Sewing in the Middle Ages: Darts

It took me some years to get comfortable with the idea that I could adjust patterns. Seems silly in retrospect since sewing offers the promise of making things fit better. And of course the truth is that I did make adjustments. But very simple ones. The most obvious being that I would lengthen trouser legs and often adjust the tapering of the leg seam, I tend to like pants that are closer to drain pipes than palazzo. Here I want to talk about two more significant adjustments that are now fairly routine for me.

Note: in order to decide to do an adjustment I make a version following the instructions and cutting out the template as the pattern designer designed it. In the world of sewing this is often called a muslin, and was made in muslin fabric. I never make a muslin in muslin fabric, I buy and use cheap wovens and knits instead.

Lowering Normal Darts

Most patterns, even indie patterns, seem to be designed for a younger woman. As I’ve aged, so my boobs have lowered (proof of gravity I like to think). I believe this is relatively common. Anyway, if the darts in any pattern are going to come to the full apex of my bust they have to be moved down to meet me where I’m at.

There’s been many a blog post written and many a YouTube video made on how to do this for normal darts. Good terms to Google on are “lowering darts.” The gist is pretty simple. You measure the distance between where the dart on the pattern lands on your body and the actual place where the fullest part of your bust is. Say, that your bust is about an 1inch lower. Then you simply move the dart by making a box around it and lowering it. This involves cutting it out of the pattern piece and reinserting it at the lower point. Then you smooth the side seams out.

And this is what that looks like on my pattern. The box I cut around my dart and how I added room at the top of the box (the all white box) and how the box now covers some of the pattern at the bottom.

What About French Darts?

I wondered for a long time whether the principle was the same with a French Dart. A French Dart is a much bigger dart, it has a longer length and covers (in a diagonal) a much larger part of the pattern. A good example of the French Dart is the French Dart Shift by Maven Patterns. I love this pattern. It’s a lovely make and I’ve made it in both the woven fabrics that the pattern was designed for and knits as a tutorial suggested in the pattern hacks. (Shout out to Indie makers who provide these kinds of hacks, it’s a great way to get started in customizing a pattern, take someone else’s recommendations for switching it up. I honestly think it gave me the confidence to do more of my own).

I looked everywhere for French Dart adjustments and like Untitled Thoughts I couldn’t find much. Her post is a very detailed essay on how she altered a French Dart on her dress pattern. I have to admit I was intimidated. Then I decided to write to Mrs. Maven, the designer/owner of Maven Patterns. She wrote back very quickly (another shout out to the Indie Pattern companies I’ve written too and their kind and quick replies). She basically told me that I should use the same method I’d used for a normal dart!

And so I did. Here it is on my pattern. As you can see gravity had really done a number on where my dart needed to be, so this is about 2 inches lower. But it’s exactly the same principle just with a much larger box. But there’s one wrinkle, look to the bottom and you’ll see that there are notch markings for pockets. French Darts get much closer to the waist area, so they begin to interact with the pockets.

What to do about my pockets, because I certainly didn’t want to get rid of my pockets. Initially I thought I shouldn’t lower those too because the designer had put them there for a reason. But then I paused and two thoughts emerged. First, I could put the pockets where the French Dart ended, in other words they could overlap. The purpose of the dart is to create shaping in the bust area of the garment. At the side seam it functions just like a side seam although there is some extra bulk (e.g., the seams of the dart legs). So maybe that would matter on some fabrics but maybe it wouldn’t.

Second, why couldn’t I also move the pockets. In my case that turned out to be a winning idea. Turns out that my boobs are not the only part of my body that is non-custom. It turned out that lowering the pockets worked for me. It is now the case that the pockets on my version of the French Dart shift begin right after the new lowered French Dart.

In summary, I lowered the French Dart using the method suggested for normal darts and also lowered the pockets.

Alignment Matters

They (whoever they is, and they have a lot to answer for) say that matching patterns is a sign of good quality clothing. They might be right. For this sewist it’s been both a pain in the arse and a complete victory. I’m going to discuss three examples in this post and offer some advice.

