Busy hands | Disquiet mind

The Electro-Sewing Workshop was last Friday, and I feel it went very well. Even with starting on Irish-Standard-Time and forcing the class to sit through a slide-deck, there were seven very pretty LED-flowers two-and-a-half hours later. Definitely a success!

Here's a couple of pics from the night.



Aren't they pretty! I am planning to write up a how-to for these, but truth be known, they follow essentially the same method as for the LED-horns from last year. Nonetheless, people seemed rather enthused about the whole experience :)

I've also gotten my hands on the new LilyPad ProtoSnap Development Board. It's very nifty; all the main components of the LilyPad range, pre-connected on one board! So you can practice your programming, or simply getting the components to work together the way you want, without having to worry about any of that sewing malarkey. Then, if you want, you can snap the pieces apart and sew them into an actual project!

I plugged it in just yesterday and was highly amused to find a pre-loaded program that tests most of the components (make sure to play with the switches!). But, looking closely, I've noticed that only the RGB-LED, the five white LEDs, and the momentary push-button are connected to actual sew-holes on the Simple Microcontroller Board. The rest of them are connected through paths that would be available on the full Microcontroller Board, but that aren't exposed on the Simple board. Makes sense, seeing as how the LEDs/button take up all the existing holes! (Still, I imagine the numbers printed on next to the other components could get confusing for someone just starting out. Speaking of, there's a nice tutorial available to get you up and running.)

And all this has inspired me to maybe run a LilyPad course in tog in January. We'll see.


In other news, I don't have any photos from Octocon, but we made the same flowers as shown above, and you can check out the photos from Darklight (where I spent some time teaching people to solder) in the Gallery. (Can you spot me, or rather my Dresden Dolls hoodie?) That's almost it for my busy October. *phew*

Okay, I've done it again, I've left it too long without posting! I am working on finishing up two projects (which I won't talk about until they're finished), I've been prelaundering fabric, and getting ready for a series of short workshops. And that's before we get to regular life stuff! I'm a busy chebe.

Tomorrow (Tuesday 11th) I'm running a basic hand-sewing workshop in tog.
This weekend (Saturday 15th) I'm running at least one electro-craft workshop at Octocon. It'll be making the LED-flowers we made at Electric picnic. And it's the first step in a series of projects of ever increasing complexity to get you comfortable with etextiles.
And if you can't make Octocon, don't worry, because we'll be running the same workshop in tog, on Friday 21st!
On Saturday 22nd I'll be helping out the tog guys run some workshops at Darklight (and a couple of my projects might be on display the Friday before).
Then the following weekend I'll be hanging around Gaelcon, just for fun, and desperately trying to finish my Hallowe'en costume! (Ideas, quick, I need ideas! ... and sleep.)

I'll try to post some content as we go along, but it's a busy month!