Puzzle hunt party, part 2

Continued from part 1.

The Firefox browser opened up to Scrabble.com. Aaron, who had previously visited my home and played scrabble with me, immediately located my game. I have a "travel" addition, which lets the players stick the letters into squares that hold them fast - convenient for setting up a puzzle.

It was not so straightforward, though. They picked out many words hidden with the square, such as "how," "measure," "man," "red," and "herring." (And also "anal," which had not been intentional!)

Alex thought aloud, "How do you measure? Measuring tape?" She looked to her left, and there was my shelving unit full of tools, including - yes! - measuring tape.

Laurence pulled the tape out and, under the 6' mark (roughly the height of a man), were numbers: coordinates which turned out to point to the French Trail in nearby Redwood Regional Park. After a bit of a false lead (what around here is French?), Allison noticed a map of Redwood Park on my wall.

On the other side of the map was a hand drawn map of the mini agility course I'd set out in my front yard. I thought that perhaps only the dog people among my friends would understand the symbols, but in fact multiple other people immediately recognized them. Off they went to the front yard, where they discovered a plastic bag filled with tea leaves inside the tunnel.

Back inside to the kitchen, they located the tea tins, and the corresponding one included a picture of Chimera.

In what was an unsettling moment for him, everyone turned to stare at the dog and a few people started to reach for him at once. He tucked his tail and moved away, and then they calmed down. Agnes called him over and he jumped onto her lap, letting her pick him up.

He turned out to be wearing a tag that said, "Prepare for a rainy day."

Someone asked, "How do you prepare for a rainy day?"

"Umbrella!" cried Laurence.

It turned out to be a stick and a small piece of plastic rain gutter hidden inside one of my galoshes.

Boy, is Ray on the case, or what?

Not pictured, because it was now dark outside, was everyone running outside and looking at the gutters. Allison pointed out that there was a small section of gutter piping wedged up above the outdoor light. Alex pushed at it and four balls fell out and bounced all over the deck! She immediately knew what to do - "The basketball!"

I had attached a plastic container to the wall along with a rectangle of white paper marked to look like a basketball board. Laurence dunked a ball into the container and was rewarded with a mass of purple glitter raining down on his arm as a hole opened at the bottom.

Chimera stared to eat the glitter, so I shooed him away and took a moment to vacuum the bulk of it up.

In the meantime, the guests went over to a piece of paper which was also covered in a pile of purple glitter and dumped it off. The writing underneath said "Sduw ri d edodqfhg euhdnidvw!" It didn't take long for someone to realize that it was a Caesar shift of 3, and the message said, "Part of a balanced breakfast!"

What's in a balanced breakfast? Eggs? Bacon?

Agnes is hungry and losing interest...

Allison finds the cereal.

And inside is a (homemade) jigsaw puzzle!

They diligently get to work taping the pieces together.

Although it takes longer than I had anticipated. I had gotten carried away when cutting up the pieces.

The completed puzzle (minus two pieces, which disappeared).

The back of the puzzle contains instructions to walk through the doorway, then "forward 4 paces, right 7 paces, left 3 paces," and so on.

To be continued...

Puzzle hunt party, part 1

Yesterday evening I celebrated my 28th birthday by arranging a puzzle hunt for my friends. It was a memorable evening - not only was it my first time arranging a puzzle hunt, but it was the most friends I've ever had come to a party at once. It was a full house! I took many pictures at the beginning, and fewer as the time went by and the sun went down.

The first people showed up at 6 pm.

I had crackers and grapes ready, and a card with a message for the adventurers. After a greeting, it instructed them to sign their names and remain on the deck for further instructions.

And so they waited for more guests. Meanwhile, Chimera posed for the camera.

And Jacques stared at this owner in confusion.

The majority of the guests arrived all at once around 6:40 pm.

So many people!

Agnes noticed that I had sent her a text stating LOOK UP.

More people realized that they'd received the same text.

And they started looking up.

They noticed a string with a tag that said PULL.

Eddie dutifully pulled (after acquiring a stool, which was a good decision).

They lowered down a yogurt container which was filled with coins.

What does this mean?? They counted the coins. They added up the total value. They arranged them in different configurations.

After some prompting (this puzzle turned out to be the hardest one), they walked through the house and noticed a few bank rolls of coins in my room.

They started to empty the rolls, and Ray found a message written inside one: "empty apple."

Off to find apples!

An initial perusal of the apples in the kitchen revealed nothing. A closer look yielded one with a hole that was covered with the missing apple chunk.

Eddie bit into the apple and discovered a yarn needle.

