Uni Watch DIY Project: Cave Painting

[Today we have an excellent DIY project by Ryan Connelly. Enjoy! ”” PL]

By Ryan Connelly

I had a fun project to work on over the holidays, as a friend commissioned me to paint a Penguins wall logo for him. Here’s how I did it.

First, I traced/drew the Penguins logo in AutoCAD. I scaled the logo up to four feet tall. Then I set a grid over the logo, with each rectangle measuring 11″ x 17″

Then I printed out each piece of the grid on 11″ x 17″ paper and set out the pages on the floor to get an idea of the scale:

Next, I started taping, cutting, and tracing:

I did the gloves mostly freehand. I used “holes” and the overall outline of the glove for reference and just sketched in the rest.

Here’s how the project looked after four hours of work, spaced out over two days:

At this point I started filling in the black areas (as you can see, there’s still a little work left on the glove and skates):

Here’s how it looked after six hours spread out over three days, plus a long shot for scale:

Next I added the gold (photo take after seven hours over four days) and the white (8.5 hours over five days):

The next step: adding white outline. I toyed with the idea of outlining the whole logo with a navy blue stripe, then a light blue stripe, or vice-versa per the 3rd/alt jerseys colors, but decided not to do that.

Finished! Six trips, 10 hours of work — not bad!

It was a fun job, because (a) I love to paint, and (b) there was a big screen in the room that I had tuned to various hockey action throughout the whole process (would explain the 10 hours, eh?). But it turned out amazing! You just can’t beat a hand-painted piece of work as opposed to a sticker or “fat head” wall hanging. Also, it was great to step away from DIY jersey making and get back into painting.

Hope everyone enjoys this as much as the “client” did after finally seeing the finished product.”

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’Stros no more?: New Astros owner Jim Crane said yesterday that the team might change its uniforms or even its name when it moves to the American League in 2013.

Personally, I think the team’s jersey design should include a little inflatable bump in the stomach area, to mimic that berm in center field. At the very least, you’d get a lot more HBPs, am I right?

If you have a better idea — and you probably do — start thinking of new names and/or designs for the Astros, because I’ll be running a contest on that topic over on ESPN shortly.

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Collector’s Corner

By Brinke Guthrie

The Super Bowl match-up is set, so in honor of Big Blue, we lead off with a nice New York football Giants 2007 season highlights book, courtesy of reader Nicholas Schiavo. And for Paul, two of his favorite things in one: a set of Giants Hormel meat trays!

Here’s the rest of this week’s eBay finds:

• Good grief, will you look at this assortment of Cleveland Indians memorabilia.

• Nothing says vintage hoops like this classic red/white/blue Dr. J Nets jersey — well, except for that “Casio” logo creep.

• So you want to bake a cake, but you want it shaped like your favorite NFL team’s helmet. No problem, says reader Bob Andrews.

• Keep warm with these 1970s Cleveland Browns winter gloves!

• Fine-looking set of 22 NFL pins from the 1970s. Or if decals and stickers are more your speed, check out this huge haul.

• Here’s a cool 1970s Atlanta Falcons windbreaker by Russell Athletic.

• And some guy named Paul Lukas sent in this Coca-Cola record of highlights from the 1978 MLB All-Star Game in San Diego.

Seen something on eBay or Etsy (or anywhere else) that you think would make good Collector’s Corner fodder? Send your submissions here.

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Culinary Corner: Throughout the food world, I tend to like the little browned, crunchy debris and edges that are formed by the cooking process. When I roast a chicken, I love all the caramelized drippings that end up in the pan. When I cook a fresh ham, I love making cracklins out of the skin. When I fry anything, I love the little pieces that flake off and get carbonized in the oil. The browned crust on a steak, the darkest shard of the shell on a crème brûlée, the one potato chip in the bag that’s almost burnt — I treat all of these as treasured nuggets of gold.

Another entry on that list would be the little half-popped kernels of popcorn that end up at the bottom of the bowl. To some people they’re garbage to be discarded, but not for me. Crunchy, salty yet slightly bitter, and roasty-toasty — they’re like little gifts from heaven, even though I wouldn’t want to eat an entire bowl of them.

Or would I?

