Several months back I did a lot of digging on the Internet, trying to find reasonable prices for crystal singing bowls (the cost for an 8 inch crystal bowl starts around $70 and goes up from there!).
I stumbled across a video by YouTube user Naddycat which he posted over 6 years ago, about his discovery of a Nordic Ware Mini Bundt pan giving off a pleasant sound when struck with a finger/knuckle. Well, I bought my own Nordic Ware Mini Bundt pan off of eBay and I can tell you it does sound amazing with a knuckle but it is even better with a gong mallet (or probably any kind of mallet).
Taking the idea of a bundt pan making a nice sound to the next level, I was at a local thrift store recently and found another polished aluminum bowl which made a nice sound too. Here's a little video to show you a random sampling of things you might find at a thrift store which make a pleasant sound. I highly encourage you to go to your nearby thrift stores and find the common everyday objects that sound good to your ears!
I use the Nordic Ware Mini Bundt pan to bring my yoga students out of savasana with its lovely dulcet tones :) I like that the bundt pan is unbreakable, sounds awesome and I can also use it to bake delicious cakes! Multipurpose FTW. Oh, and it was $20 (including shipping!) - you can't beat that!!!
I had an idea to make a sign that I could bring with me when I teach at Jai Dee in Tampa, 801 E. Main Street in Lakeland or any other place that I might get the opportunity to teach at in or around the Tampa Bay area. I've always loved the way sequin signs catch the sunlight and move with the breeze. The parts are available online in 12x12 plastic pre-pinned boards, but they're very expensive. I decided I would use a "handypanel" 2x4ft section of pre-sanded plywood and 1x2x8 strips of wood from the local hardware store and get to work on making my own custom 'pinned' wooden A-frame sign.
I ordered the bags of 20mm sequins from Aliexpress, 8 boxes of WIRE BRADS 18X 5/8 and used a big sheet of packing paper to grid out the proper spacing of the nails to keep the sequins from overlapping. I used a center punch to put a small divot in the plywood sheet at each intersection of the grid (where each nail would go) and then used a pair of flat tipped pliers to hold each nail an equal length from the plywood surface and hammered each nail in.
This is of course after building the sign and painting the surface white with three coats of outdoor rated paint.
The total number of nails used = 3600.
To keep the sequins at a distance from the wood backing (so they'd shimmer in the breeze) I used short 1/4 inch sections of cocktail straws cut down to serve this purpose. After nailing in all the nails, each nail had a cocktail straw spacer placed on it and then I could begin to pop the sequins into place over the wire brads nail heads.
What I had not initially planned for was a safety border around the edges of the sign to keep the nails from getting impaled into the grass when the sign would take an inevitable face plant on a windy day. I'd made the front facing edge of the sign a bit larger (1/8 in) than the underlying frame which made coming up with an edge framing solution a little tricky. Eventually I settled on using small strips of wood to bring the underlying frame out to the same edge as the front of the sign. Then I used wood trim painted white to create a top and sides frame for the sign fronts which will keep the nails and sequins from coming into contact with the ground when the sign falls over.
I finished the protective edging in time to use the sign outside of Jai Dee last weekend. It was a really windy day and the sign fell over a few times with no damage to the sequins. Several people commented on noticing the sign as they drove into the studio and that they could see the sparking sequins from a great distance. I'm thrilled that it came together nicely even though from beginning to end it took about a month of intermittent work (nails/spacers/sequins) and then another couple of months for me to figure out a protection frame and the time to put the framing on the sign.
If you want to make your own sequin sign, it just takes some time, patience and keeping your eye on the finished goal while you do the work that gets you to that goal.
Part of the process towards achieving Baptiste certification is teaching. The prerequisite before applying for certification is to teach 100 classes. This equals out to be two classes a week for a year which is quite difficult to do while maintaining a day job which requires sporadic and unpredictable travel. It is for this reason that I decided to transform a room in our home into a space for others to practice and where I can easily get more experience in teaching.
