Black and Gold

By now it should be obvious that the hats I make never really look like the hats I start out to make. What I had in mind for this one was a hat like Chico Marx wore but with the brim turned up all around, what I got was something like a Viking helmet. People have been telling me that I should be making black and gold hats, because apparently the Pittsburgh Steelers are doing quite well this season. I'm not entirely happy with this hat so I'll have to dream up another attempt.

Black tissue paper was surprisingly hard to find, not that I looked at very many places. I went to Michaels, a craft store, and bought what I always buy, a package of 100 sheets of art tissue. Even Michaels seems to have cut way back on their tissue selection. With 100 sheets there are 4 sheets of 25 colors. I used one sheet of black and one sheet of gold (yellow) for this hat, so if I'm clever I can make three more black and gold hats.

I've been enjoying looking at pictures of the Inauguration. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Aretha Franklin and noticed her hat. I want to find a picture of that maybe it will give me an idea. At least she had the good sense to button her coat. Both Mrs. Bush and Mrs. Obama looked lovely, but I thought the must have been freezing!

I voted for Barack H. Obama. I even changed my middle name to Hussein. And I'm impressed with many of the folks he's bringing into government. Still all along I've been reading critical assessments of his plans and have a guarded sense of optimism because the challenges are so great. Ruminating on a couple of very thoughtful posts quite critical of Obama, I found myself clicking through links at the White House Web site. There's an RSS feed and a link to have digests go to your email inbox. Did I miss those on the old site? Under the About the White House tab is a link to First Pets. Well, I'm a sucker for cute pictures, and was quite moved by the photos. Our presidents aren't gods, and there's nothing like a pet to remind a person what's important in life. So I hope Barack Obama bonds with the new puppy when it arrives.

Lots of people have remarked that the upshot of Obama's address today was: "Get to work!" In case that message was lost on us, President Obama issued a proclamation:

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 20, 2009, a National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation, and call upon all of our citizens to serve one another and the common purpose of remaking this Nation for our new century.

Regardless of our politics, regardless of who we are, we've gotta serve somebody. Yes we gotta. Yes we can!

Commons

New Hat

I showed the hat to a friend and he thought it reminded him somehow of Venice. But the idea for the hat came from watching Mahlathini & Mahotella Queens on YouTube. I bet it was this video that first drew my attention to the hat shape. Oh and I'm quite aware that my paper hats are rather pale imitations. But what interested me was the front view of the hats.


I like the upturned brim. What I did was to attach a circular brim out of kraft paper with a round hole cut out of the center the diameter of the hat tube and attach it to the top of the tube. Then I pasted tissue to the top of the circle of paper with a little tension so the brim would stand up. It's a rather cool effect I think. One that is ripe for a more decorative treatment of the brim than I accomplished, for example check out the wonderful hats the Mahotella Queens are wearing in this video. I'm running out of colored tissue, so I went with a solid color. That partly explains why I used wrapping paper instead of tissue for the tub of the hat. The black and white checkered paper probably accounts for it's Italian flavor.

I know that not everyone bothers viewing videos, or has a fast enough Internet connection for videos. But for those who do, perhaps you'll note that both of the videos I linked to were put up by Seka Moke Foundation.

Seka Moke Foundation is established to introduce North Americans to the upbeat and melodic music of Africa. We would also like to portray an accurate and positive view of Africa to our fellow African Americans and all friends of Africa throughout America. By combining our appealing music and video samples, anyone can experience our unique culture that keeps us going despite numerous adversities.

I think it's a wonderful organization and subscribing to their YouTube Channel is a great way to be introduced to African music with perhaps a bit of context added. There are over 400 videos on their channel. One feature is Africa A-Z. I particularly like this method of surfing through their channel because it emphasizes not only the music of many countries, but also the great diversity of musical styles.