Just Say No

The way to take a simple pattern and turn it into a complete nightmare is to try to match the pattern on a fabric. As an example I give you the Helen’s Closet Blackwood. This is a cardigan I’ve made many times and it’s a lovely pattern. The instructions are a joy to work with. After making several in my favourite colour, black, I decided that I would make one from some check fabric. Here is the final result.

Instead of it taking a couple of hours, it took the better part of two days. What’s a bit hard to see from this picture is how many things have to be cut to match. There’s the back and front (side seams). But at the bottom and around the top there’s a band. See below, there are also cuffs on the arms. It’s a lot of matching let me tell you.

From the outset I decided to cut the pieces as I needed them so that I could match them with what I had already sewn. Cutting is the most stressful part of the process for me, and so drawing it out like that wasn’t ideal. BUT… it was far simpler than trying to cut them all out and hope that they went together as expected. So about a million stressful hours later I had a cardigan that I’m very proud of, but weirdly I don’t wear a lot. It’s something to reflect on.

Also for my environmentally minded friends, this is not the most fabric efficient way to cut anything out. But for a fabric print pattern of this complexity I think not matching would be quite jarring, so I wonder whether it’s just best to avoid these sorts of fabrics if you want to be fabric conscious. Also, one other thing to know about fabric is that the print is not always even. I noticed that towards the selvedge edges the pattern had a slight warp in direction, it was no longer quite square. That also makes for challenges in alignment which I solved by not using that part of the fabric.

Here’s a somewhat simpler but still challenging version of the Helen’s Closet Blackwood. Stretch lace with a pattern and a border. I made the border of the front match the pattern of the front and back panels, but I used the flowers to trim the part of the border around the neck (so instead of a border made of two parts that meets in the back middle of the neck, its three pieces. Then I cut the sleeves so that there was no hem at the bottom but the border of the lace itself.

A Match that led to a Happy Ending

I love the Assembly Line V-Neck Dress, which I make as a tunic length. The original pattern has seams at the centre front and centre back. If you look at the image on the right you can see the centre back one clearly through the v-neck. The centre front one embodies what is wrong with centre seams, while ground and the sky were aligned, we see the same Frida appearing twice. The image on the left is the same fabric, same top, but I removed the centre front and back seams and thus the pattern continued uninterrupted, the easiest way to make a patterned fabric line up.

So how did I do this. Instead of cutting out two front pieces and two back pieces, I cut a front and a back on the fold of the fabric. The Assembly Line really makes this simple because their cutting outlines include the seam allowance, so what I did was carefully fold back the seam and made the seam line the centre fold line. Woot. Here’s a picture of the front piece.

The back was simple to do, and so was the front. But the front has a V-Neck and what going down to one front piece means is that instead of making the V by sewing two pieces together, you have a V shape cut into the single piece of fabric. The first implication of this is that you need to adjust the facing… or maybe you could still make two pieces and sew them together but I decided to make the facing into a single piece.

Probably the hardest part of doing all of this is trying to sew the V neckline with a sharp point. The best advice I’ve read (and I can’t find it publicly online, so I suspect it was in one of the sewing Facebook groups I’m in) is to sew towards the point and then rather than making a V in the stitching make something like this \ _ / with stitches. That and some comprehensive clipping to make the fabric lie flat. Here’s a picture of the backside of the front to give you a feel for how the centre seam removed works from the backside.

Placket Woes

At some point I decided that would make shirts for the hubby. Perhaps I was getting a bit embarrassed about the amount of clothing I had me made for me. It took a while though because shirts were dead to me as things to sew after I failed my O-Level in sewing. (Yes I failed and yes there’s such a thing to fail). Anyway, at some point I decided that I could make shirts. And now I feel a lot less guilty when I suggest a trip to a fabric store because there’s usually a good opportunity to find shirt fabric.

