Julia Child was a hacker

Embracing DIWO—the better way to DIY—at the Bay Area Maker Faire

Originally published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel June 5, 2010

I just learned a new definition for a word I thought I knew: hacker. A hacker—the hobbyist kind—does not have a negative association. It’s someone who makes innovative customizations or combinations of retail electronic and computer equipment. Put more simply, a hacker creates by combining things in a whole new way.

Perhaps hacking is at the essence of all American invention and innovation. Isn’t hacking what Julia Child did when she decided that the American housewife needed to learn to cook like the French? And wasn’t George Washington Carver hacking when he created so many uses for peanuts? And weren’t the founding fathers hackers when they dreamed up a country governed not by a monarch, but by its population?

I just attended my third Bay Area Maker Faire in San Mateo and came away more dazzled than ever before. The big picture—what Maker Faire is all about—is hacking, and hacking in such a way that everyone is part of the process. Children are learning to solder circuit boards right next to adults. Men are learning to crochet right next to women. It’s one big collaborative making frenzy, inspired by exhibitors large and small, who are there to amaze, educate, and share their particular passion.

MAKING NEW COMBINATIONS

If hacking is all about making new combinations, Maker Faire exhibitors showed us how. Some great combinations I witnessed were:

· The Human Powered Stage, which hosted hourly concerts, with mikes and amplifiers powered by audience members pedaling several stationary bicycles.

· The Coke and Mentos show, where two guys got drenched in sticky brown soda, and taught me why 108 2-liter bottles of Coke Zero and 648 Mentos candy can make a spectacular, synchronized geyser show.

· Musical iPhone apps, where I learned how to turn a cell phone into a trombone or a piano, and ways to connect and perform with other iPhone players throughout the world.

· Kinetic Steamworks, where a snow cone machine was powered by a 75-horsepower traction steam engine that belched steam and whistled periodically like a locomotive.

FREEDOM TO PLAY

To get the audience on the road to hacking, Maker Faire gave its audience plenty of opportunities to learn and play:

• Lego dumped a huge pile of their colorful plastic blocks on the floor, ready for assembly.
• Sparkfun Electronics sponsored a SMD (surface mount device) workshop, with long tables and plenty of instructors to learn the basics of soldering circuit boards.
• Lion Brand Yarn hosted beginner knitting and crocheting classes.
• Singer provided sewing machines in the Swap-O-Rama-Rama room, where tables piled high with second-hand clothing and embellishments were ready to be cut, sewn and altered into totally new fashions.
• The Maker Shed Store was full of how-to books and kits for sale—fun stuff like the electro-mechanical Blinkybug kit or more challenging stuff like the Daisy pocket-sized open source MP3 player kit.

DIWO (Do it with others)

If hacking is about working collaboratively, exhibitors also suggested some post-Faire ways to make that happen:

· Instructables.com is a virtual how-to and DIY community where people make and share step-by-step project instructions for free. Projects include just about anything you can make, and so, even if you consider yourself a more traditional crafts person, through weekly emails you’re exposed to everything from how to make Nutella cheesecake, to a mouse for people with hand disabilities, to an Altoids box barbeque, to a DVD drive iPod dock. Currently, Instructables has over 36,000 projects posted on their website, and they make it fairly simple to post your own. (I love this website.)

· Hacker Dojo is a non-profit actual community workspace for learning, sharing and making things. Located in their 600-square-foot facility in Mountain View, they hold classes, events, lectures, parties, DevCamps, DevHouses, and Hackathons. Their members make everything from code to robots to homemade bread, and believe in sharing not only ideas, but tools and materials. According to one member, “If it’s not nailed down you can use it.” They currently have about 150 members, and charge a monthly membership fee to cover overhead. Another Bay Area hackerspace represented at Maker Faire was Noisebridge in San Francisco.

· Make Magazine, who originally created the Maker Faire in 2006, publishes a quarterly magazine full of technology-oriented projects. Makezine.com, the online version, keeps a list of hackspaces, groups, and other DIY organizations at http://makezine.com/groups/index.csp. Also see its sister, Craftzine.com, for a wealth of craft projects and forums.

(As an aside to crafters without the technology background, don’t let wires and circuitry intimidate you. I threw my reticence aside, when I walked into a darkened exhibit hall at Maker Faire and saw a spectacular wearable computer fashion show, with textiles that sparkled and glowed with the help of conductive thread, fiber optic cable and LED beads. We can learn this stuff too.)

