Merry Christmas from Apollo 8

We are so going into space today

50 years ago, we sent Apollo 8 to the moon.  It wasn't originally planned as a moon mission, but rumor had it, the Soviets were going to send someone to the moon by the end of the year, and we had to beat them.  The Saturn V rocket had only been used once before in Apollo 7.  The newly redesigned crew capsule had never been tested in flight before.  Nor had the guidance computer.

(Full disclosure:  the human works for the company that designed the original Apollo guidance system.)  

And they made it to the moon.  It's not a mission you hear about a lot, but it's the mission that paved the way for Apollo 11.  Apollo 8 showed that we could get someone to the moon and back.

The place the human works had a wonderful tribute night to the engineers and scientists behind Apollo 8 at a special event to preview the new PBS NOVA episode on Apollo 8 (broadcast at 12/26 9pm EST, on PBS.  You should go watch it, because it is has all the fun stories behind the scenes on what the scientists and engineers were up to.)  The human also got to meet people like John Aaron (the original steely-eyed missile man), Jerry Boswick (CAPCOM for Apollo 8), Poppy Northcutt (Return to Earth specialist for Apollo 8.  Whoever thinks there weren't women in mission control is LYING), and Margaret Hamilton (who designed the Apollo Guidance Computer.  Now (in)famous because she has been immortalized by LEGO as a minifig.  So of course the human had the minifig on hand when she met Margaret Hamilton and showed her the minifig...)

There was a panel discussion at the event, and someone from the audience asked John Aaron, Jerry Boswick, and Poppy Northcutt what the most terrifying thing about Apollo 8 was for them.

John Aaron:  We had 55 days between Apollo 7 splashdown and Apollo 8 countdown.

Jerry Boswick:  I was told on a Friday afternoon to give an answer by Monday if Apollo 8 could go to the moon or not.

Poppy Northcutt:  The return to earth system didn't work.  I heard rumors that Apollo 8 was going to the moon, but that I thought that was *&^%$^ because we couldn't be sending anyone up when we couldn't get them back.  We were doing bug fixes a few days before launch.

(Keep in mind 'bugfix' in those days involved wrapping wires around magnets to change values in computer memory...)

Our favorite story involves the Apollo Guidance Computer.
The lead engineer of the Apollo Guidance Computer, Margaret Hamilton, let her daughter play with the simulator for the guidance computer.  And one day, her daughter managed to crash the guidance computer by giving it a command of 'change to program 01' when it was in flight mode.  Program 01 is a test program for use before launch, so the guidance computer thought it was back on the launchpad when it was supposed to be in space.  

And Margaret Hamilton, being a good engineer, brought this fact up to her bosses, and said 'We should make it so someone can't accidentally change the computer to Program 01 during flight.'

And her bosses, being men in the 1960s, said 'This can't possibly happen.  Our astronauts are some of the most highly trained men we have.  They can't possibly make a silly mistake like this.'

And on the way back from the moon, astronaut Bill Anders was making a star sighting (to give the guidance computer a stable reference point to work with).  He was supposed to type VERB 37 NOUN 23, VERB 5 NOUN 01 (in English, that means 'Change program to star sighting, use star 01 as a reference').  What he actually typed was VERB 37 NOUN 01 ('Change program to program 01'), the exact thing that triggered a crash in the simulation...
So the capsule started going crazy, because the guidance computer thought it was back on the launchpad...

A frantic call to Houston, and a computer reset later...they were back on course and Bill Anders was no longer allowed to touch the computer...

The crew of Apollo 8 orbited the moon on Christmas Eve 1968, and, in a live TV broadcast, read from the Book of Genesis.  Here's the transcript, directly from the mission control log files:

We are now approaching lunar sunrise, and the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you.

In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the Earth.  And the Earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters and God said "let there be light." And there was. And God saw the light and that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness.

And God called light Day and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

And God said "let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters. And let it divide the waters from the waters." And God made the firmament and divided-the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

And God said "let the waters under the Heavens be gathered together into one place. And let the dry land appear." And it was so.  And God called the dry land Earth. And the gathering together of the waters called the seas. And God saw that it was good. 

And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas and God bless all of you - all of you on the good Earth.

(https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/apollo-8-earthrise)

We'll go back to the moon some day...