So Liberty of London makes some lovely fabrics and some of them, like Nouveau Peacock below have a very strong geometric pattern. Not only did it feel necessary to have a go at matching the side seams it seemed especially crucial to match the front. For the shirt pattern I used Wardrobe By Me, Jensen shirt.

This was another case of cut one front piece out and then cut the other in response to it. What makes this hard is that shirts have plackets. That’s the name for the piece of the shirt where the buttonholes sit on one side and the buttons on the other. It’s made, in this case, by folding the centre seam over twice. So, fold each centre seam over twice. BUT, you don’t match the two together, because the left (left when worn) sits over the right, so the actual match takes the left folded over + the width of the placket on the right side. I drew the width of the placket onto the pattern piece so that I could know where I needed to align the left side piece too.

Here’s what that looks like on the pattern piece. You can see the two dotted lines down the side of the front, those are the first two folds of the placket. The third line, my blue annotation is where the pattern on the right side has to match on the left. Now since you cut the right and the left sides from the same piece, what I typically do is cut the left first, fold and iron it and then cut the right. Its fiddly but it works for me (I suspect projector cutting would be particularly good for this).

Here’s the final result and I have to say Im pretty pleased with it.

The Lining I Didn’t Expect

So I like a good cardigan and sewing was always going to facilitate this hobby. Recently I found Sinclair Patterns Candy, which I like because of the long front drape. I made one version as the pattern calls for, but I didn’t like how the hem showed on the inside. This of course meant it was time to experiment. First, I made a small lining. What I mean by this is that I made an extra piece, front lining, that traced the front neck and side collar, and some of the bottom hem. I sewed it up and now when the front drapes open you see the lining and not the back of the fabric. That was pretty simple.

Then I wondered what it would be like to make the lining the entire front panel. This also coincided with my thought that perhaps I should make a cardigan that wasn’t black. The skull and roses fabric seemed to fit the bill and so I made it. I simply cut four front panels instead of two. I followed the regular construction but before I set the sleeves I sewed the lining panels to the front pieces. Then I set the sleeves with three pieces of fabric at the front, the sleeve, the lining and the front panel.

After setting the sleeves flat, I sewed the side seam sewing the arms and the side seams together. At this point I closed the lining and the front of the front part of the cardigan together (and sewed them also to the back). It was shortly after I had done this I realized that there was no easy way to sew up the hem. I did eventually figure out a hack (cut into the side seam to the depth of the hem, then fold the hem pieces into and sew them together using an edge stitch on the outside. Then in the back piece I could flip up and hem that normally.

After this rather frustrating experience I suppose it was inevitable that I would decide to try one more time. This time I decided to line the whole cardigan. I was initially inspired by this post about lining a similar looking cardigan. I read it closely and I think the way she made it work was by having the seams exposed on the side seams. I could have done that but then I wondered whether I could simply line the entire thing, including the sleeves, and that led me to bagging.

Bagging is a technique that uses the machine to sew together most of the lining on a jacket. What makes it a bit mad is that it’s an exercise in geometry, particularly for the sleeves. How you sew them together is difficult to impossible to explain but it’s also brilliant and means that you have an almost entirely enclosed set of seams. It took me the better part of a day but I figured it out. And now I have a cardigan that is Hacci Sweater knit on the front and lined with Polartec fleece that will be super on those cold cycling in days in Atlanta. And of course it was back to black.

While I like the outcome of the black with lining, I really like the skulls cardigan so here’s another shot of it. For the curious, FabricMart is the source of fabrics for the skulls and the fully lined cardigan. Joann’s brushed knit was used for the first cardigan in this post.

Sewing for Computer Scientists (and Swimmers)

I use computers. I also swim. Both of these have probably changed the shape of my back. Other people blame computers for the Forward Shoulder adjustment and I am happy join the chorus of people throwing machinery under the bus for their contributions to poor posture. At the same time I would like to take credit for those muscles that come from swimming (beyond the actual work of exercise there’s a whole post that could be written about what it means to swim with 20-somethings many of whom have swum competitively…).