Some people might not find much merit in projects involving snow cones, Mentos or Blinkybugs. Of course Julia Child and George Washington Carver hacked their way into the history books with end-products as deceptively trivial as a cookbook and a jar of peanut butter. But I can’t help seeing the promise in the convergence of 80,000 people of all ages, over one weekend in May, gathering simply for the chance to learn, play, make and hack.

Note: If you missed Maker Faire in San Mateo this year, you can still catch the World Maker Faire in New York, September 25 and 26, 2010 at the New York Hall of Science. See makerfaire.com for details.

Create Ceramics for the Garden

Santa Cruz County has all the Resources You Need

Originally published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, May 8, 2010

It’s Spring, it’s warm, and I’m outside again, digging in the dirt, schlepping bags of potting soil, rearranging plants, looking for ways to make my garden look well tended, fresh and dazzling. Last August, after visiting the Sierra Azul Nursery sculpture garden in Watsonville, I got this crazy idea to make a ceramic totem pole. There were some great examples at Sierra Azul, including works by Carole DePalma, Jenni Ward and Jane Reyes. Although I love lots of large-scale garden art, it’s often made with materials, such as steel and glass, which I expect might require some expensive cutting and welding tools and a large workshop. But ceramics seemed more doable, although I had to first overcome my three-dimensional art phobia.

Perhaps my 7-step history with ceramics is not uncommon:

1. Had to take it in college (art major).
2. Struggled on the wheel.
3. Made lots of small, useless containers.
4. Took a summer class.
5. Learned to make pinched and coiled pots.
6. Liked the cool, squishy feel of the clay, but never made anything satisfying.
7. Convinced myself to stick with two-dimensional art in the future.

To begin my totem pole project I contacted an artist friend—Sally Diggory—who makes great ceramic garden sculpture and has a studio near my home. She was happy to teach me the basics in her studio. I brought in some photographs of shapes and pieces I liked, and we started with pinch pots.

Pinch Pots

Sally showed me how to start with two lumps of clay and end up with a rounded, hollow shape. The air trapped inside supports the shape until it is dry enough to poke a hole through. (Note: when creating a hole for sliding the pieces onto the center shaft of the totem pole, allow for shrinkage of the clay in firing.)

Slab-Building

Sally showed me how to roll out the clay with a rolling pin between two sticks to keep the thickness of the clay uniform. She then showed me how to drape the slabs over molds for shaping and drying a bit, before removing the molds and joining the two pieces into a hollow shape.

If you don’t have an artist friend with a ceramics studio, these two techniques can be easily done at home, on your own, without a lot of space. First, get a good book on hand-built pottery. One I really like is Handbuilt Pottery Techniques by Jacqui Atkin. Then, check in your kitchen, bathroom and garage for items that can stand-in for the ones you might buy at an art store, such as:

Cutting wire: An 18-inch piece of thin wire, with the ends wrapped around two short dowels for cutting off wedges of clay from the slab

• Large (about 24-inch square) piece of heavy canvas: Porous, non-stick surface for rolling out clay.
• Wooden rolling pin: The longer the better, for rolling out slabs.
• Two 18-inch pieces of wood, ¼ to ½-inch thick: These will act as roller guides on each side of the clay. The ends of the rolling pin rest on each guide to keep the thickness of the clay uniform.
• Rasp blade: Use to pare down clay surfaces, create surface texture.
• Small serrated knife: For cutting and trimming clay.
• Tools: For carving, cutting holes, modeling, poking.
• Large, flat wooden spoon: For beating, smoothing and texturing.
• Sponge (natural is better): To smooth clay, remove glaze.
• Brush and jar: To apply water or slip, and glaze.
• Tools for shaping, texturing and stamping: These are everywhere you look. Credit cards cut into shapes, old mascara wands, buttons, flea comb, zippers, meat tenderizers, shells, etc.
• Paint scraper: Useful for cleaning work surfaces.

(Note: Choose a well-ventilated room and an easily cleaned work surface. Avoid creating airborne dust by cleaning work surfaces, floor and clothing before spilled clay has a chance to dry.)

All of these materials can be found at Phoenix Ceramic Supply, located behind Costco in Santa Cruz. They also have a very knowledgeable staff to help you find the right clay, glazes and tools. Best of all, they can also fire your pieces onsite, with rates calculated by the amount of kiln space your piece requires. Finished pieces require a bisque firing and a glaze firing.

