Sometimes ideas pay off

I get lots of ideas.  Most of the time they don't work out but every once in a while they do.  Some of the people in the lace group have little wooden stands for their pillows.  Here's a miniture of one of them.  And here's another that's not quite so expensive.  They can angle the top and use it comfortably while they're working.  My problem is that I'm really cheap and the tables are very expensive.  So I had an idea.

What if I used an inexpensive tripod and was able to attach crossbars to the top to hold the pillow.  Then it could be adjusted for height by the tripod legs and adjusted for top angle by the head at the top of the tripod.  It sounded good but then I had to figure out how to make the head frame.  I wandered through the building supply store wondering what I could use.  I found a strip of wood, 1.5x.5inches that was 36 inches long.  At the Ace Hardware store, the manager showed me a piece of hardware that would allow me to attach the camera holder to the head frame and that was the last piece of the puzzle.

Here's how it ended up:

 I drilled peg holes along each arm to make it adjustable to hold different pillows snugly.  Here it is with one type of pillow.

 And a cookie pillow.

 Here's a view of the bottom with the piece of hardware that I used to attach the head frame to the camera platform.  All I had to do is drill a hole and hammer this in.  It has teeth that bed into the wood to hold it in place.

For the pegs, I used a small dowell that I had on hand and cut a few pieces that fit into the drilled holes.  The camera platform comes with the tripod.  Normally it would screw into a hole on the bottom of the camera.  Perfect fit.

It's also really portable because the tripod came with a carrying case and the frame will travel easily with the pillow.  All I lack now is to finish the wood and I've got me a stand!  And instead of the $105 for the cheaper stand linked above, I spent a total of about $23 and have the joy of having come up with something all by myself (with a little help from the Ace Hardware guy).  Plus I can still use tripod for my camera, too!