Anyhow, back to my back. I knew there was something wrong with my version of the Assembly Line V-Neck Dress (which I make in a shorter tunic length). The neckline features a collar that stands at the back. I loved my tunics but I often felt that they were slipping backwards, so the neck collar wasn’t standing at the back of my neck rather there was a gap between my back neck and the collar. I also noticed that the shoulder seams weren’t sitting on my shoulders but slightly behind them. I was curious whether this could be fixed. This picture illustrates both problems.

Turns out it can, once you know the name for it. High Round (Full) Back, High Round Back and Forward Shoulder are the terms you want to look at. I found Sew Essential’s guide to be particularly helpful. It gave me the courage to try both adjustments out on the pattern. Although I have not tried the Assembly Line Tutorial, I appreciate the details covered in it.

Let’s begin with the back. The trick to the full back is to open up the centre of the back while leaving the arms and neckline the same as before (so that they match the other pattern pieces — sleeves and the front). Below is what I did to my Assembly Line V-Neck Dress pattern. You can see that there’s a white triangle with the widest part being at the centre back of the pattern. That’s me creating extra fabric to accommodate those swimming muscles. I think I put about 1.5 inches in there and that’s done the trick. The collar stands up right behind my neck.

The second thing that’s going on in the picture is to the top left of the back piece, another small triangle of paper. This triangle reaches its point where the shoulder meets the neckline. This triangle has moved the shoulder seam forward, again providing more “back” so that the shoulder seam sits at the top of my shoulder (as opposed to about an inch behind the top of my shoulder.

Since I added an inch to the back seam I was also required to take it off the front seam. And this is the front of the same pattern. Instead of cutting it off I just folded it over. In both cases the triangle is the same size so what I’ve done is move a part of the front fabric to the back.

The first time I sewed with this adjusted pattern I was quite nervous. At the time this was one of the most intensive modifications I’d done.

How did it turn out? Here’s before (left) and after (right). On the left the gap between the neck and the collar that was problematic. The Full Back adjustment gave me more fabric over my back and closed the distance between my neck and the collar. The Forward Shoulder is harder to see from left to right but it’s also made a difference. The seam is definitely closer to the top of my shoulder in the right picture which is where it should sit. Most importantly from my perspective, when I wear the tunic Im not constantly tugging at the front to make it sit where I want, the garment no longer slides backwards.

So there it is, full back and forward shoulder adjustment.

It was a Pants Weekend

Last weekend I spent the entire weekend making pants (trousers). Surprisingly, given the summer here, Atlanta also has a winter season. This winter was marked by my beloved Athleta Metro pants giving up the ghost (after what 10 years) with the elastic going and more piling emerging. So I decided to make some pants.

I started with two patterns: Almost Long Trousers by the Assembly Line and Pandemic Pants by See Kate Sew. I know the Assembly Line patterns well so I knew my size and so I cut and made it. I’m familiar with pants making, so it didn’t take long, probably about an hour and a half with cutting in total.

The result was a pair of pants that were enormous around the waist area and a little short in the leg. It was then that I noticed that this pattern was actually for woven fabric and I’d made it in a knit. So the drape was all wrong and there was stretch! I made some major adjustments to the center seams of the back and front of the pants (which were easier to take in than the side seams due to the pockets. I redid the cuffs making them slightly longer. These pants became a set of pajama pants. One other take away, I really liked the slash pockets on this pattern.

Next up the Pandemic Pants. These turned out much better. First, I looked at my adjusted Almost Long template to help with the shaping that I wanted in the leg. Turns out that I like a loose leg but not too baggy, particularly below the knee, so I tapered the seams a bit. The pants turned out quite well but once again I felt that they were pajama pants (fortunately I’ve been super frustrated with the actual pocket-less pajamas I own and so having two pairs of new pajamas was just fine.)