Clay Creation, just down the street from Charlie Hong Kong in Santa Cruz, offers another alternative: for a monthly fee, you an work in a studio space with all the clay, glazes, wheels, and tools you need in one place. In addition, instructors and classes are available several mornings and evenings each week, and they have an onsite kiln for firing. You can work at your own pace, when it’s convenient, and benefit from the inspiration, experience, and successes of other studio users.

Several artists in the county offer private classes. One is Jenni Ward, whose ceramic work (fanciful totems, flowers, and hanging pieces) can currently be seen at NewGarden Nursery in Live Oak—a relatively new retail venue for outdoor sculpture combined with unique plants in Santa Cruz.

(Clay Creation instructor Geoffrey Nicastro also has lovely cats and abstract ceramic pieces on display at NewGarden Nursery.) Jenni teaches classes at her Earth Art Studio in Aptos, catering to school-age kids. Her students are currently working on slab-built birdhouses, which will be for sale as part of Ward’s spring studio sale May 1 and 2.

I also took a recent workshop form Elaine Pinkernell, whose specialty is stoneware and raku wall pieces. She uses roofing paper as templates and to mold slabs into rounded shapes, and loves to create high-contrast textures—both very useful techniques in my totem pole project. Elaine teaches at Blossom Hill Crafts in San Jose, and at the Corralitos Cultural Center, which offers art workshops and includes the Corralitos Cultural Center Art Gallery, which currently is showing work by numerous local artists in a variety of media.

Since I started in September, I was hoping to have my totem pole completed by now, but other projects have delayed its completion. I’ve got three sections bisque fired and ready for glaze, and two more ready for bisque firing. I don’t know how cohesive the whole project will be in the end, but a ceramic totem pole has proved to be a good project for a beginner like me, in a county as full of resources and inspiration as Santa Cruz.

Resource list:

“Sculpture Is: 2010” at Sierra Azul Nursery and Gardens, (May 31 to October 31), 2660 East Lake Avenue (Highway 152), Watsonville, http://www.pvarts.org/

Phoenix Ceramic Supply, 350-D Coral Street, Santa Cruz, (831) 454-9629

Clay Creation, 1125B Soquel Avenue, Santa Cruz, (831) 429-1645, www.claycreation.org

NewGarden Nursery & Landscaping, 2440 Mattison Lane, Santa Cruz, (831) 462-1610, www.newgardenlandscaping.com

Earth Art Studio/Jenni Ward, (Spring studio sale May 1-2), 767 Cathedral Drive, Aptos, (831) 818-9569, earthartstudio@comcast.net

Geoffrey K. Nicastro, http://galleryforrent.com/

Corralitos Cultural Center/Art Gallery, 127 Hames Road, Corralitos, http://www.corralitosculturalcenter.org/

Elaine Pinkernell, http://elainepinkernell.com/

Use #6 plastic to make jewelry

Shrink and Be Merry

Originally published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel April 3, 2010

KNOW YOUR RECYCLING SYMBOLS?

Keep your reading glasses on and let’s take a trip to your refrigerator. Open it up and grab the first plastic container you see. Hold it up in the air and squint at the bottom until you can make out the tiny number inside the triangle. Check out a few more containers and you’ll find that there are a whole lot of #1s (soda, juice, salad dressing) and #5s (yogurt, syrup, ketchup), and an occasional #2 (the milk jug) or #7 (“other” like Tupperware). You probably won’t see too many #3s (PVC pipe, outdoor furniture, vinyl siding) or #4s (plastic bags). But there might be a #6 in there, holding a dozen eggs or those leftovers you couldn’t finish at the restaurant the night before.

Polystyrene (also known as #6 PS) comes in a white, foam variety (packing peanuts, Styrofoam cups, meat trays), but also in a clear, rigid form, most commonly used by the food-service industry for to-go clam-shells and disposable drinking cups. Because the foam variety is full of air and the more solid variety is molded into throwaway containers, it’s very lightweight and easily carried away by wind and water currents. For this reason, and because it’s so commonly used away from home, #6 is an abundant form of trash accumulating across the American landscape.

HOW IS POLYSTYRENE UNIQUE?

Stay with me here, as I attempt to explain why polystyrene, unlike many other plastics, is an amazing material for crafts (the clear kind, NOT the foam variety). All the plastics we create from petroleum are formed from chains of polymers linked together in a variety of ways. A thermoplastic is a polymer that turns to a liquid when heated and solidifies to a very glassy state when cooled. Thermoplastic polymers differ from thermosetting polymers (Bakelite) as they can be re-melted and remolded. Polystyrene is a unique thermoplastic, in that, when heated, its chains of polymers will stay in the same conformation as they melt and solidify. So, you don’t just end up with a plastic blob after heating, but a shrunken replica of your original shape. A rectangle will still be a rectangle—it’ll just be smaller and thicker.

