Fashion Club...continued

Fashion Club is steadily designing with trash.  This is the second design group from the Southeast Steuben County Library to participate in the annual Recycled Runway Fashion Show, a benefit for The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes.  Each fourth Friday, from January through May 2016, the group will finalize their juried design to perfection until it is exposed on the catwalk.

Mess o' Materials

The trouble with reporting the fun we're having in the program is the desire to show off our progress, while keeping you all intrigued and interested enough to support every designers' efforts and purchase a ticket to the show.  Remember: the fashion show is a benefit fundraiser for our local ARTS Council.  Although we are training young ladies and gents to think and work creatively, we are also participating in a much larger effort, so please--support our local ARTS scene.

Gimme Your Water Bottles!

The main elements of our design are the clear plastic water bottles used to hydrate our patrons during movies and other programs.  These get recycled every month after Family and Adult movies.  There is a 5 cent deposit on these containers, which makes them more valuable than most trash in our state, but they are so plentiful in supply, we needed to re-purpose them for our design.  

Curly hair?

"The Age of Reason" is the title of our design.  We are going BIG!   Big hair and big dress.  Curls, height volume--we need it ALL!

BIG Hair

There are many directions to go, but teases are the only direction I will take you...until the catwalk. 

Yarn circle elements

Yarn and cardboard circles are the other elements in our design.  Yarn is always donated to the library, so we have an over abundance.  The cardboard circles are also a donation that is scrap from a local production company.

Here we go 'round in circles

It feels like we are working around a Mulberry Bush, 'round and 'round we go.  Strong staples and dedicated hands get this job done.

Bit o' Bottle

These bottles have grown into a tower and the piece is not even complete.  I just love the way these beauties seem to suspend in mid air.

Our designers are having a great time working together toward our goal.  The program series is past the halfway mark and the Fashion Show is just over 2 months away!  

This means I better get working on my own piece.  That's right, I have my own Trashcan Fashion piece in development.  Make sure you get a ticket to the show...I'll look for you in the crowd.

Check back next month for more snippets of our design and remarkable pieces from last year.

Rounded Pi Day

Rounded Pi Day was this Monday, 3/14/2016.  It was Rounded Pi, because Pi is 3.14159......so Monday was 3.14.16--Rounded Pi--irrational, I know (wink, wink).  We needed to celebrate this irrational number with a party and LOTS OF PIE!

Pi Participants and Prizes Table

Pi Participants needed to register at this table to get their tickets to enter for Pi prizes and pick up Pi Pins.  Guests learned they would be challenged with interactive games, poetry, calculations, and strategy to complete tasks at each station and enter to win fabulous p(r)i(zes).  With guest collaborators from the Twin Tiers Section of the Society of Women Engineers (S.W.E.), and the Corning Museum of Glass, Pi Day was Packed with activity. 

Prizes included 2 paperweight eggs from the Corning Museum of Glass, a Pizza Pie certificate from Atlas Pizza in Corning, and a Pi (777 Digits) poster from artist Michael Albert.

Educators from the Corning Museum of Glass with Pi Dividers

The educators from the Corning Museum of Glass brought a glass challenge, the Pi Divider.  Glass makers use this tool when making vessels with canes to calculate the amount of canes they need to make a vessel of a particular size.  In place of glass canes, colorful straws were used to demonstrate the idea.

Mousetrap Race Cars with S.W.E.

The Society of Women Engineers devised Mousetrap Race Cars with a little help from books they borrowed from our library sytsem, STLS.  Challengers took to the "streets" (A.K.A.- the Dewey Decimal Math aisle--510) to race these hot rods.  S.W.E. was also gracious to provide S.W.E. s.w.a.g. (stuff we all get) to Pi participants.  

Teen Tech Raspberry Pi micro-controller games

An assortment of Raspberry Pi micro-controllers were placed in the SSC Library conference room for all to sample.  Raspberry Pie sounds delicious, but these are not edible Pies!  These mini controllers are power houses of teaching and learning opportunity.

Edible Pies

For those seeking edible pies, we had a few treats to savor, but there was a major requirement.  You must complete a Pilish Poem or Pi-Ku and perform it for me before getting to polish off Pies.  Just entering that community room caused taste buds to salivate and this mission was easy to complete.

Pilish Poetry and Pi-Ku

The activity I devised was Pilish Poetry or Pi-Ku.  Pilish writing matches the number of letters per word to the corresponding number in Pi.  The shortest Pilish Poem could have a three letter word, followed by a one letter word, then by a four letter word.  Pi Ku writing matches the number of syllables in a line with the corresponding number in Pi.  We had some reluctant performers, but once they understood the rules: No pie without a Performance, I had a ton of readers stating stanzas under the Pi Pie.

There was also a Pie in the Face game, which is very much a scary game of chance...watch out or you may get covered in whipped cream!

Pie in the Face completed our Pi-venture

With this much fun, we will revisit Pi Day in 2017.  Lucky we initiated this program on Rounded Pi Day.

Picture Perfect Pi Day