I now had two pairs of pants and ideas to merge them. I wanted the slash pocket style of the Almost Long Trousers, and the fit of the Pandemic Pants with one change. I wanted the waistband to sit slightly higher. Surprisingly I decided to pause here and read about fitting pants around the waist (I say surprisingly because I can be a bit impatient to get on with things). I wondered whether I needed to adjust the crotch seams any or whether I could do something simpler. So I actually retrieved a lot of my pants and measured the front and back crotch seams. Ultimately I decided that I could probably just raise the entire waist area by 1 inch and that would work. I used my beloved French Curve ruler to do this because the waistband of pants patterns is not straight but angled and I wanted to preserve that appropriately.

One other thing I wanted to do was not to have cuffs at the bottom of my trouser. For some reason I decided that trousers with cuffs at the bottom might be a bit casual for work. Particularly on days when am Associate Dean-ing (we are looking for a new Dean so you know I’m thinking about being tidy). So I took the cuff pattern piece from the Pandemic Pants, measured it and divided by 2 and then added a bit just because you can always remove more.

At this point, perhaps I should apologize for not having pictures. I should also explain how I do these things. I buy my patterns online and have them printed out by the fabulous PDF Plotting on A0 paper. I have two ways to make pattern adjustments. One way is to cut into the paper pattern and move things around, which can and does involve taping more bits of paper onto the pattern. Another is to trace the pattern onto tracing paper. In this case I decided to trace the adjustments on tracing paper and so starting with the Pandemic Pant pattern pieces for the front and back legs and pockets I traced four sets of adjustments. First, I raised the waistline by an 1inch. Second, I tapered the legs at the bottom. Third I added the length of the bottom cuff and change to the bottom of the leg. Fourth, I turned the side seam pockets into slash pockets (here’s a great tutorial, H/T Lorrie), necessitating angling off the front leg pattern and the front pocket insert.

Pant 3. Fantastic. I couldn’t have been happier. So happy I made them again in a thicker more wintery fabric. I wish, wish, wish I could tell you what these fabrics were (other than knits), but Fabric Joint is a rather eccentric local fabric operation here in Atlanta. The fabrics are good quality and ridiculously cheap, most coming in at between $4 and $5 per yard.

What is Knitting?

Now I’ve finally finished Kate Orton-Johnson’s piece on the study of Ravelry, and at the end I find myself asking what is knitting?

Her argument, which resonates with me strongly, is that social media have broadened the experience of knitting. And as I reflect on this, I am inclined to agree.

I don’t really know what triggered the reawakening of knitting for me. Knitting as a child waned in my teenage years. Long before sewing did, I sewed basically up to University. I even made a few garments for my trip to Irvine. But for some reason knitting reappeared. But knitting now isn’t what it was for me. It is strongly changed by social media.

I’ve been a keen amateur photographer, but even I was surprised at how useful the picture-taking skills I learned would be for knitting. One of the most significant changes for me is that picture taking is part of my new experience of knitting. Just like Orton-Johnson describes in her study of Ravelry users (of which I am one), part of participating there (and elsewhere) and to do that photographs are required (of the yarn, of the project in progress, of the completed article). It’s hard to take pictures of yarn. Especially certain colours which are difficult for the digital camera to reproduce (purple-blues seem especially hard). Then there’s also the lighting to manage. I find myself back to all my techniques for handling autumn colors, the hope for bright flat even lighting. There’s technique involved in arranging the finished article to convey size, texture, and so forth. Focusing in on the stitch work brings back memories of many evenings of macro photographic practice.

I didn’t expect my photography and knitting interests to merge.

There’s a whole social world on Ravelry too. One that I am not very engaged with, I have three friends on Ravelry. But, I have had interactions there, not just with colleagues in HCI (although that is very nice, hello W.P. 🙂 Most surprisingly to me, but also rather fun, is that after I knitted my first socks (I was in fear of socks, I really thought that I could never knit socks and then it happened much to my surprise and delight) I heard from the author of the book I had used to make them. She complimented my socks and added me to a group of people who have knitted her patterns. She is obviously straddling a social world, and one in which she professionally promotes and gets feedback about her texts. Its an interesting connection. It felt very similar to being sent a friend request on Facebook by someone whose work you admire and feel that they are a leader in the field. Its professional, but it’s also something else. And I didn’t expect that with knitting.