The room is 10 x 14, has hardwood floors and lots of windows (not a plus in winter or for handstand practice!) but is easily separated from the rest of the house by the floor to ceiling curtain I created. I am currently researching whole room heaters that will allow me to gently warm to the room to 90 (if possible). The space presents challenges with the plethora of windows and the fabric curtain separating the room from our kitchen. I'm confident that I can find a solution to work within these confines to create a pleasant, useable space for yogis.
Stay tuned for what I find out with regard to space heaters/humidifiers.
I've been stressing about how to hang my clothes up to dry while at Baptiste Level One training in August. I opted for the bunkhouse lodging and as such, I won't have a closet or many options for hanging things. I've been thinking about an inexpensive, portable, collapsible solution to this problem for several months now.
Today I solved the problem with an idea to use a PVC pipe cap, threaded rods, acorn (cap) nuts, clear vinyl tubing and a bit of epoxy on a 1/4-20 nut (which exactly fits a camera tripod threading)
Parts list (minus the epoxy I already had)
611942038565 PVC CAP 0.98
1-1/2" PVC CAP SLIP
887480001310 LOCK NUT 1/4 0.98
1/4" STAINLESS STL NYLON LOCK NUT
887480000313 MACH SCREW
MACH SCREW NUT SS #10-24
4@0.98 3.92
887480020113 CAP NUT
CAP NUT ZINC #10-24
2@0.98 1.96
098268038583 20' VINYL 4.93
5/16ODX3/16IDX20' VINYL TUBE
887480022070 THRDED ROD
ROD THREADED ZINC 36X10/24
2@2.18 4.36
SUBTOTAL 17.13
SALES TAX 1.20
TOTAL $18.33
I cut the two 36" sections of 1/4 threaded rod into 9 inch sections, giving me a total of eight "arms" on the hanger. Putting the hacksaw in the vice and sawing the threaded rod against the hacksaw blade made the process much easier! After cutting, I smoothed the newly cut ends on a file and tested the threading with the cap nuts.
I marked visually equidistant marks on the PVC end cap to allow for eight rods to connect to the cap. Drilling with a 3/16 bit made the insertion of the threaded rods a piece of cake. Keeping one nut on the inside of the cap and one on the outside and tightening them towards one another makes for a stable fit. Using a cap nut on the end of the arm prevents anyone from getting injured on the metal threading.
With all the arms attached, I tightened down the cap nuts and marked on the rod how far down they thread when fully tightened. I removed one cap nut and slid the clear vinyl tubing over the rod and marked on the tubing where the line on the rod was visible. Sliding the tubing back off of the rod a bit allowed me to make the cut in the tubing, slide the tubing back on, screw the cap nut back on and move on to the next arm until each of them had a protective vinyl sleeve over the exposed threading. This vinyl sleeve will make it so that any wet clothing that is hung on it does not become damaged.
I placed the hanger back in the vise and marked the center of the cap where I'd glue down the tripod threaded nut. I chose the nylon locking nut because it was a deeper threading than the non-locking nut. This gives me some wiggle room for the epoxy to adhere to the nylon threading, but not damage the threading on the rest of the nut.
Applying a dab of epoxy, smearing it around in a circular fashion until there was a clearing at the center point I'd marked. This made sure that a big blob of epoxy wasn't going to seep up into the threading as I put the tripod nut in place. The completed hanger is 20 inches across, but the whole thing disassembles and fits into a fraction of that space!
The telescoping aluminum tripod I have is a Bilora, but any lightweight telescoping tripod will work. You can find tripods like this on eBay, typically in the $20 price range. Some are more expensive but I can't see a reason to justify the higher asking prices. Update! Shortly after using the clothes hanger at Menla, the weight of the clothes drying was no match for the epoxy/nut solution I utilized. I limped through the rest of the week, but upon returning home, I re-engineered the top portion of the structure which connects to the tripod thread. I purchased a two inch long bolt (threaded 1/4 20) and two of the long connector bolts. One is tightened to the bolt coming through the top of the hanger cap and the other will provide the connection to the tripod thread mount.