Maker Faire Africa

Maker Faire Africa
Originally uploaded by whiteafrican

I'm such a lazy blogger! I've made a new hat, but my camera battery is dead and it's been over a week without doing something about it. I really like the new hat I made, but it's one of my bigger hats. In the back of my mind I've been thinking about selling paper hats at Etsy. I wondered how to send hats; that is the packaging for the product. I experimented today with making a hat box from old magazines. So that's something to blog about in the future once I charge up my camera batteries.

Also I'm mostly been blogging about hats leaving out the "health" part of Hats For Health. Not that there are really any regular readers of this irregular blog, but a few may know that in the past I've focused on water borne diarrheal diseases. Like most Americans when we hear about clean water or smoke from cooking fires killing millions at first glance it seems there must be simple solutions. Further examination shows the problems are not so simple even if the solutions must be.

Diarrhea kills millions every year, especially deadly for children under five. But I was surprised to hear MIT Professor Amy Smith in her Ted Talk point out that acute respiratory infections kill even more people worldwide. I was surprised, but know from my friends that smoke from cooking is a big problem.

I often end up chatting with people on the Internet. Ever since I've heard about Maker Faire Africa I've brought it up in conversations with some of my African correspondents.

My friend Nathan runs a community based organization in Uganda called the Busoga Shining Light Association. The aims of the BSLA are: Promote Fellowship, Increase Education, Improve Health, Steward the Environment and Nurture Livelihood. Over and over Nathan has been told and I have been told that the organization had to do one thing. But it always seems that what the BSLA wants to do in communities involves all five aims. It's so hard to figure out how to pull the issues apart.

The idea for the Maker Faire Africa is about focusing attention on making things, on the small scale economic activities that really make a difference. Amy Smith's work and Ted Talk shows how talking about making stuff connects with health and the environment.

Make Magazine has given the organizers the okay to use the registered trademark Maker Faire for the Maker Faire Africa. Make Magazine isn't running the show. But Make Magazine is really cool! More than any other publication I know, they have embraced the possibilities of Web 2.0. What my friends and I have been talking about are ways that we might translate some of the joy of invention that Make Magazine promotes so well into an African context. We're all poor, so we're thinking along the lines of blogs or other simple promotions. What's great is how the idea of Maker Faire Africa has captured my friends' attention, quite unlike the usual reaction to my many cockamamie ideas.

The often brilliant Ethan Zuckerman wrote a really important post last October Innovating from constraint. He offered seven rules to help to explain how innovation proceeds in the context of the developing world. I won't list all of them because the post is short and very worthwhile reading the whole thing. One of his rules:

- don’t fight culture (If people cook by stirring their stews, they’re not going to use a solar oven, no matter what you do to market it. Make them a better stove instead.)

It seems like such a simple and obvious observation, still it's profound and something that so often is ignored. My Internet friends get tired of hearing all the time what they ought to do, when what they really want to explain is what life's like for them.

A month after posting his original post Zuckerman came back with Innovation from Constraint (the extended dance mix). This post is a lot longer. But it's worth clicking through if only to see the great photos he's used to illustrate his points.

I'm really psyched that a friend in Ghana and a friend in Uganda seem intrigued enough about Maker Faire Africa to want to try to draw attention to it and the idea of innovation as "using the ordinary in extraordinary ways." I'm not sure what will come of it. It's really nice to know that the excitement about making things is something that crosses boarders so well.

Making paper hats and trying to figure out how to package them are things I do for fun. I would like to figure a way make some little money out of it, because some little money can go a long way to promoting health and other good aims in the many community projects I support. It's true nobody really needs paper party hats, still people do need parties. But I like to tinker and lots of us do as well. It's good to realize that our tinkering really can play a part in the many problems we face in the world today.

Wizard Hats

I'm running out of different colored tissues. I guess I'll have to break down and buy a new package. The other day I went online to look at tissues online and browsed Dick Blick a great resource for art supplies. Then I went to Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo and in the ads there was a link to Dick Blick. Perhaps it was just a coincidence, but ad targeting really is sophisticated these days.

