CoderDojo, for those unaware, is like a free Saturday computer club for children, set up by various groups (increasingly companies are setting up their own), with an aim of teaching children some form of computer language. The most popular is HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Recently I started helping out with the CoderDojo in DCU (website launching soon). It's just over a year old, and today was my second week.

I got involved because, a woman from work sent around an email, and it's close to my home. That, and three weeks ago they started another class particularly aimed at girls. So from 10am to noon, 30 or so 10-18 year old girls (and their parents/guardians) gather to learn how to write their own webpages. Then from noon until 2pm the mixed beginners class is run, and from 2pm to 4pm is the advanced class. There is a bit of a mix-up with the ticketing system that needs smoothing out (girls tickets, gen tickets), but other than that things seem to be going well.

Why start an all-girls class? After all the material isn't any different. They'd been running the mixed classes for a year, and had about four girls attending. The girls class started with about 35. Why? Perhaps it's about perception? No-one is particularly keen to do things if they feel they won't fit in. So if you tell them yes, this is for you, and there will be others like you, maybe they feel more encouraged to attend?

I help out with the two beginner classes, and after those four hours I'm a bit shattered, and keep missing out on the advanced class who do fun things like animation and node.js. Maybe once I get used to the routine I'll find the extra energy. It's inspiring to see the children getting excited over what they're doing. It's humbling to see the creativity just pour out of them so effortlessly. And it feels good to be able to help them when they get stuck. I'm looking forward to the coolest-project competition.

Work has been keeping me busy so coherent ... speech stuff ... is little beyond me at the moment. (I'm going to a grammar workshop on Saturday, maybe that will help.) So this will be blessedly brief.

Those are crepe-paper cherry blossoms at the top. I roughly followed this tutorial, only I lack a tree branch.

I've taken to learning how to needle-felt. Here's my first attempt at a rectangle in green wool, and conductive stainless-steel fiber.



I've also been experimenting with fusible fibers (and sheets) together with conductive fibers as well.



In tangential news we got a 3D-printer. I haven't logged much time with it yet but am looking forward to some of the translucent and UV-reactive plastics.



Finally, to conclude, I'm going to be busy this year attending all the things.

April, Saturday 6th. Anime Dublin (facebook twitter) Showing people how to make LED-flowers.

April, Saturday 27th - Sunday 28th. MakerFaire UK (website twitter) Helping out at the TOG hackerspace table.

June, Friday 7th - Sunday 9th. GaelHack (website twitter) Doing... something.

July, Saturday 27th. MiniMakerFaire Dublin (website twitter) Again helping out TOG.

July, Wednesday 31st - August, Sunday 4th. O.H.M. (website twitter) Trying to forget that I dislike camping.

Now to find the energy required to do it all.

Hello! Been a while. I have been starting things, just not quite getting around to finishing them... My friend Julie is on a mission to spread the joy of contributing to Open-Source Software. So this Wednesday just gone she organised a meet-up at the hackerspace to help new-comers get started. She gave a short talk (transcript here), and then we broke up into groups to get hands-on experience, in some cases finding, and in others getting started on projects.

I had great plans to finally get started on some Dreamwidth dev. I got my Dreamhack ages ago, but hadn't had time to do much with it. So I read up my wiki, logged into the account (miraculously remembering the passwords), and decided starting fresh would be the best. (When I wandered away things were still in CVS, they're now in github.) So I found the reinstall script, and ran it.

Don't. At least, not for a while. After following all the steps I could find I still had trouble; the system complaining about not being able to access the db. I logged into the dw-dev irc room to complain, and found out that the script is broken. Alas! My plans are on hold for another little while until the script is fixed up and I can get my Dreamhack working again. The hard part is waiting patiently. I think I've been bitten by the bug.

You know what I need to stop doing in 2013? Thinking, gosh, what I need is to pick up another craft. Seriously, I have more than enough to be doing. But, during 2012 I picked up a little crochet. Tríona (of Science is Delicious) had the task of teaching me how to crochet. Multiple times, over and over.