The transformation of knitting into an online and public experience, not just in meetings or places, but also through Facebook has also been a new part of my hobby. It extends the types of conversations I might have with people. People who knew me as someone interested in ethnographic methods, or as someone they went to primary school with, now know that I knit and do other crafty things. I know it of some of them too. One of my FB friends, and someone I went to high school, makes the most amazing jewellery (you, C.H.), and I hope she’ll start selling it soon. For people that I see face to face its broadened the conversations that I’ve had to include knitting. (Knitters of the world unite, we have nothing to lose except our stitches).

Another dimension of the online experience that I’m not so engaged with, but I have used it, takes me back to some of David McDonald and colleagues work on the role of YouTube and others in its ilk to learn. Orton-Johnson also talks about this in her paper. When you don’t have a peer network of people who can teach you new techniques, how do you learn. The Internet is filling in for where my Grandmother and my Great Aunt. It also translates for me what my mother would show me, but she knits in the Continental method whereas I knit the English way.

Knitting as a child was something I did by myself or with members of my immediate family. It was relatively solitary and only likely to survive if I kept a social network around me that could teach me, and with whom I could share the products. It has returned to a different world, one in which I construct these social circles not via proximity (very marginally at best) but with the help of dedicated and non-dedicated social media sites, each of which plays something of a role in growing, sustaining and nurturing my hobby. And much like the experience of knitting in public, one of the things I find really rewarding about the role that Facebook plays, is that it starts unexpected but very welcome conversations with colleagues who in most worlds I just would never know that they were knitters, or curious about knitting.

Knitting in Meetings

I was just re-reading a great paper on how sites like Ravelry transform knitting in a variety of ways. One thing that comes up in the paper is a discussion of knitting in public. Knitting is typically not a public act, the paper suggests, and sites like Ravelry through their focus on advertising local events provide opportunities for people to get together and knit outside of the domestic circle.

I’ve been knitting in public for a while now. It’s an interesting experience. I’ve written about it before. I also knit at work. I’ve said less about that. At first I felt the need to explain to colleagues that when I was knitting my concentration was better than it would be without yarn. I tried to explain that for the things I knit in meetings, I don’t have to know the patterns because they are encoded in my finger and hand movements. Its a physical knowledge, not one that requires mental attention. If it does, I have to stop and either deal with the knitting or wait until we have a break to do something like, say, count the number of remaining stitches.

Explaining the presence of the knitting is different from justifying the laptop or phone. The laptop is easy to explain, as a machine with a keyboard it seems obvious that one could be taking notes. Although that’s not the only things that laptops are capable of doing during meetings. The phone/tablet is more curious. I don’t see my colleagues justifying using these devices in meetings, even though its pretty clear to me that they are not note taking devices. Knitting ought to be in the same category as the phone, and yet, I’ve not gotten there with it. I think it’s because I believe it to be unfamiliar to many of my colleagues. Unlike phones—where we all share a global understanding of their pros and cons in meetings and what work they might do, or not—knitting is not something I expect my colleagues to know about. I thought that they might wonder whether I was so focused on the knitting that I was essentially not present.

Also, I still have a list of work related meetings I won’t knit in. Obviously, I can’t knit and teach. I could knit during class presentations, but again I feel that the students might not understand that I was concentrating. Their unfamiliarity with knitting (presumed by me of course) along with their unfamiliarity in giving presentations makes me leave the sticks behind. There are also meetings in which I think even the presence of laptops/phones is frowned upon. Meetings about really important topics. I don’t take my knitting there either.

