Adam Kreutinger's Small Fry Puppet Clothing Patterns

I have been making Small Fry puppets from Adam Kreutinger's pattern and modifying doll clothing patterns to fit the measurements of the Small Fry. The Small Fry doesn't have a "neck" that is smaller than its shoulders, and as such, 18-inch doll clothing patterns require modifying to fit the Small Fry's proportions.

This post is about the formal suit jackets and dress shirts I made for the Small Fry. The suit jacket pattern has three different collar styles and two different fit styles in it. One is more of a Pea Coat fit, bigger in the overall sizing and with a wider lapel. The other fit is more true to the Small Fry measurements and I have included a 1950's style Peak lapel and a smaller Mod notched lapel style.

The dress shirt has two different collar styles - a traditional straight collar and one with a bit longer collar points as seen in the polka-dotted dress shirt photo. The sleeves are intentionally about a half-inch long for the Small Fry arms, adjust your pattern as you desire for sleeve length.

The patterns all include a 1/4 inch seam allowance. When a 1/8 inch sewing edge is called for, it is indicated in the pattern instructions.

If you download and use these patterns and instructions, I'd love to see what you've made with them!

I will be editing and uploading the dress pants and boxer shorts I made for the Small Fry puppet soon.

• Small Fry Suit Jacket Pattern
• Small Fry Suit Jacket Pattern Instructions
• Small Fry Dress Shirt Pattern
• Small Fry Dress Shirt Pattern Instructions

Things I've Made That I Haven't Told You About Yet

I'm going to assume you're curious about the things I've made, otherwise, you wouldn't be reading this post!

Scrolling back through the photos on my phone, I'll make my list chronological.

Lenny 4 part spray paint stencil (4/19)

Lenny was a magical feline who was FLV+ and lived a brief life of adventures, sunsets and I commemorated his portrait in a multi-part spray paint stencil. I used Sara Sandoval's excellent how-to video on YouTube.

Kraftwerk Skydancer 5/19 - this has already been documented and discussed. 

🤖

Ecstatic Dance Sunshade (6/19)

My friend Laryssa was the organizer for the Tampa Bay Ecstatic Dance gatherings and she said "What if I had an Ecstatic Dance sunshade for my car? Then I could put fliers in my dash advertising the next dance date, price, and location - every place I parked." I thought this was a genius idea so I bought a cheap silver foil sunshade from the Dollar Tree, used an old white sheet, my Beam projector, and permanent fabric paint to recreate the Ecstatic Dance artwork Laryssa used on her event flyers.

Mighty Boosh Halloween costumes (6/19)

I got obsessed on Halloween early in 2019 and made David and I costumes so we could be Howard Moon and Old Gregg. We went to the Tokyo Motor Show instead. These costumes will be revisited at another Halloween...

Buster Keaton shirt (6/19)

David is a big fan of Buster Keaton, so I found a high res photo online, bumped up the contrast, and turned it into basically a stencil. I used the Beam projector to shine the picture on the shirt, traced it, and filled it in with permanent fabric paint in navy blue on a really nice vintage ringer tee we scored at the Salvation Army.

2019 Gingerbread Marathon

The Reverend Fred Lane BOLOPHONIC shirt (1/20)

I made my BOLOPHONIC shirt to wear to the historic concert with Fred Lane and His Disheveled Monkeybiters at Saturn in Birmingham, AL. After the show, I made a hoodie for a guy I met at the concert who came up to me and was like "WHERE DID YOU GET THAT SHIRT?!"

Pandemic masks (so many masks!) (4/20)

I know how to sew and had a lot of fabric already on hand when masks weren't something you could find or buy. So I made masks. Lots and lots of masks.

Holliday Bakes lettering for A-frame sign (7/20)

My friend Chriss Holliday had a pop-up bake shop in Seminole Heights (she's now in Tallahassee). She'd gotten the metal and the stand for the sign and I put her signage on the stainless steel sheet metal with vinyl I already had. The Cricut makes so many things possible.

All Y'All Yoga tank tops (8/20)

These were two designs I came up with for All Y'All Yoga tank tops. One is a mashup of the YES YES Y'ALL font for Toronto's long running queer party and the other is a mashup of a Baptiste yoga tank font and the All Y'All font.

Journey Into Power window clings (8/20)

These JIP figures have evolved over the years. Originally I purchased yoga stick figures online, added in the poses from JIP that weren't in the set I purchased. Then EB asked if I could make the figures into window clings. I could - but I took each of the JIP poses into Adobe Fresco and thickened and smoothed the lines of the stick figure so that the Cricut could cut each pose out cleanly.

Kraftwerk puppets - (8/20) documented here.