The main plus crochet has over knitting is that the level of entry is much lower. I never quite got the hang of casting on (or off) in knitting, but crochet is much easier, it simply begins with a single knot!

But also having a project to work on gives the knowledge something to stick to. And so, crochet baubles!

Using a 5mm hook, and some mysterious yarn, the pattern goes like this;

1. Start with a knot, leave a tail to work in later.


2. Chain 6, work last into first chain stitch to form a circle.


3. Chain 3, work last into the centre of the circle. Repeat to make eight loops, working the last/eighth loop into the centre of the first loop in the row.


4. Chain 5, eight times, last one into first in this row.


5. Chain 6, eight times, last one into first in this row.


6. Chain 7, eight times, last one into first in this row.


7. Check size against the bauble. If needed, chain 8, eight times, last one into first in this row.


8. Start decreasing. So if added a chain 8 row, chain 7, then chain 6. Check size against bauble, continue as needed. (I find the final row only needs seven loops.)


9. Cut a tail about the length of your forearm. (Work in the bottom tail now.) Thread the top tail on a large needle, and use it to catch each loop of the top row, and tighten to completely enclose the bauble. Knot and tie off.

( Couple of pics )

I made another bag! The last ones were so small I think I've over-compensated and have gone too much the other way. This one is a laundry bag from a project in 'A Bag for All Reasons'. I deviated a little from the instructions. The two-compartment design wasn't going to suit me; most of my clothing is darks and brights, with a handful of whites/pales/delicates. So I doubled up the internal divider to make a small third section in the middle. For the darks section I chose a black and grey striped fabric, and for the brights a nice colourful printed patchwork fabric. Then at the every end I got lazy, and instead of two parallel lines of stitching 5mm apart I used a twin-needle in one pass. It's mostly straight lines and different sizes of rectangles, which makes the cutting out easier (thank the rotary cutter), but makes the actual sewing rather boring (not even any seam finishes). The end product is approximately 50cm x 60cm, and fully lined. It's quite pretty and ultimately functional, good result!

( Pictures! )

It's a dress! Actually, it's the Crepe dress I started two years ago! (You can find previous posts with the tag gerties sew along.) The astute among you will notice a couple of things.

Firstly that it's finished. I didn't want to risk posting another in-progress update in case I put it down and ignored it again for another few months. But yesterday was the annual Crafters Sugar-overdose Night (which has unofficially become the TOG Christmas party), and I was determined to have something to show at it. So despite my intense hatred for hemming I spent all of Sunday doing just that, and felt the relief of actually finishing something. This is my first (non-costume) dress, so I now feel justified in calling myself a 'dressmaker'!

As Craft Night is directly after work I ended up wearing my dress to work. It was a peculiar experience. I have never worn a dress to work before, not even when I worked in retail. Skirts sure, but not a full dress. Being the middle of winter I made one concession, the stockings were swapped for leggings, so please excuse the bagginess in the photos.

Secondly, oh observant followers, you'll have noticed that you've never seen this fabric before. Indeed, the project came to a rather definite halt when I gave up on the fitting and was about to cut the fashion fabric and realised that the fabric wouldn't work well with this dress design. Time passed, and I happened on an online fabric sale. The moment I saw this fabric I knew the dress was back on!

Here, let me do a twirl for you! (These photos are not instagrammed, just shot in poor, yellow, light. That first photo was taken with flash and shows the colours better.)

( Photos! )

Did you spot the pockets? Pockets! Such wonderful inventions. Okay, since this was a sew-along I should talk a bit about the actual construction. The lovely patterned crepe is rather translucent, so it is underlined with black polycotton, which gives it a nice (but slightly stiff) body. Although, the hand-basting took such an impossibly long time that in future I will be saving this technique for particularly special gowns.