Over time, I suppose I’ve started to think about my workscape in a new way, places to knit, places not to knit. Who are the stakeholders in each setting? What do I owe them? What can I assume about their knowledge? (Interestingly I get far fewer questions about knitting from my colleagues even when I do it in front of them than I do when knitting out in public in Atlanta). Asking, can I knit here has been an interesting way to reexplore the place I work.

Adventures in Yarn

Last week I went to Stitches South! It’s a yarn convention, there are demonstrations and classes about yarn techniques. I’m used to going to conferences, it’s an occupational hazard in Computer Science. Bring on the tote bag (free) and the t-shirt to commemorate the event (for a price). I’m used to selecting among sessions and also trying to decide what, if anything of the vendors who come, typically with books, I would purchase.

Other than that yarn is quite different. Most strikingly, the gender balance of course. There were some men at Stitches South, I even recognized one of them (he organizes the men’s knitting group at a local yarn store I purchase wool from). But, they were few and far between. As a friend of mine pointed out, they also fall into two distinct categories. Those who knit, and those whose wives knit.

And while there were books for sale, there were other things too. Yarn of course. Lots and lots of yarn. I wish Computer Science conferences had the diversity of alternatives as yarn conventions. It would be like looking among Commodores, Amigas, ZX81, as well as the PC or Mac question. And then there were all the unnecessary things you have to buy to make knitting fun. That’s probably the equivalent of a laptop case (even though you have several, you can be persuaded to buy more, well I can). I’m going to a conference in my professional field soon, CHI, and I wish there were more things to amuse my purchasing interests. After a long day in sessions, I think there’s a target market for the whimsical purchase.

And since I’ve written this much…

…the most ridiculous thing I purchased at Stitches South was a contraption that allows you to wear a ball of wool. It has a bangle like attachment from which a stick suspends with a cap below. You attach the bangle to your wrist, thread the stick through the centre of the ball of wool and then use the cap to ensure that the wool doesn’t fall off. Now I can look like a complete knitting pratt. But it will save those embarrassing accidents in the cinema where you begin knitting with wool on lap and then somewhere, usually during the darkest scene in the entire film, the wool falls off and down into the murky world of “below the cinema seat.” Not only is the process of fishing around for it usually futile, there are all manner of disgusting things below the cinema seat. Old popcorn is among the least offensive. So, I’ll be saving that particular gadget for the next trip to the movies, or perhaps for this Friday when I can recreate cinema conditions watching the Royal Wedding before dawn while knitting.

People, People, People

At both his interview and on the occasion of his arrival, our new Dean gave a talk, and he made the comment that the future of computing is algorithms, algorithms, algorithms. On the second occasion, it happened to coincide with a conversation I’d had earlier in the day (this was a while back). Earlier, I had heard someone propose an argument: What if HCI was the centre of computing, and other disciplines within CS were sub-specialities? To be crass you might say that the future of computing is people, people, people… This caused me to reflect on some recent events.

1. I am part of a multi-institution grant proposal focused on building network architectures that would support the rest of the world getting online.
2. Someone asked me about how best to represent where/how a program was running on parallel processors. How much and then how should you communicate to programmers about the parallelism of their program?
3. I had just listened to a senior HCI researcher give a talk about how Robin Milner’s research was the foundation for his latest HCI/Ubicomp project.

All this happened in the same week. I am struck that I can and do have exposure to a variety of aspects of Computer Science as an HCI researcher. There are some problems with the people, people, people argument. One that strikes me is that it’s easy to get into a situation where you’re arguing that the human experience is central to being human. That’s a statement of the obvious, too high level to be substantive. The second one is that the people, people, people argument was made in jest, so even its proponent doesn’t believe it. That’s also a compelling reason.