Disco ball trailer hitch cover (of course) (9/20)

I ordered a couple of bags of tiny mirror squares and used Mod Podge to glue them to a trailer ball hitch cover I'd purchased. Why have a boring trailer hitch cover if you don't have to?

Press Your Luck Leggings (9/20)

I always loved watching PYL when I was home sick from school or during summer break. I used the leggings pattern from Society 6 to make a pair of PYL leggings for me. I was surprised to find that the sizing for the XL leggings had changed A LOT since I made/ordered my Frogger leggings. I had to add an extra 4 inches to the rise because the torso of the leggings was way too dang short.

2020 Gingerbread Marathon

Rocky (from Buffalo '66) Shirt (still a work in progress) (12/20)

This is still a work in progress. The first attempt at making a vector from movie stills didn't cut well on the Cricut. The vector lines were too thin and didn't cut properly. I'll revisit this again because I love Rocky's character in this movie.

Soliloquy For Lileth shirt (10/20)

David ordered a Soliloquy for Lileth shirt off of AliExpress and we were both disappointed that it wasn't a gold foil graphic. It looked more like an army green sort of color so I made three SFL shirts and now David, Sosh and Erin are all proud owners of proper gold foil SFL shirts.

I got vaxxed at the dog track shirt (3/21)

I made this tank top to commemorate my vax status. The decommissioned Dog Track up the street from us was the site of the FEMA vaccination distribution site and I thought it was an odd and somewhat humorous location for a vaccination site.

WWT magnetic logos (makes any button up shirt a corporate edition!) (3/21)

I made myself a WWT magnetic logo to wear on my shirts when on video calls. I picked up a couple of nice button-up shirts from the Salvation Army. I used my Cricut to cut the silhouette of the WWT logo out of hotel keycards, scraped off the top layer of plastic to reveal the white of the card. Then cut vinyl in red and blue. I used a paperclip hot glued to the back of the logo to make the logo magnetic. This makes any dress shirt a fancy work shirt. I received a lot of compliments and questions about where I'd gotten my WWT shirt from other co-workers. I made some extra for friends at work.

Whiskey Barrel Hoop Drum (4/21)

The full write-up is over here.

Braided ribbon barrettes (6/21)

I'd been missing seeing these cute braided barrettes in ladies' hair so I made myself a few. I volunteered to lead a barrette braiding class at the local community center and one lucky little girl went home with 6 brand spanking new fancy braided and beaded barrettes.

Brass shims for rain lamp oil reservoir base (6/21)

The plastic bottom of our rain lamp cracked in April of 2019 and we had a mineral oil disaster in the dining room. The bottom of the rain lamp containing 4 quarts of mineral oil gave way (peak plastic failure) and our dining room was suddenly covered in said quantities of mineral oil. I was unsure about how to fix the broken segments. My thought was to cut a ring out of some sort of metal and support the base of the lamp with a metal ring. I didn't want to spend the time to cut out a ring with a dremel, so I put the project on hold.  In September of 2020 I reached out to a local person with a 3D printer and he printed up a couple of different styles of support shims. One of them seemed like it would work, but he only printed one for me. I had a hard time getting ahold of him to get more printed so I got frustrated and used some brass strips I had to replicate the shape of the 3D printed shim. David helped me get the holes drilled in the right spots and now our rain lamp is back up and operational.

Conny Plank puppet (7/21)

With the launch of the Kraftwerk Puppets, it was only natural to make a Conny Plank puppet. No band would be complete without their chief engineer and producer!

All Y'All Skydancer (7/21)

Charlotte is a big fan of sky dancers and we were talking after the All Y'All open house event in July about the possibility of making a sky dancer. I said YES and I already have a pattern. We discussed colors and styles of dress and three weeks later, the studio has its very own custom sky dancer for events!

Elvis Costello puppet (7/21)

Paul Weller puppet (7/21)

I was speaking with my friend Rocky about the Conny Plank puppet I made and he said "IF I had any artistic ability whatsoever there would be Elvis Costello and Paul Weller ones.  They could fight for my heart, like Karate Kid.  Also if I wasn’t lazy.  Also if it wasn’t your brilliant idea." I told him I CAN DO THIS. These are a work in progress and all photos are offline until Rocky shoots an unboxing video (once the puppets are done and in the mail).

The Reverend Fred Lane puppet (7/21)

Thinking over the other persons I know who are visually iconic, very funny and may enjoy having a puppet of themselves (!), I reached out to Jeannie to ask if her husband Tim would get a kick out of having his very own puppet. She said YES HE WOULD, so this is also a work in progress. Photos are being taken of the process, but they too are offline until the big reveal.

This does not include the chronology of Sticker Mule deals unless this assemblage of order thumbnails counts...