Christmas Eve Coloring Books

It's Christmas Eve, and we're enjoying the vacation with cookies, milk, and a stash of new coloring books for the winter.  

These would make great absolute last minute stocking stuffers.  Each book has 6 pages to color.

Get the coloring books here!

Chistmas Papercrafting 2018: Christmas Cards

Hi!  It's your hosts, Lily and Z (yes, the human has pulled out the stash of Christmas sweaters...luckily she doesn't have enough for everyone yet...) with this year's stash of Christmas cards.

The human might have fallen behind with her card-sending this year, but we haven't.  It really is customary for us to use an old-fashioned fountain pen and real ink in a bottle to write our cards, like the human does.  It's only a matter of time before the calligraphy and manuscript illumination classes start again.

This year, we have 12 miniature Tasha Tudor cards, depicting old-fashioned Christmas in rural New England.  Having spent some time in central VT with the human, the churches-in-a-town-square-covered-with-snow cards are SPOT ON.  These cards are all miniaturized versions of vintage Caspari cards, with the same message the real card would have had inside.

Get your Christmas cards HERE.

Last year's Christmas cards are HERE.

Christmas 2018 Papercraft-a-long: Advent Calendars

Welcome to the 2018 Christmas Papercraft-a-long, with this episode hosted by your favorite dolls, Samantha and Nellie!

This year, we're going with a vintag-y theme for decorations and cards.

Our living room has been decorated with card garlands and assorted paper sculptures, including an paper nativity scene from an antique french pattern.

The cards are miniature versions of Tasha Tudor's Christmas card designs.  For a bit of a Scandinavian influence, we have some miniature yule goats (No, we are not setting these on fire.  We are not allowed to set anything on fire.  The human has ruled that right out.) and a pair of Dala horse, all made from paper.

The kitchen is ready for some baking goodness.  We're planning a gingerbread house this year, along with peppermint bark and even more cookies.

And for today's papercraft:  Advent calendars!

The original designs are (as always) from Canon Creative Park.

We've shrunk these down to our size.

House Advent Calendar

House Calendar Instructions

Tree Advent Calendar

Tree Calendar Instructions

Print the calendars out on lightweight cardstock for best effect.  

The house is simpler to make than the tree.

We have 2 calendars, one shaped like a Christmas tree, and one shaped like a house.  Each calendar has 24 little drawers to pull out.  These two designs actually have interchangeable drawers, if anyone wants to mix-and-match.

We're just showing off the contents of the drawers...  The other girls aren't getting sneak peaks of the treats.

The giant stash of candy we have actually fits in the drawers quite well.

...and meet a different furry interloper.  This one wants to play with the candy.
Notice the devil-may-care look as she paws at the candy drawers.

Not that the normal furry interloper isn't around...

Advent Papercrafting: Gift Boxes

We're back!  Are you excited for more cute Christmas crafts?  We've been crafting for weeks now getting ready for the holidays (and there's still more cute things coming up).

(We also have some sad news.  The human has a very sick cat who's been hospitalized and running up a $2000+ bill.  If you've been wanting to purchase patterns for doll books to make your own library, now's a great time to buy some from the human's etsy store.  Or ask about any of doll book patterns featured here so far.)

This time, we made a bunch of different gift boxes, some simple, some exceptionally elaborate.  The gift box patterns are all from Canon Creative Park, resized for us.  It's one of the human's favorite free papercrafting sites.

Assembling gift boxes

To resize the patterns, when you're printing them, go to the 'layout' options, and select '2 pages per sheet'.

We had a lot of fun with these, but some of the boxes were definitely more difficult to make than others.  We'll let you know ahead of time which ones are really finicky and time consuming.  The results are worth it, though.

A Christmas tree box for Christmas

1.  Floral box 

(difficulty:  easy)

2.  Christmas tree box 

(difficulty: moderate at human scale, difficult at doll scale)

The red box actually comes in three different colors

3.  Hexagonal gift box

(difficulty:  easy, with one tricky fold closing the box)

We just love the fancy paper bow on the star box

4.  Christmas Star box

(difficulty:  moderate in human scale, difficult in doll scale)

5.  Dainty gift box (Perfect for Valentine's Day in our mind)

(difficulty:  easy)

Coming up next:  Vintage/antique paper dolls and some space themed things to welcome Luciana.

