Over the past 2 years, I've been exposed to quite a few office conversations about hacks and makes and whatnot - thanks to MAKE magazine. One of my favorite makes is this kit: the pacman POV for your bike. While I think that all of this is pretty cool, I've never been confident enough in my geekiness (or my soldering skills) to take one on. Instead, I'm much more likely to pick up a project from MAKE's artsy cousin - CRAFT.

Well, last weekend I made the trip to Austin, Texas, for the Maker Faire. I really wasn't sure what to expect so I printed off the schedule and figured out what I wanted to do while I was there. I knew there were going to be super smart makers showing off all the cool stuff they'd done. I was a bit nervous about this actually. Was I going to grasp exactly what it was they were doing? I was also pretty excited about the crafters - seeing what new things people were doing and maybe even buying a few kits. I saw the crafty chica at breakfast at my hotel and that just kind of sat the stage for the rest of the day. We got to the Travis County Expo before it opened, but as soon as I walked through the gate, my schedule went out the window. There was so much to see and do! The people-watching wasn't half-bad either.

One of the most widely attended demos was the life size mouse trap. It was a bit nutty, but impressive nonetheless. I heard a few folks muttering while waiting for the show to begin (yes, you had to get there early if you wanted to see it), "Who comes up with stuff like this?" "Who had time to build this?" I was curious, too. I mean, seriously, who wakes up one morning and says, "You know, today I'm going to build a Rube Goldberg style life size mouse trap just for the heck of it, because i can." In this case, apparently his name is Mark Perez, but this could be said of a lot of the makers and crafters that were at the faire.

I also heard Tom Igoe speak about physical computing and the arduino on the Maker Stage. And yes, I understood it (phew!), thanks to a primer from fellow Ditto, Tom Lee. He talked a bit about what his students at NYU are doing with the arduino - dresses that flash LED's with your heart beat - for one.

My favorite thing about the Maker Faire was honestly the Maker Shed (that's right - the book store - and I thought I wasn't going to be nerdy enough, right?), but my favorite maker/crafter was definitely Avi Hartman and his Carmadillo. Again, a carmadillo? Who comes up with this stuff? Who cares who comes up with it - it made people smile all day long!

My visit to the Maker Faire got me thinking quite a bit about creative outlets. I'll be the first to admit that I'm one crafty nerd. I have a cabinet full of baking supplies, another full of specialty baking pans, another full of paper crafting supplies, a basket just for block printing and another for embroidery. Yes, I'm that girl. The one who has enough "projects" around the house to keep every second of every day from now until eternity jam packed, but has no spare seconds to do any of it.

No matter what it is, I think most folks probably do have creative outlets... but what about creative inputs? I read about what other folks are doing on the CRAFT blog and about 20 other craft-related blogs according to my RSS reader. I also frequent etsy and am part of a few baking-related flickr groups. Where do you get inspired? How do you come up with stuff like this? I'm looking forward to next year's faire already to see how things have grown and expanded and to find out what new stuff folks have come up with.