All posts by Lenore Edman

About Lenore Edman

Co-founder of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories.

Pumpkin Spice Truffles

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Truffles

The fall holidays are fantastic ones: Halloween is all about costumes and candy and Thanksgiving is all about food. Here is how to make one of our favorite fall treats: pumpkin spice truffles. (Yum.)

To get the note-perfect flavor of traditional American pumpkin pie, we use the spice ratio from the old-standard can of Libby’s pumpkin (here is the recipe from under the label). Bittersweet chocolate has a stronger flavor than that of pumpkin, so we actually use twice the spice of a pie for a small batch (well, small for us batch) of truffles. The amazing thing is that these pumpkin-free wonders taste uncannily like pumpkin pie. Not that anyone will have trouble distinguishing your truffles and a pie, but you just might get asked, “Are these actually made with pumpkin?”
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Just in time for halloween: Bats

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bats hanging like fruit

The animals that everyone hears about from Australia are things like koalas, wallabies and platypuses. But the real stars, as far as I’m concerned, are the bats. We saw a few bats in the zoos we went to, including ghost bats and flying foxes. But just walking along in the afternoon in the botanical gardens in Sydney, we looked up and happened to notice that what was hanging from the trees wasn’t leaves or fruit – it was bats. Hundreds of flying foxes. They chattered at each other and flew from one roost to another. While the echidnas were awfully cute bumbling along at the zoo, and the cockatoos were fun to watch at the park, it was the bats in the garden that stole the show.

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Flannel Pillow Case Mod

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Goway, I'm sleeping For a group trip I’m going on, I was given an inflatable neck pillow by the travel agency. It seems like a good idea: it packs compactly and is still reasonably comfortable to rest my head on. However, it is made with flocked vinyl, and reeks of plastic softeners. My solution: make a cotton flannel cover. It has a much better texture, can be easily washed, and it even hides the silly name of the travel agency.

cover number one

I took a scrap of leftover flannel and cut it out in the shape of the pillow with the fold of the flannel on the straight edge of the top of the pillow. I then stitched around the perimeter, leaving one side open so I could stuff the pillow in. Crowning touch: I put a button hole where the valve sticks out so it can be inflated and deflated with the cover on. (More photos here.) The net result is an improved pillow, which did help me sleep while I was packed in a 747-400 sardine can for 14 hours.

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Bicycle Seat Cover Project

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pretty, pretty

Vintage saddle

My vintage cruiser bike has an unusual seat post both in diameter and in the amount of taper at the top where the saddle mounts. I have not been able to locate a new saddle mounting bracket that will fit on the very small top of the seat post, nor will my non-standard mounting bracket fit on a replacement saddle, so I can’t just grab a replacement off the shelf. So, for both aesthetic and comfort reasons, I decided to make a seat cover.
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Vintage QuiltBert!

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Q-bert quilt Eric's original 1984 003

I knew I couldn’t have been the first to make a QuiltBert, but I just couldn’t find any evidence for one online. That’s probably because in 1984 putting pictures of all your crafts online wasn’t yet commonplace, and that’s when Eric’s extremely cool mom made him this Q*bert quilt for naptime, making him the luckiest preschooler ever. It even has a brown plaid flannel border like mine! More pictures here, including a close-up where you can see some of the embroidery that went into making Coily. Many thanks for sharing it with us!

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Quiltbert: a Q*bert Quilt

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Lap quilt

QuiltBert is based on the traditional tumbling blocks pattern and the video game Q*bert. It is a lap-sized quilt, ideal for hanging out on the couch playing vintage video games.

A while back, our junior mad scientist brought home a geometry / art assignment from school based on designing a quilt. The kids were given a small grid which they filled in with a pattern. They then rotated and copied the pattern several times into a larger grid. His design looked like it would be very complicated to make into a real quilt, with curved pieces, applique and embroidery all needed.

That started us all looking at quilt patterns so he could get an idea of what goes into making a quilt. When we found the “tumbling blocks” quilts which are made with rhombi the question came up as to whether anyone had ever made a Q*bert quilt.

Although there are many tumbling block quilts that are referred to as Q*bert quilts, we couldn’t find any genuine Q*bert quilts. We did find Tetris, Space Invaders, and Mario, Mario, Mario, and more Mario. Also the tangentially related but incredibly inspired Color Bars quilt. Clearly, someone needed to make a real Q*bert quilt.
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Photomask coasters

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Coaster

Photolithographic masks, or photomasks are clear templates used in semiconductor manufacturing. Typically, they are made of UV-grade fused silica and have a highly intricate chrome metal film pattern on one side. These remarkable objects are exactly the sort of wonderful thing that occasionally pops up at good electronics surplus stores. We recently found a few, took some pictures (see below) and, in the spirit of re-use, made them into some classy coasters.
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