FUN FOR KIDS AND ADULTS

Shrinking #6 plastic for crafts (again, not the foam variety) is a really cool thing to watch. As it heats up, a flat piece will roll up, twist this way and that, and finally, resume its original flat formation. What starts out as a flimsy piece of brittle plastic is magically transformed into a shiny, glass-like trinket. Colors can also be added in a number of ways, and become quite concentrated after shrinking.

WHAT YOU NEED

To cut the plastic: Scissors and hole punch

To decorate the plastic: Sharpies, stamp pad ink, acrylic paints, colored pencils, fine-grit sandpaper

To shrink the plastic: Oven and non-corrugated cardboard

To avoid breathing any fumes created in the heating process: Use a toaster oven and do your heating outdoors on a patio table.

To see what’s possible: Go to www.etsy.com/ and search for “shrink plastic jewelry” to see what artists are creating with shrink plastic.

WHAT YOU DO

Start with a clear, clean, flat piece of #6 plastic. Cut into any shape you want. Amount of shrinkage will vary, but count on a 3-inch piece shrinking to about a 1 ¼-inch piece, or to 45% of its original size. Use a hole punch (for stringing as jewelry), decorative scissors or punches as desired.

Color the plastic piece with rubber-stamp designs (heat set and permanent pigment inks hold best on the slippery surface) or Sharpies. To get color pencils, acrylic paints or other inks to adhere better, sand one side of the plastic with fine-grit sandpaper.

Preheat the oven to 300-350 degrees. Put the plastic on a piece of non-corrugated cardboard in the oven. Watch through the oven door and remove the piece (with a potholder) on its cardboard tray once it is done shrinking and is again flat.

A MILLION VARIATIONS

There are a whole lot of ways to vary this basic technique. Here are a few:

To make a bead, roll up a long strip of decorated shrink plastic on a thin, metal knitting needle, wooden dowel or skewer, securing it in place with a twist tie. Using a heat gun (found in craft stores for about $15), heat the rolled plastic on a tile until it shrinks completely. To add texture, wrap the hot beat with an unmounted rubber stamp and press.

To add texture to a flat piece of plastic, layer two or three pieces together and cover top and bottom with a Teflon ironing sheet (found in notions section of fabric store). Iron the plastic with a medium hot iron until it shrinks, waves and then flattens. Remove the top Teflon sheet and immediately press a rubber stamp into the hot plastic.

To make a ring, heat a strip of plastic about 7½-inches long by ¾-inch wide. Use a paper cutter for straight cuts, and round the corners off with scissors. Decorate the plastic. Find an object about the diameter of your finger to mold the ring around, such as the handle of a wooden spoon, market pen, or lip balm tube. Preheat the oven and heat the strip on non-corrugated cardboard until shrunk and flattened. Wearing leather gloves or mittens, take the cardboard tray out of the oven and quickly shape the plastic around your mold. If the plastic hardens before it is correctly shaped, reheat it in the oven.

Shrink plastic is also sold under a variety of brand names, with different opacities, colors and finishes. It also comes in an ink-jet printer variety. Some has a frosted (sanded) finish so that you can decorate your pieces with colored pencils, chalk, fingernail polish, felt tip pens, make up, spray paint, pastels, and other inks. Chalks and pencils or any water-soluble colorant will need to be sealed with varnish or lacquer after baking.

Other plastics that can be heated for amazing effects are Tyvek (ironed between Teflon ironing sheets) and sheet-protectors (beads can be made with yarns, fabric, or thin paper rolled up inside before ironing between Teflon sheets). A great book featuring these plastic crafts and more is Creative Embellishments for Paper, Jewelry, Fabric, and More by Sherrill Kahn.

Home Depot vs. DIY Academy

Two cities; two days; two workshops

Which class teaches you “How to paint a wall” better?

Originally published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel March 6, 2010

The Home Depot class started out badly. First, the manager couldn’t allow me to take pictures. This was expected since I had forgotten to call ahead for corporate clearance. But then they didn’t start on time. The instructor seemed harried and put out. She was the only one working in the paint department on a sunny Saturday morning, there was still a long line of customers, and although she apologized, she wasn’t sure how soon the class would start. So I roamed around the store, and finally, 20 minutes later, she had set up a table and supplies near the color chip display, and was ready to begin the Interior Painting class.