Everyone peered into my sewing kit and started to remove the contents. Ray picked up a crocheted ball. She squished it and then looked remorseful. "I crushed your ball," she said. "Did you?" I asked, with raised eyebrows. She smiled and picked it back up, and proceeded to pull on the string to undo the top of the ball. (A cool thing about crochet - to undo it, you simply grab the yarn and pull. It makes it easy to go back and fix a mistake.)

The ball unraveled to reveal a picture.

After an initial "WTF, a furry?" someone recognized it as a play on the Firefox logo. Ray opened Firefox on my laptop, which was conveniently turned on and ready.

To be continued....

The money tree, parts 2 and 3

You may recall my first post about the money tree. I returned a week later while hiking with the same dog, and found this:

A collection of pebbles, along with a flower and some branches from the forest. And there was more money. This time there was a single $1 bill, and $1.22 in coins. I collected everything I could find again, and then felt like I should leave something behind in gratitude. I looked around as I hiked, and picked up three small branches, which I placed by the side of the existing decorations.

I returned again this week. (It's a great trail for my shy hiker - we rarely run into anyone else.) This time there was no money, but there was a collection of flowers.

Now I really felt like I should have brought something to add. Alas, I had nothing, so again I searched the forest.

I laid down a couple of hollow sticks into which I stuffed animal fur that was on the side of the trail. (Don't know if it's from another hiking dog or a wild animal.) I also offered a twig with lichen growing on it, and a small bunch of yellow wildflowers. And... a fedora I found lost on the trail! Hopefully its owner will find it. And possibly be very confused.

Crochet flower

Made an easy crochet flower, just for practice.

The money tree

I was hiking with a dog in Claremont Canyon Preserve, and paused among a little stand of redwood trees so he could rest in the shade. As I was slowly meandering, I looked down and saw some coins at the foot of one of the trees. I stopped, leaned over, and realized that it was quite a large amount of coins. They were nearly all pennies, but I'm a frugal person, so I decided to collect them.

As I was doing so, I realized that were a few tiny items along with the coins - a bead, two sequins, and a beautiful, tiny, light blue egg. And there was a feather stuck vertically into the ground.

This was... purposeful. It didn't look like someone had simply dropped their change and not bothered to pick it up.

I looked around more, and realized that there were coins stuck in the base of the tree, in the troughs made by the bark. (You can see in the top picture that redwood bark is not smooth, but grows in ridges.) I started picking them out. And kept finding more, and more, and more coins, distributed all around the tree, as high as I could reach. They were still mostly pennies, but there were also three $1 bills curled up tightly and stuck in tiny holes in the bark, and two pieces of paper:

My best guess is that this was someone's celebration of graduating from UCB.

In the end, I had acquired $3 in bills at $3.43 in coins.

I thank whoever left the coins in the tree - not just for the little extra money (that will cover the price of two small Kindle books!) - but also for the twenty minutes of amazement and seeking circuit fun I experienced.

Pajama pants

Five weeks ago, I started a Sewing 101 class at Stonemountain and Daughter Fabrics in Berkeley. We had a small selection of beginner projects to choose from, and coincidentally, almost everyone chose the same pajama pant pattern. I bought a very thick and soft flannel for my own pants. It took longer than I expected to complete them - the instructor took us through all the details of ironing the fabric and the pattern, selecting which size to cut, lining it up along the grain of the fabric, putting the pieces together, carefully sewing and serging, putting in an elastic waistband, and hemming the bottom.

The pattern has too much fabric along the crotch and is baggy on me even for PJs, but I was pretty much expecting that on my petite frame. Otherwise, I'm happy with it. I already wore the pants once but of course they are way too warm for this time of year! So back in the closet they go for five months.

Here is the pattern I used: Kwik Sew K3602.

I used size M, but I had to shorten both the top and the bottom of the pants for them to be the right height.

I purposely hemmed them short at the bottom because I prefer them to be well off the ground when I'm going out in the yard in the morning and evening and it's dark and there is dog poop. Plus I like my pants to be short enough that the bottom doesn't get caught in the tongue of my tennis shoes.

The pattern didn't have pockets but the instructor helped me insert them. Since the flannel is bulky, I used scrap pieces of cotton fabric - a different one for each pocket.

Here's the nicely-sewn waistband.

I used a serger for the first time!

Since the front and back look similar, the instructor had us attach little tags to the back. She sent some scrap fabric through the serger to make thin, colorful strips. I love the idea! I feel like I should find a fabric that I identify with and keep serged strips around for all the clothes I'll make in the future. It's a pretty, personal touch.

There is one more class meeting to go before the session ends. I'll be starting work on an apron, so that I no longer get flour all over my shirt when I'm making bread.