Kraftwerk All The Things

Kraftwerking all the things started with the driver's license photo, then our wedding and our version of the We Are The Robots video All these led us to visiting Düsseldorf (several times!!) and meeting Harald Naegeli & Wolfgang Flür (bonus!!). 

Kraftwerk mash-ups

• The Wolfgang Flür Skydancer
• Man Machine gingerbread cookies
• Grace Jones & Kraftwerk = Yoga Life

Now, I introduce to you... Kraftwerk P U P P E T S. 

Here is the Flickr photo album of the creation process!

The Three Gates of Speech

I recently attended the Wireless LAN Professionals Conference in Phoenix and the conference itself was professional and informative on all things Wi-Fi. Many photos were taken, many groups gathered and did various activities. The women attendee count was up substantially since the last time I was at a WLPC (in 2018) and the ladies who wanted to be in the group photo for 2020 gathered on the stage before lunch for a photo.

The morning after the photo was tweeted, a long time member of the wifi community called this photo self-segregation and that it made the statement that we wanted to be treated differently. Well, a twitter shit-storm unfolded. My initial response wasn't pretty but I refrained from tweeting what I was thinking and instead sat on what I wanted to say in response until I'd had a while to think about it.

I kept coming back to a quote I'd read recently in a couple different books about the Three Gates of Speech. The concept is that before you speak, check your words at each of these three gates before you speak out loud.

Is it true?

Is it necessary?
Is it kind?

Twitter allows anyone to "say" anything to anyone (on Twitter), I get that. We are each ultimately responsible for how we comport ourselves in this short life we're living. Just because you can say/do a thing doesn't mean you should. 

It is my opinion that the original commenter on the photo was making up a story of what they were seeing in the picture and trying to use shame to turn a photo of a gathered group of women into something that it was not by using the hashtags of #selfsegregation #treatmedifferently #imspecial.

This all started because another long standing member of the wifi community is a woman and chose not to be in the photo because she doesn't want to be singled out and treated any differently than men in the industry and wants to be celebrated for her accomplishments and not her gender. 

None of the other photos from the WLPC event garnered this level of commentary/opinion sharing and it was my takeaway that this whole thing wouldn't have happened if the original commenter had let his words pass through the Three Gates. I believe that his words would have gotten stuck at the first gate. He was inferring things from the photo that weren't accurate, sharing his opinion on the photo was not necessary and many of the subsequent tweets he replied back with were not kind.

I did learn quite a bit about the personal values of many people in the wifi and infosec community as others weighed in with their opinion via replies, likes and retweets and for that, the whole kerfuffle was instructive.

Just because you have an opinion on a thing, does not mean that your opinion is truth. Just because you have an opinion does not mean it is your duty to share your opinion. Just because you believe your opinion to be the truth does not mean it is a Universal Truth.

I'm so glad that we had a group photo taken in 2020 and I'm glad this photo below was taken in 2018. In 2018 there was no shit-storm about this photo being self segregation or that the people in the photo were asking for special treatment. The two people who were at the epicenter of the WLPC 2020 Twitter shit-storm were at WLPC in 2018, but obviously their opinions were held in check and not shared as a Universal Truth.

To sum it up: Yes, you have opinions. Opinions are not hard truths. They may be true to you because you believe them to be true. This does not mean that you have the right or duty to beat others over the head with your "truth". 

Use the Three Gates to check your words for true, necessary and kind. This world needs more kindness and less opinions wielded as bludgeons.

Technology for Travelers

Navigating a new city can be pretty stressful. After spending 9 days in Tokyo & 4 days in Manchester (by way of Heathrow LHR), I can definitively say that having fast, free wifi can make a world of difference in the experience of navigating public transportation systems.

I was able to navigate with Google Maps all over Tokyo with no problems whatsoever. The PASMO train card kiosk was easily switched to English so we could get PASMO cards. Topping up the card with more Yen throughout the week was also easily done.  Tokyo had fast, free wifi in and/or on every train we were on during our stay there.

Landing at Heathrow and attempting to find the correct kiosk to print the train tickets I purchased online was a runaround of bad directions from several different train line employees. Finally I got the tickets, got directions and went down to the Underground station. What I saw on the platform didn't line up with the directions we'd been given so I tried to connect to Google Maps and compare. No such luck. No cell coverage, and the wifi charged me £5 and then it didn't even work. Eventually we made it to the National Rail train which purported to have onboard wifi. The Speedtest app said it was 1.86 down and 10 up, but it was worthless in my experience of trying to use it.

Now that I've had time to decompress after returning home, I did some digging to find out WHY there was such a huge difference in my experience. Here are some facts about the Tokyo train system: built around 1927 or so, current daily rider numbers hover around 8.6 Million people. Tokyo has had free wifi in/around their trains since 2016. London's Underground was built around 1863 or so and currently moves around 5 Million people a day. Back during the Olympics in 2012, there was some limited (an hour a day) wifi on the platforms, concourses and escalators. Now it is all pay-as-you-go (but it doesn't work even if you pay).