This was also my first time doing facings, and it was an adventure. The points on the neckline could have been done better. And my interfacing was so delicate that I melted a few pieces with the iron. That took getting used to. And they are so light that they have to be tacked down in several places to stop them flipping out. (That is one advantage of the underlining; I can tack to the lining without having the stitches visible on the outside.)

My usual method of seam construction is straight-stitch finished with overlocker. In some places, like the skirt side-seams with the pockets, I had to leave the seams open, so I overlocked both sides. Speaking of pockets; I initially put them in the wrong way around. So I had to cut them out and put them back the right way around. Silly mistake, and reminds me to not sew when I'm tired.

Other than that my skirt is 62cm long measured from the waist seam. The ties don't want to lay flat and keep compacting, and there seems to be a bit extra fabric in the body, but I figure that's part of the pattern. I am glad I spent so much time working on getting the fit just so, because this really is a very comfortable dress to wear. (Like it was made for me or something :P )

( Here are some shots of the inside of the dress )

Okay, that's that. *dusts off hands*

This is the Raven USB stick. It is a network evaluation tool for ZigBee networks. You can use it with the killerbee framework/toolkit to passively listen in on network traffic.



Which is great, until you want to use some of the more active features of the toolkit. The toolkit comes with an active firmware, but first you have to load it onto the Raven.

( Another good use for a Dragon )

I've started making bags! They're handy things, carrying stuff for you. But it can be hard to find just the right one to fit all your really important stuff properly. Therefore, on occasion, I need to make one myself. I got a book (Sew What! Bags) and started small.

This is the glasses case. Just a few rectangles of fabric sewn together in a tube like shape, fully lined. Handy little thing.


Then I tried the drawstring bag. I've made them before, but it's nice to follow a 'pattern'. The one in the book isn't lined, but I fancied a lined drawstring bag so that's what I did. I got a bit confused with the drawstring channel itself and think I was supposed to turn it to the inside rather than the outside, but hey, learning!



Have a few others in the works. It's nice actually having a use for all that pretty quiliting-weight cotton in the shops. Onwards to more complicated bags!

Hello. Well, I was going to tell you about how I'm getting into making bags, show you a nifty little glasses case I made yesterday, and maybe go into some cool Lilypad related stuff. But. My home router decided to bork its own wireless functionality, I wasted an hour trying to fix it, and the helpdesk doesn't open until 9am. Then I thought, isn't technology grand, I'll just connect to the mobile internet through a hotspot on my phone. Yeah, except for some reason all my attempts at uploading photos result in nasty xml-tastic error messages. So I'm throwing in the towel and putting on a few CDs for the rest of the evening. Oh, and things will be back to normal (more regular like) around here shortly, presuming the internet starts working again.

Normally when I dye fabric I just dump the powder and salt in the washing machine and let the chemistry and engineering do what they do best. But it's wasteful, especially when all you want to dye is one or two t-shirts. So I decided to dip my toe into the domain of hand-dye.

I had two fine white cotton t-shirts to hand; one with blue and red print on the front and black on the back, the other with green and orange print on the front and black on the back. Clearly what they needed was purple. (I have been accused of thinking everything needs to be more purple, but see nothing wrong with this.) I found a nice dark, deep, "Intense Violet" colour. Perfection.

Perhaps doing it at the hackerspace was a mistake. There were many people to help, but largely it resulted in distraction and mass mis-reading of the instructions. We did it 'wrong'; you're supposed add the dye-water to the salt-water! But, t-shirts got dyed, so it can't have been that wrong.

( Pictures )

But, they're still cotton t-shirts, so there's no problem with trying again. And the coverage is nice and even, I especially like how even the gaps in-between the printed bits took the colour just as well. Maybe I'll get a better colour next time, if you know, I actually follow the instructions. But there will be more modding of these t-shirts first. Like adding of waists, and maybe lowering the necklines. Though that's a task for another day!