But, these reflections borne from a remark did confirm to me that HCI has a place in Computer Science. First, I am still struck by the framing of the problems that Computers are intended to solve. Frequently, those problems begin with a human, even if the solution focuses solely on the machine. I still think there’s a spectrum there, that if a problem is motivated by a human, then at the interface of that machine solution, there’s potential for a human-centered computing problem to lurk. It’s not that there aren’t machine related problems, but just that I think that much of the motivation for Computing includes people and when it does it creates a significant latent potential for human-centered Computing research. Second, and I can imagine that this one might cause more disagreement, but I’ll put it out there anyway. I wonder whether the mechanisms by which HCI constructs legitimate scientific problems aids its ability to connect to other parts of the discipline. My understanding of HCI is that it’s a discipline of understanding how to design technologies to improve the human experience. What we design, whether it be an interface, a system, something networked, some hardware is built, is open to us, it’s driven by the methods and requirements that we demonstrate, somehow, a change in the human experience. I think that gives us quite a lot of latitude in terms of the technologies that we might use, and engage with, to construct our outcomes. This strikes me as different from parts of the discipline that are committed to particular solutions, whether it be a novel architecture, operating system optimization, etc. (Although clearly, we can’t participate in making a contribution to those parts of the discipline without the collaboration of those
who understand the challenges presented in making a machine contribution). One of the reasons I enjoyed the talk about the role of Milner’s bi-graphs in Ubicomp was because it was a partnership between my colleague and Milner.

Another way of saying this is that it places an emphasis on problem discovery as much as on problem solution. How the problem is solved is determined by what the problem discovered actually turns out to be. And I can’t help feeling that that is qualitatively different from other parts of the Computer Science discipline. In partnership with other Computer Scientists now seems like an exciting time to work on hard, interesting problems with a human-facing component.

The Dummies Guide to Buying a Book

I’ve noticed a gap in the series Dummies (or Idiots) Guide. While there are several about writing books, there’s not one on buying a book, although obviously they actually all are about buying a book.

So based on my experience with books (I own some and along the way I’ve purchased some) I offer the following points for consideration as the start of a work. I’d be happy to collaborate.

When I moved from San Francisco to Atlanta I went through a house-staging, an experience that was designed to sell my house by stripping it of my life and turning it into the “ideal life” instead. From this ideal, I learnt how the ideal home is decorated with stones, small reed balls, and table coverings while simultaneously stripped of pictures of unattractive destinations. I also learnt a lot about the appearance of books. Up until then I admit my first thoughts had been focused on content, but apparently size also matters when considering which book to buy.

Size. Different sizes imply different places for books. I’d been struggling with the naive assumption that it was the size of the bookcase, I learnt I was wrong. Big books belong on coffee tables. Little books in bookshelves. No, don’t move those shelves to accommodate large volumes, find the appropriate shelving vehicle, the coffee table, place at jaunty angle on top of similar books all arranged to reveal corners. Do not purchase coffee-table size books if you own more than about 4 per coffee table owned. Do not buy an excess of coffee tables to cope with said books.

Colour. When buying a book it’s important to consider the colour. The colour should match other books already owned. There are also more acceptable and less acceptable colours. Orange and yellow, despite being the predominant colours of the dummies and idiots book series, should be considered with caution. There’s only a small amount of bright yellow that any home needs. In general staying closer to colours in the off-white family (sort by Magnolia, Egg-White, Snow, etc.), light blue (morning sky, baby etc..), light green (winter grass, dew) and use accent colors (burgundy, British racing green more sparsely).

Furniture. I’ve already outlined the crucial role of the coffee table, but other furniture is also acceptable for storing books. The bedside table should feature a smaller, jauntily placed book on it. Please do not have multiple books.

Book Shelves. Do not fill them (rookie error). Remember you need enough space to have a couple of books laying full down on the shelf in addition to the ones stacked vertically. And, just like coffee tables, it’s essential not to overload on bookshelves.

I learnt about content criteria as a teacher.

New Editions. It is essential to purchase each new edition. Authors know that it’s important to revise content as things change and preferably swap the chapter order about at the same time (although I can’t find that particular top tip in the guides to getting published). And nothing changes as quickly as philosophies developed by now dead philosophers. For the buyer, it represents an opportunity to spend more time preparing for class.

Just a few thoughts, it’s been a long week.