--- session: 8 title: The things you can hold point: Not everything here runs on a server. I asked about a shower, a tree, a puzzle and two books, and learned that Jamie doesn’t always do the making himself. What he brings is the idea, the direction and the details that make a thing true. pull: n: 62 words: bridging the digital world and the physical world also: - n: 55 words: if you’re going to build something that brings in the character of something else, it has to be accurate. - n: 60 words: I liked the view from above, looking down at a lot of different things, which is what looking at a year of links felt like. - n: 59 words: What we mostly learned is that creating a puzzle is really hard. started: 2026-11-11 ended: 2026-11-11 notes: - I corrected names the transcriber misheard, among them Quinn, Layne Kennedy, Foshay Tower, Mazie and Things 4 Good. - In question 56 the transcriber heard “coupe piece”. It is a Kubb piece, as Jamie confirmed after the sitting. - The note under question 61 is mine, from Jamie’s post of May 2009. It adds a detail and takes nothing from his answer, which stays as he gave it. questions: - n: 55 title: Why the game had to be right things: - tetris-shower - n: 56 title: Whose idea, and why Peanuts things: - charlie-brown-tree - n: 57 title: Adam Gale’s design things: - charlie-brown-tree - n: 58 title: Seventy-two hours with Layne Kennedy things: - stone-steel-people - n: 59 title: Drawing Celebration City things: - jiggy-thing-puzzles - things-4-good - n: 60 title: The cover of Yearly Thing 2025 things: - yearly-thing-2025 - weekly-thing - n: 61 title: When someone else’s hands do the making things: - tetris-shower - charlie-brown-tree - n: 62 title: The next thing to hold things: - yearly-thing-2025 --- # Session 8: The things you can hold ### 55. The Tetris Shower had rules: every piece whole, no row complete, one piece still falling. You wrote, “It was critical to me that the tile pattern be correct.” Why did the game have to be right? **Jamie:** Because if the game wasn’t right, the whole story would fall apart. You can’t have a Tetris shower and then have something in the tiles that isn’t a valid tetromino, or that wouldn’t happen in the game. Here’s a funny story. Rather than creating it by hand, I played games of Tetris. There was a Mac Tetris clone called Quinn, an exceedingly well-done clone. It eventually went away, because the Tetris Company sued everybody who made anything closely related to Tetris. I played games in Quinn and intentionally didn’t complete any rows, leaving spaces in them, and took screenshots of those games. Then I put multiple stacks of games next to each other, all the while making sure I never completed a row. A complete row would have meant some of the tetrominoes went away, and then it would look invalid. So it was important to me. I think if you’re going to build something that brings in the character of something else, it has to be accurate. ### 56. You told me the Charlie Brown Tree was carved “out of a dead tree at our cabin”. Whose idea was it to carve it, and why Peanuts? **Jamie:** That was Tammy’s idea. The tree sadly died, and we were trying to figure out what to do with it. She loved the idea of having a carving done, and she found the artist. Peanuts, because we have a lot of Peanuts things at the cabin. And there are Easter eggs. The tree has references to objects that are very much about our family. There are books on a shelf that our kids really liked. Instead of holding a football, one character has a soccer ball, because we’re into soccer. One of the characters is holding a Kubb piece. So it’s Peanuts, but it’s also personalized to us and the things we do. ### 57. Adam Gale of Rust n’ Grain carved it. How did you find him, and how was it decided which character went where? Name them for me, from the bottom up. **Jamie:** I can’t name them from the bottom up. Adam came up with the design. He sketched it out on paper, and then he made a three-dimensional clay model of what the tree would look like. We still have it, framed as a diorama, and we have his drawings at various levels of detail. He brought in the characters. Where we really weighed in was Snoopy being on top with his treehouse, and the individual pieces that were part of the tree itself. ### 58. Stone/Steel/People came out of Layne Kennedy’s 72 Hours workshop: a little over 30 pictures, one to a page. What were those 72 hours like, and which picture in the book would you show me first? **Jamie:** Like all of Layne’s photo workshops, it was a bit exhausting. We shot from very early in the morning until very late at night. But I always learn a ton in any photo workshop, and particularly in Layne’s. What I remember about that one is the people part. We were all in downtown Minneapolis, and it was just Layne, me and, I think, one other student. We shot all kinds of subjects, and getting people and real things into the photos was one of the things we worked on, like shooting a street musician. I distinctly remember the photo on the front, the Foshay Tower at night. And I have a photo of somebody playing a saxophone on Nicollet. That one is really memorable, because I remember standing there, observing that scene and taking the photo. ### 59. Celebration City is hand-drawn and full of small scenes, like an ant hotel with a “no vacancy” sign. Who drew what, and how did a family draw one picture together? **Jamie:** That was a fun project. The puzzle started as a special puzzle for Tammy’s birthday, and then we evolved it into a puzzle we sold at the Things 4 Good fall candle fundraiser. It was drawn over many, many sessions, all on an iPad in Procreate, with a lot of layers. Mazie drew parts, I drew parts, Tyler drew parts. There was a lot of zooming in, working in different layers to add new things and clean things up, and using the pencil to get a lot of detail and retouch the image. There were probably 100 hours of effort in it. What we mostly learned is that creating a puzzle is really hard. There are a lot of little details you put into a puzzle. And we learned we probably wouldn’t do another one. ### 60. The cover of Yearly Thing 2025 is wind turbines against a cloudy sky. Where was that picture taken, and why is it the cover? **Jamie:** Funnily enough, I took it while descending on a flight into Amsterdam. The cloud ceiling was really low, and as we came down I looked out the window and saw these pillowy clouds with wind turbines popping through them. I thought it was really cool. I just took it as a regular picture, and it was featured in one of the Weekly Thing issues. I used it for the cover of the Yearly Thing for a few reasons. It was a photo I took, so there were no rights issues. The abstract visual worked well; it looked right. And I liked the view from above, looking down at a lot of different things, which is what looking at a year of links felt like. ### 61. For several of these, someone else’s hands did the making: Terry Owens laid the tile and Adam Gale carved the tree. What is your part in a thing like that? **Jamie:** The creative inspiration, the creative direction, the visual aesthetics. I was very actively involved in the ideation. On the tree, Tammy and I both weighed in on the little Easter eggs. The Tetris Shower was purely our idea. We needed to tile the shower, and if we were going to tile it, why not have it say something and mean something? So instead of plain tile, let’s do a Tetris shower. **Thingy’s correction:** [Jamie’s post of May 2009](https://www.thingelstad.com/2009/05/03/tetris-shower.html) adds that a friend helping Tammy with the design drew up the concept. ### 62. A shower, a tree, a puzzle and two books. Is there a next thing you would like to make that you can hold? **Jamie:** I think about creating another book. The Yearly Thing may be something I do again. I’ve also been thinking about possibly publishing a book in the future, something that isn’t just a derivative of a project I have. The other thing I’d hold in my hand is what I do with 3D printing. I think it’s very interesting to think about creating my own models and extending what I can do with 3D printing, bridging the digital world and the physical world.