If you're just joining us, the previous weeks are here:

1.  Christmas decorations and Christmas cards

2.  Christmas coloring books

Advent Papercrafting: Coloring Books

Are you amazed that the human has actually managed to post on schedule?  We certainly are.

It's time for the next five days of crafting:  some holiday themed coloring books!  You can either print out and fold these as coloring books, or cut the pages apart to make a giant stack of pages.  We, obviously, prefer the books.  These are super fast to make up (think under 5 min) and are great for stocking stuffers or decorations or props for a bookstore.  

Coloring Bonanza.  Guess which crayons/pencils actually work.

We keep asking the human for a bookstore or a library, but she claims we don't have enough books to properly equip one.  She may be lying, but if she's not, it means we'll be getting even more books next year.  (Current book tally, for those of you who are interested, is somewhere over 300, probably closer to 400, which you'd think would be plenty...)

Coloring and activity books

Download the coloring books

Instructions

Interior pages of the coloring books

The originals came from Dover samplers, and the human resized them to doll scale.  Each book has six interior pages to color (and yes, if your pencil/crayon is small enough, you can color it.  The human tried and succeeded.)

If these aren't enough and you need more coloring/activity books (or bonus Christmas themed books):

Christmas books (including a book of carols)

American Girl themed activity books

See you in five days for the next batch of crafts!

Advent Papercrafting: Decorations and Christmas Cards

Nora here.  It has been a while, hasn't it?  We finally made the human sit down and organize her photos of us, and it turns out she's got about two months worth of backlog adventures to go through.  You can expect regular updates through February, at which point we're going to have to hound the human again.

Do you like our living room?  We (that being Cauth and I) have taken it over to our own papercrafting, and we'd like to share our new projects with you this December. 

We're still looking for a theme for the last 5 days of crafts, so please leave a comment with your suggestion.

Christmas cards and decorations

It's December, so that means Advent, and we're going to have 25 (maybe with a few bonus crafts) small projects in all.  Some projects are harder than others, and we'll point those out hopefully before anyone gets frustrated.

Projects 1-5: Decorations and Christmas Cards

Our craft table is only marginally messier than the human's

The decorations (on pages 1 and 2) should be printed on lightweight cardstock for best effect. 

Tiny and cute, and currently on top of the bookcases in the parlor.

The original designs came from this book, which was part of a Dover sampler pack.  The human gets a good number of her designs from Dover samplers, if you were wondering.

Next up, the annual batch of Christmas cards.  The human hasn't started hers yet, so we're ahead of the game.  The Christmas cards are on pages 3 and 4, and should be printed on normal paper.  Fold each card in half, glue, and fold in half again.

We always use calligraphy pens for Christmas cards.

The designs are a mix of American Girl catalog pictures (from 2015, which was when the human designed these and then forgot about them for 2 years), and vintage/antique Christmas cards from the NYPL's digital collection (here).

Christmas cards, modern and vintage

Enjoy, and come back on 12/6 for more crafts.

Samantha in Montpelier

In the hotel lobby

Sam here.  The week before Christmas, the human, her male counterpart, and I took a little weekend trip to Montpelier, VT.  Since it was supposed to snow, I commandeered the new purple velvet cloak.  We stayed in the Capitol Plaza, right in the center of Montpelier.

First stop, the Vermont History Museum

The snow did not start Friday night when we drove up, but by Saturday morning, there was a lovely little snowstorm.  But the museum was right across the street from the hotel, and wonderfully deserted thanks to the snow.  It was just me, the human, and the museum employee (who gave the human a little sample book someone sent them.  It's too big for us, but the human will miniaturize it.).

The museum had some really interesting objects, like a Civil War medicine case of leather with little glass vials.  I do believe that the human should make us one.  Not shown here was the obligatory Bernie Sanders campaign poster from 1983 (it is Vermont, after all).

Outdoors, it was turning into a winter wonderland.

Christmas shopping at the Farmer's Market

By early afternoon, the snow had died down, and the humans decided to venture to their favorite distillery.  I came along for some nice scenery.  (The less said about the condition of the roads, the better.  The humans only drove into a snowbank once.)

Winter scenery

In the evening, we made a trip up to Burlington for dinner with the human's friends, and some lovely street scenes.

And when we got back to Montpelier, the tree in front of the state house was lit, so we went out for more photos.