Five things that have happened (Patreon)

Two of my best friends got married
To each other! Very practical. My love language is making gifts, which is a double edged sword because:

A. there's no receipt and return policy
B. you would probably feel very guilty about throwing it away.

A week before their wedding, they joked that if they had a coat of arms, the slogan would be "patience and relentless optimism." So I sneakily wrote it down on my phone, and made this, featuring their dog Gremmie as a griffon:

Made using laser cut parts painted with acrylic paint. The back plate is made out of MDF using CNCelia.

I am a competitive wedding crier, and I started crying the moment they started the music for the ceremony. Fortunately, there are no photos of that, but here's a reference from when my parents got married:

The Companion Chair is for sale!
But unfortunately, not by me. Someone sent me a screenshot of this facebook ad and wow. Is it bad that I'm tempted to buy one? But also I can't imagine that they'd send me anything for $35.

I made new AC floor vents
Just another tiny house project, I had these very sad floor vents that were falling apart:

So I spent the weekend designing and making these custom floor vents for the house! All I want in life is to make minor improvements to trivial things.

I'm building a puzzle table
Background: I love working on jigsaw puzzles, but I don't love the amount of table space they take up. So, what if you had a table with two table tops, that you could switch between depending on the activity? There are some solutions out there, but none of them solved the problem quite the way I wanted to. 

I have spent an embarrassing amount of time thinking about this, and roped in Stu from team to help figure it out. Here's our design:

So there's a tambour top (with all the slats) that you can have dinner on. Then you turn the hand crank to move them away and lift up a secondary table surface, which is were you have your puzzle/homework/board game/taxes. Basically anything that you don't want to have to clear away just to have somewhere to put your dinner plate.

I've made probably 10 prototypes for this project, and not filmed a minute of content. It has just been one of those builds where I feel like I'm stumbling in the dark, and have no idea how to tell the story as I go. But I'm planning to start filming this week! Except....

... I'm in a weird immigration twilight zone
I don't want to bore you with US immigration law, but my green card application is taking longer than anticipated, and I'm not allowed to leave the country until it's figured out. And due to unfortunate timing, my visa expired two days ago, and my driver's license is about to expire, and I can't apply for a new one until my green card comes through. 

So, in short: I'm currently not allowed to leave the US, but also not allowed to work and also not allowed to drive. Hopefully it'll be resolved within a couple of weeks, but until then I'll just... sit on this chair over here, twiddling my thumbs? Maybe I can build a machine that twiddles its thumbs for me. Actually I kind of like that. I'll put it on the to-build list, right next to "instant noodles shaped like a brain."

XOXO
Simone