This hat was inspired by a photo of Sean Paul Kelley who is travelling the world and writing about it at The Agonist. I haven't figured out yet the geometry of making triangular hats with my simple tube method. The challenge is how to get more material above the crown. In this attempt what I got is essentially a wizard hat; not that there's anything wrong with that.

For the tube type hats I start with a strip of kraft paper about 3 inches wide and 25 3/4 inches long, folded in half lengthwise. One standard size for tissue paper is 20 x 25 inches and that's the size most convenient to use. So for this hat I cut two triangles about 12 1/2 inches at the base. I placed one of the triangles in the middle of my hat band. The sensible thing would have been to place the two triangles side by side--so they looked like two mountains. Because I did not do that I had to cut the second triangle in half and put the two halves beside the triangle. It just goes to show how forgiving working with tissue paper and paste is. It's probably a good thing to work out the geometry of designs in advance, but it's much easier simply to play around without much care.

Because what I had in mind was the picture of Kelley in his Vietnamese garb, I wanted to make the front and back look like triangles. So I joined the two triangles on either side with a strip of tissue that got crinkled in the middle. The appearance was still rounded. Perhaps if I'd worked with a newspaper base the shape I was going for would have worked better as newsprint is slightly stiffer than tissue.

Anyhow in my mind's eye I was imaging the hat to have a front like a bishop's miter. However when a friend came to visit we had a fire outside. He didn't have a hat for the cold, so I gave him the hat to wear. Immediately he put the hat on with the creased part in the front and the two triangles by his ears. That's the way the hat looks best! It hardly matters that the front is on the side. Finding the front of the hat is often something that can only be known by putting the hat on and looking in a mirror. When the paste is newly applied the hat is a bit flexible. Generally the hats feel best in a particular position and while flexible the hat can be shaped for the best effect.

Once the front has been chosen I like to make a fold in the back of the hat band, a pinch, to make sizing to differently sized heads easier. The bigger the hat, the more essential it is for the band to be the right size. a staple or piece of tape can hold the pinched part of the hat at just the right size.

Wizard hats are quite available with the popularity of Harry Potter. These are very nice, but there's something proper about a custom-made hat. Every wizard is unique and in making ones own wizard hat, or one for that special wizard in your life, that originality can show through.

Hat Sizes

Hats look quite boring set on a bowl, but when people are around the last thing I want to do is to take pictures.

I really like this hat. Tube style hats are the easiest to make. For the very top of the crown I just cut a round of tissue for the top, and a round of wrapping paper for inside the crown. Because the wrapping paper is slightly sturdier I pasted the open part of the tube to that round first and then pasted the tissue round on the outside of it.

The idea for it came from a 1960's video of Miriam Makeba singing Khawuleza. I'm awfully fond of that video.

Friends stopped by on Thanksgiving evening and we built a fire outside. They hadn't arrived with hats so I put paper hats on them both. The hats are surprisingly effective for warmth. It's the layer of warm air that's held between the scalp and hat that makes them warm.

I start my tube hats with a strip of craft paper which I fold down the middle lengthwise embedding the tissue paper in between and then drawing the ends together to make the circle. The length I generally use for the kraft paper strip is 25 3/4 inches. This allows me an inch or less to overlap the band ends while still being big enough for most heads. Charlie 1 Horse hats has a handy chart showing standard hat sizes in inch an metric measures.

People with big heads really seem to hate hats. I find it's good to make hats big so that big-headed people are pleasantly surprised that a hat fits on their head. But a hat too big is unpleasant to wear. What I generally do when making the hats and the paste is still a little flexible is to pinch a fold at the back of the hat. Fiddling with the fold is often enough to get the hat to fit well. But a quick staple on the fold, or a strip of tape will make the fit more durable. The pinch had the effect on this hat to make angle slightly to the back when worn.

