CrosspostKnitting a Scarf to Visualize the Questions Asked in the Makerspace (Crosspost from TRU Library Makerspace Blog)

Note: this post is cross-posted to the TRU Library Makerspace Blog and the original was posted here: Knitting a Scarf to Visualize the Questions Asked in the Makerspace – TRU Library Makerspace (C7elelkstén’)

We recently added a king size Addi circular knitting machine to the Makerspace, and inspired by Making Research Tactile: Critical Making and Data Physicalization in Digital Humanities I decided to make a scarf that would visualize the number of questions we’ve answered in the Makerspace since we opened in March, 2022.

Our new Addi kindsize knitting machine

The machine lets you quickly knit either circular tubes or flat panels, and I found it surprisingly easy to use as someone who doesn’t know anything about knitting. The main thing I learned is you need to be careful about how much tension you put on the yarn as it goes into the machine, and you also need to watch carefully at each end or you risk dropping stitches. I dropped a few and had to fix them later, which I will show in a minute.

Whenever we help someone in Makerspace we make a tick on a piece of paper under the appropriate technology. These are called “Reference Interaction” and each tick is one interaction, not one question: if you ask 3 questions all at once we record that as one tick, and if you later ask another question we record that as another tick. This is all entered into a system that records the library’s stats. We have had over 10,000 of these interactions in the Makerspace since we opened!

The spreadsheet I used to calculate the number of rows I would need to represent the data

To turn this data into a scarf, I did a little experimental knitting until I figured out it took about 8 rows to make an inch. Since I knew I wanted something around 30 inches long, I played with the data until I figured out that if each row represented 300 interactions, I would get a scarf that was 33 inches long. I set up a spreadsheet to calculate this and added a colour, order, and “knit to” column which would tell me when to stop and change yarns. I then riffled through our new yarns in our community fabric stash until I found enough contrasting colours made of low-quality material to make the project.

The knitting machine in action!

Then I started knitting! I used the row counter until I got to the right number, then cut the yarn and tied it to the next colour. This is another place where it’s easy to make a mistake, and a couple of times the yarn came untied or risked getting stuck in the machine. It pays here to go slow and learn how to tie a tight knot. In total, it required 269 rows and I estimate it took about 2 hours in total to make.

As I said, I dropped a few stitches so I googled around a bit and found that many people just take a new piece of yarn, loop through the dropped stitch and weave the ends back through the finished piece to hold it in place. I did that, badly, using a contrasting colour that would show my work. My theory is it’s always good to show when you make mistakes, especially when you run a Makerspace and ask people to try new things. Luckily, I make plenty of mistakes.

The fix for the drop stitches

And here is the finished project! It will be hanging in the Makerspace until it gets cold enough one of us takes it down to wear it, so check it out next time you are here. I’d love to see people using the new knitting machine for all sorts of projects, as well as people experimenting with data physicalization and other kinds of data visualization. If you have questions or ideas, let us know or come by one of our co-working sessions.

The finished scarf

3D Printed Tokens hanging on the glass wall outside the Print Room

Three Challenges for Makerspace Users

Makerspaces

I give a talk when classes and other groups visit the Makerspace that is meant to explain what we are, how we can be used, and hopefully makes them feel welcome. That’s a lot to accomplish and in the first year or so I was trying to fit in too many details, which made the talk overwhelming, even to me. The important parts were often drowned out by all the details.

This year, I took advice from Design Is Storytelling by Ellen Luptin and The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker and redesigned the talk to be shorter, punchier, and focused on values and calls to action. One thing I added is that I now end with 3 challenges. I’ll share them here along with some comments about how they connect with the values I ‘m trying to promote in the space.

Make something personally meaningful to you

“Making as learning works best when you have a personally meaningful project. When a project means something to you, you will work harder to make your vision a reality — your vision will be here (usually I show right hand wayyy to the right) and your current abilities will be here (show left hand wayyy to the left) and you will do all the things you need to do to close the gap between them. This might mean starting over a couple of times, learning new skills, and finding people to help you. What you do in Makerspace doesn’t need to be connected to your classes, so think about how you might use the Makerspace for something you really care about.”

In my experience, personally meaningful projects really do result more learning, better stories, higher-order learning outcomes, and more creative objects. That is why we don’t require users to only use the space for class assignments. It’s important to give users explicit permission to make something they care about because they often think they can only use the space for class assignments. This is especially true for equity-seeking groups who don’t see themselves as allowed to use the space.