Initially I was worried about my language barrier in Tokyo, but that proved to be no issue at all because I had constant Internet access from my phone and didn't have to ask anyone for directions. Comparatively, getting directions in an English speaking country proved to be much harder because of conflicting information and no Internet connectivity to verify what we'd been told was correct or not.

In short - go to Tokyo. Get on the train, use the wifi and go have an adventure wherever you've chosen for your destination. It'll be a lot easier than you might think. Word to the wise: if you've got luggage of any kind - don't use the Underground. Take a taxi or better yet, fly into Manchester instead of taking the tube/train to get there from Heathrow. Trust me on this.

I took about ten million pictures in Tokyo. Here they are.

What Is A Predictive Survey?

It would seem that somewhere along the line the rumor got started that predictive surveys are magical, mythical things that are conjured out of thin air by the power of an 'easy' button.

If I had a nickel for every time I've had to level set someone's expectations on how long a predictive survey should take, could take or will take; the stack would be pretty high.

I made an informational video explanation on what a predictive survey is and the difference in the length of time to define all of the RF obstacles when the wireless engineer has a CAD file of the floor plan vs. any other image file of the floor plan. The video is eight minutes long and has a disclaimer at the end for all the YouTube people that feel the need to tell me what I left out, or how I didn't explain it right (according to them).

This video is not intended to be an all-encompassing explanation of all of the phases of a predictive survey. The content is solely my opinion. Do not attempt to perform a predictive survey without having attended an Ekahau training class, preferably the Ekahau ECSE Design course. Any and all images used retain the copyright of the original creators.

Combating Lying While Being Civil

I recently became aware of several people in the wireless industry who have been besmirching the character of someone I care about. The things being said are fabrications, lies, character assassination and outright slander. The things that are being said are intended to undermine the character of my friend and perhaps the people spreading lies are also attempting to disrupt my friend's employment or perhaps attempting to bully my friend out of the wireless industry.

I will not stand by while friends of mine are mistreated. I definitely will not stand by while women in the wireless community are being mistreated. What you say about her, you could just as easily be saying about me and I won't support this behavior with my silence.

News flash: women are human beings, just like men - and as such, have the right to being respected as a human being. Period.

What you say about one woman in this industry, you are effectively saying about all women in this industry. I am no different than her. I am a woman and the things being said about her are lies and hurtful and would be hurtful to any woman human being.

The number of global wireless engineers is quite small. The number of wireless engineers that attend IT industry events is smaller. The number of wireless engineers who attend wireless focused IT events is even smaller still. The community that you interact with; that you do business with should not tolerate your behavior. Your comments, made when no other women are present are cowardly. Casting your aspersions on her, in the company of men speaks volumes about the nature of your character. I am disgusted that you and your coworkers would stoop to such levels to attack the character of a woman I consider a friend and a peer.

Being a woman in a male dominated industry is challenging.

We are judged for what we wear or do not wear.
We are judged for how pretty we are or are not.
We are judged for how much we drink or do not drink.
We are judged for how much we eat or do not eat.
We are judged for how much we know or do not know.

I get that "that's life". Humans are constantly judging other humans at the blink of an eye.

What I do not get is why a person would put words to a judgment of another person, knowing that their words are lies. Judging someone in your mind is one thing, spreading lies about another person is a whole other thing.

I refuse to let you and your coworkers force us to live our lives from the outside looking in. Second guessing who we choose to hang out with and for how long. Second guessing having a drink or two with friends. Second guessing what we wear. Second guessing if it is somehow our fault.

I don't need to name names. I am not the human behavior police. You know who you are. You know what you have said and continue to say. I want you to know that I see you. I see you trying to take down another woman with your lies. She could just as easily be me.

I wonder if you are lashing out from a fear of scarcity. Your behavior does not serve your best interests and will only ever cause division in our small community. I'm asking you to be up to something bigger than yourself. Come from a place of kindness, generosity and altruism for other human beings.

If you aren't sure how to begin the process of undoing the damage and hurt you have caused, begin by examining your behavior objectively (this is difficult work) and from there you will find the strength to cease your slander of another human being and possibly make amends.


I will close with a link to compassion training from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Compassion Training

Compassion is the feeling of caring for and wanting to help others who are suffering. The following audio files and scripts were created as part of a study into the effectiveness of compassion meditation conducted by Principal Investigator Helen Weng with Drew Fox, Alex Shackman, Diane Stodola, Jessica Kirkland Caldwell, Matt Olson, Greg Rogers, and Richard Davidson at the Center for Healthy Minds.