I thought it looked splendid, but the next day when my friends when home, the woman wearing it demurred when I said she could take it home. Her partner helpfully added that she doesn't like stripes. I thought the hat suggested plaid. In any case there's no accounting for taste.

I haven't really had the opportunity to make hats with and for children. I'm not sure how big to make hats for kids. The easy way to discover the size is simply to wrap a strip of kraft paper around their head and measure it. If there's a gaggle of kids you can strike an average and cut strips ahead of time erring on the larger size knowing you can size this sort of hat with the pinch method.

The kraft paper I get is sold in rolls. The rolls seem about 30 inches wide. So I cut a length to my 25 3/4 inched dimension. Sometimes rolls are difficult because the paper always wants to return to the roll shape. Everything can be measured, penciled and cut with sissors. I find it much easier to fold the paper and cut it with a knife along the fold as if you were opening an envelope. Consequently I don't actually measure the widths of the strips at all, simply arrive at a size by successive folding of the paper.

Micro Books

I threatened to start posting here again and then completely forgot to! No, I didn't really forget, just wondering what to say.

The picture is a hat I made for a friend's birthday. There was a little party at a bar and restaurant for him and I was pleased that he seemed happy wearing it the whole evening. The idea for the hat was taken from a music video from Tanzania by Saida Karoli entitled Mapenzi Kizunguzungu. I enjoyed the video not just for the music, dancing and great hats; I also really loved how a loving couple is portrayed. They meet and the man is so overjoyed he lifts her off her feet when they embrace. Then without fanfare he gathers up the bundle of plants she's been harvesting and carries them as the walk. That's pretty mundane, I suppose, but it's so rare that tenderness is depcited in music videos.

At the party I was telling my friend how much I love YouTube and I really do. The last time I posted here I mentioned Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord and Making Books Blog. A recent post on her blog got me to open Blogger with the thoughts to add here blog to the blog roll here. I haven't done that yet, but since I was here I thought to post. Her post is about making a Word a Day Journal. In that post she's embedded a YouTube video. It turns out Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord has a YouTube Channel!

It's really a pleasure to watch great teachers in action. The Journal actually consists of 12 books, one for each month. The books are made from a method she calls a Hotdog Book. I knew this great design for a book from one of my favorite fd flickr toys, their Pocket Album. At Susan's YouTube Channel she's also got a whole video about making HotDog booklets. In the Journal a Day video she mentions that she likes to reuse paper, so she collects paper with writing only on one side for projects like these. She proceeds through the folding instructions with clever mnemonics: first fold is long like a hot dog bun, second fold squat like a hamburger, and you'll know if you've done then next two folds right when the paper looks like a W. She's really thought it all out and is able to very plainly explain the instructions.

I love the idea of micro books, what I call Cracker Jack Books and blogged about them along time ago at Bazungu Bucks. Part of the challenge of spreading the read/write culture of the Internet in the developing world is there's not many private computers, often electricity isn't widespread. But there still are computers and the Internet there. What's lacking are ways to interface with the Internet and make it portable. It's a bit like the last mile problem preventing more people in the USA from having broadband Internet. Paper seems an obvious solution, so I've been thinking about little books for a long time. Actually there are many little problems to be worked out, so I haven't gotten very far. One of the great things about YouTube is the related video feature. There I saw instructions for making a 16 page book from a single piece of paper by sammiboy96. Man, I presume the '96 part stands for being born in 1996. I'm so out of it that if you'd said he was born in 1996 I probably would have wondered if sammiboy was walking yet. Nevertheless he provides a brilliant demonstration for making his booklet.

I wonder why I never thought to search YouTube for bookbinding before? Well, of course the blessing and problem with YouTube is that one video leads to another. Clearly there are lots of videos I want to check out about making books there now that I know to look for them. I wonder if there are videos about making paper party hats...