this up for sale on my Etsy store! Oh man!

I had a quick question... How many scales and links do you use per average length tail?

My standard full-length tail pattern has 517 scales in it. (I checked off of the template that I have for laying out custom patterns.) As for rings, I think I’ll go through about 1500-2000 rings per tail, but I don’t have an accurate count on that.