Then things started to get a lot better. First, I was the only student in the class, so she asked me exactly what I wanted to learn—basic painting or faux finishes?--and she was willing to teach directly to that. Second, she shook off the distress of a busy morning of paint mixing, and expressed a very real enthusiasm for paint. “I’m really passionate about color,” she said. Kristina Revetria has worked in the Watsonville Home Depot paint department for 2 years and really knows her stuff. “I pretty much live here,” she said. When another shopper asked if she could join the class and learn about faux finishes, Kristina very willingly added specific decorative painting techniques to her basic demonstration.

By the end of the one-hour plus class, she had opened 6 gallons of paint, 2 containers of spackling, 1 pint of glaze, used several brushes, rollers, sponges and paint trays, and had answered every question her two students could come up with. She had clearly learned a lot about paint and painting from personal experience, but also from teaching the class itself. “The cool thing is, I get contractors in these clinics and they show me a whole new way of doing things.”

Not only did I learn the basics of painting a wall, but I also learned some painting tricks such as:

• Although sponging creates an interesting decorative texture, just using a simple plastic bag for dabbing on a paint looks even better
• Although you can buy expensive textured rollers for faux painting, you can also simply wrap an old t-shirt around a roller, fasten in on with rubber bands, and create similarly great effects
• If you have a gallon of paint in a color you’re tired of, you can bring it back to Home Depot and have them add new tints to create a new color you’d rather have
• From fellow student Judy Kirker: If you’re not sure what color will look good on your walls, the Buena Vista Landfill in Watsonville has a recycling center with cans of paint you can take home and try out for free (you can also bring unwanted cans of paint there for someone else to try)
• As work permits, Kristina is willing to set up impromptu classes to answer customer questions with a demonstration

I took the Home Depot class to provide counterpoint to another class I took earlier the week called “Paint Like a Pro,” offered by the recently opened DIY Academy in South San Jose. This small, strip-mall facility offers classes in a number of home-improvement areas, including painting, tiling and wiring.

The fun thing about DIY Academy is that its classes are completely hands-on. Their website (www.DIYacademy.com) says “expect to get dirty,” and so everyone shows up in their grubbies and is assigned a partner and a tiny room to “finish” by the end of the class. The Drywall a Room and Trim Out a Room classes had obviously happened before ours, since there were nails to be set, holes to be filled and sanded, and gaps to be caulked before we could start priming and painting—just like in real life. Each team was given just the right amount of time to master each technique in their room, before gathering for the next demonstration.

The class was taught by a veteran paint contractor, Santa Cruz native Chad Buckner, with 17 years of experience. The two Academy founders, Jeff Vasek and Steve Gross, were also on hand to help late arrivals catch up, answer questions, and wash brushes and buckets between primer and paints. The class was geared to beginners, but even a somewhat experienced painter might be surprised by all the time-saving techniques practiced by professionals—things as elemental as using the appropriate brush or roller, or properly loading a brush or roller with paint. The instructor had a more efficient way of doing just about every step.

My favorite part of the class was learning how to clean a brush. I’d always considered buying expensive brushes a waste, since I could never wash out enough paint to keep the brush flexible for the next job. But in this class, the instructor recommended buying the $15 brush, and then showed you how to property wash and store it to keep it like new indefinitely. (Sorry, you’ll have to take the class for this trade secret.)

You can see a complete listing of classes and schedules, and enroll, on the DIY Academy and Home Depot websites. Some of the DIY Academy workshops, like Basic Home Electricity and Tile a Bathroom Floor, are all-day weekend classes, while others, such as Tile a Backsplash and Paint Like a Pro, are half-day or evening classes. By contrast, Home Depot usually teaches one-hour workshops that are repeated every weekend, and sometimes geared to the seasons.

Since the 1-hour Home Depot class was free and the 3 ½-hour DIY Academy class was $150, I was afraid the former would pale in comparison with the latter. But, they turned out to be two very different classes that actually complemented each other in content and style. I would recommend the Home Depot class if you have a very specific question about a painting technique or product, and the DIY Academy class if you want to improve your painting skills overall and become a more proficient painter.

Van Gogh and Vinyl

The risky business of making art

As published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, February 6, 2010

Royal Talens, a Dutch manufacturer of artist materials, makes a line of student-grade paints, pencils and pastels under the brand name of the famous Dutch Impressionist, Van Gogh. “All Van Gogh products,” one vendor advertises, “are non-toxic—perfect for use in the classroom.”