That’s the question raised by a new snack product called Halfpops, which is exactly what it sounds like: partially popped corn kernels. For now they’re available primarily in the Pacific northwest, although the company offers mail-order service (with free shiping anywhere in the lower 48). After hearing about them a few weeks ago, I got my hands on a few bags last week and have been nibbling away ever since.

Visually, Halfpops look a bit like a smaller version of Corn Pops cereal (click to enlarge):

As an eating experience, they’re a little like cancha, the toasted corn snack frequently found in Peruvian restaurants, and also seem like a cousin to Corn Nuts. But cancha and Corn Nuts are both fried, while Halfpops are air-popped. The good part about this is that Halfpops aren’t greasy and don’t give you that logy feeling that fried foods can sometimes impart. Their crunch is very clean — turns out I can eat a whole bowl of them. The bad part is that Halfpops don’t have that undercurrent of roasty-toastiness that partially oil-popped kernels provide. In short: It’s a really good product, but not quite a perfect one. Not that that’s kept me from devouring them, mind you.

How do they make Halfpops, anyway? Like, do they just make the rounds of big, commercial-scale popcorn makers and say, “Hi, we’ll take those partially popped orphans off your hands,” or maybe they scour the mostly eaten bags of popcorn left behind after movie screenings?

Nope. “We pop them in such a way that there aren’t any fully popped kernels — only Halfpops and a few duds, so we try to sift those out,” says Halfpops CEO Mike Fitzgerald, who’s a former professional auto racer. “We have a utility patent on the manufacturing process. It involves manipulating the moisture content prior to popping, and then a bunch of other things during the popping process that we keep secret. It’s actually pretty difficult to do.”

Interesting! Like I said, Halfpops aren’t perfect, but they’re still really good. If you want to try them, use their store locator page or just order some for yourself. Fitzgerald says any orders placed by the end of this week should arrive in time for your Super Bowl party.

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Uni Watch News Ticker: Not exactly a surprise, but the Pats will wear blue and Giants will wear white in the Super Bowl. … Nike will unveil new men’s and women’s basketball uniforms — all of them sweatbacks, I think — for Arizona, Baylor, Connecticut, Duke, Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Syracuse tomorrow morning. ”¦ Hmmm, new helmet for Illinois? (From Joel Hackler.) ”¦ Always good to see another view of Clarence Weathers’s double-decker FNOB (big thanks to Kevin Bresnahan). ”¦ Why was Derrick Martin of the Giants using a Packers-branded Flip cam during the team’s postgame celebration? (As noted by Josh Neisler.) ”¦ Movie note from Andrew Levitt, who writes: “In a sequence from the 1984 crapfest Supergirl, our eponymous protagonist is seen flying with a bumper car featuring the Patriots and Rams, circa 1983. After a bit of searching I couldn’t find any other reference to such bumper cars, which look awesome and frankly are the single best aspect of this movie.” ”¦ New 20th-season logo for the St. Paul Saints (from R. Scott Rogers). ”¦ Old Dominion’s basketball uniforms were stolen from their locker room over the weekend. ”¦ Here’s more about Olympian Nick Symmonds’s efforts to have athletes be able to wear sponsorship tattoos (from Vince Bosco). ”¦ Don’t think I’ve ever seen Jerry Dior’s MLB logo concept appropriated by a roofing company (Josh Billman). ”¦ The Spurs will retire Bruce Bowen’s number in March. ”¦ Ladies and gents, your very underwhelming 2012 CavFanatic jersey, which will make its on-court debut tomorrow night (from Jerry Wolper). ”¦ Lots of old newspaper clipping about the Leafs winning the 1967 Stanley Cup here. ”¦ Speaking of the Leafs, they wore white at home last night against the Islanders, who are expected to return the favor when the two teams meet again tonight on Long Island. ”¦ As Billy Cundiff scurried onto the field with play clock winding down on Sunday, I immediately thought (and posted in the comments), “He’s rushing, he didn’t get onto the field soon enough.” We all know how that turned out, but why was Cundiff late getting into position? Now, thanks to some excellent work by Slate’s Stefan Fatsis, we know the answer to that question. … Buried toward the bottom of this article is an interesting note: When the Giants went to the airport to fly home from San Francisco, the team “was greeted by flight attendants dressed in Giants apparel.”