Replying to
also I’ve been walking around holding this thing like a keytar
Remote
Lea
@lea@mastodon.social
mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06(formerly @0x11eaea)
I'm still trying to find a new usage pattern, but for now: follow this account for "main" content, or lea@hci.social for research-only. (I'll boost research posts to here as well.)
0 Followers
0 Following
35 Posts
Joined November 23, 2016
website:
lea.zone
pronouns:
she/they
Replying to
Knit files and instructions: https://cmu-devlab.github.io/knitting_machine/
This is absolutely an alpha release and we’d welcome feedback. The documentation notably does not include any “how to knit with this,” but fwiw this machine was highly inspired by the Bond “Ultimate Sweater Machine” (as well as other modular knitting machines on Thingiverse), so tutorials for those should be helpful here too.
Replying to
@alexr@tilde.zone my last few attempts at making a glass Klein bottle have trended generally closer each time, and I’m trying again tomorrow 🤞
Replying to
The machine has, shall we say, zero bells or whistles. It was engineered by Scott (an expert in hobby build processes) to be robust to low-quality printing, to use very few tools, to minimize complication (e.g. all of the bolts are the same), and to be modifiable and open-ended. It is probably harder to use than a “real” machine.
It does have one genuinely helpful unique feature: the cams and needles are *much* more visible than in other machines. I think this will make it good for teaching!
Replying to
@chrisamaphone my best so far:
catfishing.net
#626 - 9/10 🎉
🐈🐈🐈🐈🐈
🐈🐈🐈🐈🐟
(And I’m a little embarrassed by the last one; it’s one I arguably had a better chance with than some of the earlier ones in this round.)
Replying to
@chrisamaphone @lindsey Yeah I actually pictured Olympia first too, and I knew that was the wrong era, but the mental interference from the word Olympia kept me from getting all the syllables in Odalisque. O-something?…
Replying to
@oliv Not yet! It’s very much a work in progress (and we were mostly pushing for this deadline of showing people in-person at the conference).
It is definitely not the very smoothest knitting experience and I think a video will help set expectations, so I do want to get some footage soon. I’m hoping that’s within the next few weeks (but, I mean, I hope all kinds of things and they don’t always happen).
Replying to
@max_power Thanks for your enthusiasm! As academics, our funding comes through elaborate mechanisms such that we’re more interested in information (e.g. feedback on things that work / don’t work; ideas about how you could see this being used) than money per se.
Replying to
@merlin Not yet! It’s very much a work in progress (and we were mostly pushing for this deadline of showing people in-person at the conference).
It is definitely not the very smoothest knitting experience and I think a video will help set expectations, so I do want to get some footage soon. I’m hoping that’s within the next few weeks (but, I mean, I hope all kinds of things and they don’t always happen).
Replying to
@TindrasGrove @malstrom Yes, I really think that playing with this machine should be helpful to explain the mechanism— especially to someone who hasn’t used one before, but even if you already own one. Most carriages are quite complex; even the lace carriage is opaque so you can’t see the action in real time. TBH, Scott started working on it because he wanted to understand how knitting machines work. :)
Replying to
@b0rk also uhhhhh the docs were written 1) “very recently” and 2) with not enough sleep. (I already see a typo in the zine…)
I do hope to improve them somewhat but you should also absolutely ask any questions you have.
Replying to
@b0rk I can’t upload the fix because the site is GitHub pages (not my choice) and apparently one can’t push to git on eduroam.
Here are the links:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BYJWBGYK
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FSVK2Y
https://excelblades.com/collections/knives-and-cutters/products/k1-craft-knife
https://excelblades.com/products/sprue-cutter
(You do *not* have to buy from Amazon — those are Scott’s links, but the needles can be found on AliExpress and foam from a hardware store.)
Replying to
@samgoree@hci.social Several of the assignments in my course last semester either were or could be considered games, and the “reflection” portion of those assignments included some questions that were game-design-y (things like “how does [this style of interaction] influence the kinds of stories/experiences you might make this way?”), though again it wasn’t really an explicit angle. And that was a programming course for HCI students, not an HCI course per se.
Replying to
@samgoree@hci.social I kind of sneak game design — or at least, game design concepts like “verbs” and game design practice like “playtesting” — into several assignments. For playtesting, I use Jess Hammer & Amy Cook’s “EOTA” framework (https://amyshannoncook.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/eota-shareable-draft.pdf)
Replying to
@Greg@social.coop IMO the other big tip if you’re just getting into filament printing is that filament quality does matter. Whatever ships with the printer will be good (because they want the printer to look good) but check on printing-Reddit for known-good suppliers after that.
Replying to
@chrisamaphone okay now that I’ve done 643 I’ve gotta say I feel like you had some advantages on this one
Replying to
@chrisamaphone okay 642 was more my speed — got all of them either right or “close enough” except for q4
Replying to
@chrisamaphone no; Pittsburgh was nowhere in the tags so it definitely wasn’t Warhol (and also he was born two decades later, wasn’t Jewish, and did not commit suicide). I guessed El Lissitsky on the basis of Russian Jewish but I knew it wasn’t right (because I didn’t think he emigrated to the US, and indeed he did not) and that it was gonna be someone better-known. 🤷
Replying to
@mym @chrisamaphone yeah I absolutely got that one because of “death by firearms in Bolivia” too
Replying to
- Phone app, messaging app, and camera app
- Overdrive (which is problematic I know, but the easy availability of library ebooks does truly improve my everyday situation)
- Not every day, but some of them: Blender.
- Not really “better” but “less bad than otherwise”: Sublime Text.
I’m being asked to recommend a resource (online course, textbook, or similar) to the students who will be in my class next semester. I need them to know about:
0. Comments
1. Variables
2. Arrays
3. Objects
4. Conditionals
5. Loops
6. Functions
and how to express each of these in JavaScript. I want something that would truly make sense to someone with *no* code background and focuses on these basics (i.e. unlike javascript.info, I don’t think the “nullish coalescing operator” is “fundamental”).
Replying to
@NZChineseGenealogy @malstrom For what it’s worth, this was more of an industry/academia conference, so less about doing the knitting yourself and more about programming, maintaining, pushing the capabilities of, and handling supply chains around industrial knitting machines. Of course many of those folks are also hand-knitters and there’s a lot of love for handcraft and yarn culture in that space. (There was a presentation about Rhinebeck sweaters!)
Replying to
@henryk@chaos.social @mhoye@cosocial.ca I agree. Mayyyybe written by someone who hasn’t read anything written by humans for quite some time, but probably just extruded.
Replying to
@jplebreton@mastodon.social wait I thought “clanker” referred to the human enthusiasts? Have I been interpreting it wrong?
Replying to
@jplebreton@mastodon.social Oh that would make sense. (I have never seen Star Wars.)
I definitely would not have used the term myself (I don’t tend to reach for pat deprecatory epithets) so it doesn’t really matter, but I think I read it as sort of a “you love the machines so much you might as well be one of them.”
Replying to
@Greg@social.coop I recently oversaw the purchase of a 3d printer for my partner’s nephews, and I asked my former advisor (a highly knowledgeable fabrication researcher and 3d printing enthusiast) for recommendations for inexpensive and user-friendly. We ended up going with the Anycubic Kobra 2 Neo. A different colleague also suggested the Bambu Lab A1, but apparently their proprietary firmware is annoying (and also they didn’t ship to the country the nephews are in).