This is also why I require faculty who want to use Makerspace for assignments to give students choice about what modality/tool they use and as much freedom as possible for what they are making. Makerspace assignments that require everyone do the same thing (e.g. 3D print a particular kind of object) aren’t really makerspace assignments, they are lab assignments that happen in the Makerspace.

Make a story illustrated by an object

“Sometimes we get too focused on the things we are making and lose sight of why we are making it. This can cause us to make the thing we can already make, instead of what we actually want to make. Instead, try thinking about what you’re doing as telling a story that is illustrated by the thing you’re making. Why are you making this thing? Who is it for? What will it mean to you and others? What impact, good and bad, might it have? Who helped you make it? Think of the story as a container for the thing you’re making that explains what it is meant to be and why it is important.”

I’ve written before about stories being the proper way to talk about outcomes in makerspaces and this challenge is really about starting with that idea by getting people to use stories as framing devices for their projects. Users often become hyper-fixated on what is possible instead of thinking about what they really want to make. Being practical has its place, but often I want them to think bigger instead of thinking practically. Stories help them do that by giving them an outcome that is achievable even if the thing they want to make is going to require a lot more work, resources, collaborators, time, etc.

Stories also foreground what is meaningful about what they are doing, and how it fits into a social/ecological context of place, community, nature, class, etc. It makes them think about the people who will use the things, and the people who helped them make the things.

Make a gift for someone

“The third challenge links the first two: Consider making the first real thing you do in Makerspace a gift. Gifts make things meaningful and ties them to stories about people and community. It helps us think about who the thing is for, how it will be used, and if it will have a positive impact. Consider making a gift for a friend, a family member, or a community organization. The identity token you 3D print in Makerspace is a gift for the space: a piece of communal art that shows the impact of our community.”

This challenge has a number of purposes. Giving the first thing you make after learning a new skill is an important part of Indigenous teaching, and this challenge is meant to bring that learning and spirit into Makerspace. It is also the last thing I say in the welcome talk, and so it is a bookend to the land acknowledgement that I use to open to the talk, which includes a call to be good stewards of the land, resources, and community. In this way it is meant to subtly help users see that they are anchored in a community and that they have a responsibility/role to make it a good community that has a positive impact.

Hooks not Directives

I think of these challenges as hooks I’m establishing that users might later use when thinking about what they are doing, and why they are doing it. They aren’t meant to be rules or directives, they are meant to subtly shift users towards thinking more ambitiously and about context and community.

Storytelling should be the primary frame for (more than just) makerspace outcomes

Makerspaces, Posts

It matters what thoughts think thoughts. It matters what knowledges know knowledges. It matters what relations relate relations. It matters what worlds world worlds. It matters what stories tell stories
Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene – Donna haraway – 2016, p. 35

Three interrelated draft-y thoughts about stories in Makerspaces.

Stories should be the primary frame for outcomes

The idea that makerspaces are spaces where inventions and businesses are created is greatly exaggerated. A friend of mine who travelled to makerspaces around the world told me that one thing he learned was that nothing ever gets finished in a makerspace. Instead, they were spaces where people met teachers and collaborators, gained access to technologies, and learned how to learn. If their goal was as concrete as a patent, that happened later in purpose-build spaces. This isn’t a weakness, the two types of spaces serve different purposes and are not really compatible.

Especially in post-secondary institutions the value of makerspaces lies in a meta-skills users develop: a strong sense of self-efficacy with design and technology, skills for life-long learning, and access to a community and space that provides support and a sense of belonging within the institution.

Stories capture the rich activities of what happens in the makerspace better than statistics or even the things made. Most of the actual things made in the makerspace are not that interesting in themselves. They might be interesting to the user, but as object they are often simple, or stereotypical. Stories let us expand out from those objects to talk about what we actually value.

Storytelling should be the goal of most makerspace projects

Something I see a lot is users limiting themselves to things that are achievable in a short amount of time and with their current skill set. This results in stereotypical off-the-shelf projects that don’t make them go beyond their existing knowledge or imagine alternative solutions to problems.

Rather than focus on specific outcomes (an object, a video) we should encourage users to think about what they are doing as telling a story that is accompanied by an object. This expands the range of possibilities users can explore and explicitly values the process of learning over the specific objects. It allows users to tell a more ambitious or speculative story because it’s okay if the object they create to go along with it is non-functional.

