You know those people who make all sorts of stuff? Like, stuff you could buy but why do that when you can just make it? I’m thinking about my colleague who only makes his own yogurt, for example. I buy my yogurt without any shame whatsoever. His family makes theirs. I’m sure it’s delicious, but that’s more dedication than I have.
Given the choice, I’ll probably buy something rather than make it. “But you can buy socks and you make those!” Touché, but I can’t buy the experience of making socks, and the experience is why I knit them. Believe me, I don’t need more socks. The last several pairs I made were gifted for this very reason. Side note: people go out of their minds when gifted a pair of socks you made with your own hands. They get all gushy, they hand-wash them, or they only wear them around the house even though the yarn wears like iron and is perfectly happy going through the dryer. Who am I to question their happiness? I made the socks, after all, and to quote Spongebob’s grandma, “There’s love in every stitch.”
I’ve started prototyping The Idea. I have to make at least one, because when I tried to buy it I discovered that it didn’t exist. I did some sketches and drafted the pattern. I was so excited to try it out that I didn’t even finish stitching before I tried the fit… and it turns out my math was kind of totally wrong.
No matter what you’re making, the process is full of surprises.
Add to the list of surprises: If I choose to make a lot of these things for some reason, I will need an industrial sewing machine. Sewing heavy canvas with heavy thread and a heavy-duty needle has this wonderful kaCHUNK feeling, I must say. I can’t remember the last time I was sewing something this heavyweight — hemming jeans many eons ago, perhaps. KaCHUNK kaCHUNK kaCHUNK…
Did I mention that my math was wrong? That’s not entirely accurate. Well it’s about as accurate as my math was. Ha! I made the typical software engineer mistake: I forgot to account for the stuff around the edges. That’s not to say that I didn’t put in a seam allowance. I did that part. I just had this ridiculously optimistic view of how much space objects actually occupy. It’s the patternmaking equivalent of, “We can do that in three days of coding.” That estimate doesn’t account for testing or bugs or actually integrating with the code in production. We’ve all done it. I just can’t usually touch it.
Then again, I’ve never worked with haptics. That would be a way to do both.
So I’ll iterate. Another version of the prototype. I have the perfect pencil, a relatively new eraser, most of a roll of freezer paper, and a few yards of bright orange canvas ready to sacrifice for the cause.