Art supplies in use today that may still contain lead pigments include inks, dyes, paints and pastels, wax crayons, and colored glazes for pottery or glassware. Leaded solders are also still used in stained glass and enamel manufacture, glass-blowing, and jewelery-making.

Of course, lead isn’t the only hazardous material found in artists’ studios. The toxicity of chemical solvents, silica dust, and heavy metals contained in art supplies or in fumes produced in art processes, is well-documented, and art suppliers are required by law to label their products with warnings of acute or chronic health hazards (but not necessarily a list of ingredients). Wise artists take seriously the recommended precautions such as gloves, mask, goggles, and a well-ventilate workspace, when they choose to use potentially hazardous materials. But what happens when there is no warning label or material data safety sheet?

Today’s artists are not afraid to use all manner of unconventional materials in their work. For example, encaustic and fiber artist Daniella Woolf—whose large-scale pieces are currently on display in the Rydell Fellows exhibit at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History—has incorporated the humblest of items—tea bags, eucalyptus leaves, carpenters’ shims, drywall tape, and all sorts of found papers—into her work, often in massive quantities. Does she worry about exposure to toxic materials—especially undocumented ones?

“Yes, it’s a huge concern of mine,” she says. “In the 60s and 70s, before very much was known, I worked with resins. I dyed 100 pounds of jute sisal without a mask or gloves. I used to blow my nose and purple would come out. I feel lucky to be alive,” she says.

“There are some things that don’t leave your body. I have high cholesterol and no one else in my family does. So I went to an acupuncturist who said, ‘You’re an artist. You’ve been around toxic chemicals your whole life. Your liver is probably screaming.’”

Today, she’s very careful to use gloves, work in a well-ventilated room, keep her heated materials at safe temperatures, and avoid anything her nose, body, or someone knowledgeable tells her is unsafe. She admits that it’s a risky business, but “I know how to keep it safe,” she says.

I started thinking more seriously about the relative safety of certain art materials when I considered making crafts from recycled vinyl. I came across a how-to sheet on sewing a vinyl-pocketed charging station at Jo-Ann Fabrics; and then stumbled upon a series of beautifully painted bowls made from heat-shaped vinyl records at http://eyepopart.blogspot.com/. As I ventured father into the possibilities of vinyl, I discovered that there’s a whole section of differing thicknesses of vinyl for sale at the fabric store (what do folks make with all this?) and numerous tutorials online for making bowls, hair bands and clocks from vinyl records. But is crafting with vinyl—an extremely controversial, yet ubiquitous product—a safe thing?

Vinyl, also know as PVC (polyvinyl chloride), is an inexpensive plastic so versatile, the list of products made from it is exhaustive. Over 50% of PVC manufactured is used in construction—in everything from window frames to rain gutters to wall coverings to flooring to plumbing. The rest is in your clothing, your car, your kitchen, your office, your backyard, your children’s toys, your doctor’s office—even in your back pocket (credit cards). It’s impossible to avoid the stuff.

But, if you’ve ever seen the film “Blue Vinyl” you know that the production, use and disposal of PVC are not without inherent risks to human health and the environment. The California Assembly even approved a bill last June (AB 1329) to reduce PVC in plastic packaging. Reusing vinyl—as in keeping all plastics out of the landfill—can be a good thing. But what if, in the process of heating the vinyl (to mold a record), you were exposing yourself to harmful gasses?

One green writer, Umbra Fisk, recognizes the dilemma between the relative positives of reuse vs. the potential for harm on her website “Grist.” After reading lots of anecdotal and scientific evidence on the Web, I’m inclined to agree with Fisk when she says, “Can I find out if heating the vinyl enough to reform it into a bowl is harmful to the crafter or the eater? No. But from what we know about vinyl, its ability to offgas, and the poisonous additives that may or may not be in records (lead!), I'm persuaded that vinyl fruit bowls are a fun item we can do without.”

That said, (and please feel free to consider me stupid), I did go ahead and make a vinyl record bowl. I opened all the kitchen windows, turned on the range fan, used the second (mostly dormant) oven, washed every tool I used (hands, mittens, cookie sheet, metal bowl) in hot soapy water afterwards, and won’t use the record bowl to hold anything edible. In retrospect, it may have even been wise to cover the cookie sheet and molding bowls with foil, which could have been discarded afterwards.

Of course, whether the acrylic paint I added to the surface is also hazardous when heated is another question. The point I’m belaboring here is, do your homework, take precautions, work smartly and safely. You’ve got a world of information at your (gloved) fingertips that Van Gogh never had.