Stories don’t need to be finished, functional, or real. A story can be stretch. Often users are hyper-practical but when asking big questions (climate change, housing crisis) there needs to be intermediate outcomes. Sometimes the story is what is needed. Making it functional can happen later, or never, depending on the goals of the learner.

For examples: learners might make a design for a 3D printed bee habitat that is bio-degradable and environmentally friendly, even if they can’t actually make a functional prototype. This could be in the form of a non-functional prototype or descriptive image along with a story. Later, they might collaborate with someone who has the technical skills to make this a reality. If they focused just on objects they could immediately create, that pathway wouldn’t ever be a possibly.

Focusing on outcomes is also less welcoming to users with different technical skill sets or backgrounds. It advantages the users with the most previous technical experience over new users. Storytelling allows everyone to get started with real, meaningful goals and then work towards the technical skills they require to achieve those goals.

So stories aren’t just better ways of talking about what’s valuable; they are a better way of creating that value. Storytelling should be the goal of (most) makerspace projects, and the space should be structured to promote storytelling.

Storytelling also helps us centre context and community in what is happening in our spaces.

Finally, storytelling lets us widen the frame to talk about the contexts and communities where making, learning, design, and innovation happen.

Stories let us explore and honour our histories. We’ve had students made ribbon skirts, 3D sculptures of cattle that told the story of their grandparents, and music that mixes 3 different languages by students from 2 continents. We also have students make items that express their identity (buttons, clothing, stickers, 3D prints) that relate to where they are from or what they believe.

Storytelling also let us think about the people and communities involved in making. This helps us move away from the story that anything is the product of a single isolated genius working alone.

So what?

So what are the implications of all this? I spent the summer working with the TRU Library Makerspace team to gather stories of our users. We’ve also spent a lot of time recently thinking about how to capture and share stories. Next, I want to spend more time thinking about how to guide users to create their own stories, and then share those in ways that make them scaffolds for others to build on. The real value of stories may be the ways they help others write their own stories.

Minimalist Making

Makerspaces, Posts

Minimalist making is an idea I’m adapting from Danica Savonick’s concept of “Minimalist Digital Humanities” that builds on the idea of frugal innovation and minimal computing. The principles are basically the same and I am using this space to brainstorm some thoughts about their application to academic makerspaces and making generally. I am particularly thinking of curricular situations here, but the same things likely apply to individual makers. Digital humanities is really digital making and I’d love us to better support digital making in the future.

Basically, Minimalist Making is making that embraces the following principles:

Keep it simple
Make it fun
It must be relevant
Keep it low impact (social, environmental, and economic impact)

Keep it simple

Whatever you are initially thinking, start smaller. Much smaller.
What pre-work can be done ahead of time?
What infrastructure needs to be in place? Does equipment work? Are supplies available? Are instructions and troubleshooting tips at hand?
The goal here can never be to do the work for users, that would negate the value of a makerspace, rather it is to set conditions that are realistic for the level of expertise of the users (zone of proximal development)

Make it Fun

Choice and user autonomy is essential. To me, making is about having a vision you want to bring to fruition. If you need to mandate a particular activity or outcome (and should you really? really?) what can the user choose to make it their own? Design, colour, process, etc.
Make the environment fun. Add music. Make it social. Conversely: have an option for people who don’t find that fun, like a room they can use that is quiet.

It must be relevant

As noted above: something I suspect is that making works best when you have a vision in your head you are trying to achieve, and so each time you iterate you are pushing against the limits of your abilities and closing the gap between your vision and what you can actually do. If the thing you are doing is arbitrary, you don’t have a vision or gap to close, just the artificial assignment requirements. This is one type of relevancy.
What skills are you developing? How will they help the user?
What is the impact of what you are doing on your community, society, culture, the environment, etc?
There is a link here with mindful making as well, thinking about users and purpose and values.

Keep it Low Impact

Think about costs, waste, time, equipment, stigma, etc.
Impacts should be proportional to outcomes and should never be arbitrary
Ask users to think about what the impact of their making will be, positive and negative, on the space, other users, the community, etc. all the way out in ever expanding circles.
Environmental and economic impacts are the easiest to think about here, but social, cultural, emotional impacts are the most important
There are big questions here with cultural impacts as well, especially when people are making things from other cultures or traditions.

Wilding the Makerspace

Making in the Chthulucene