🎭 Cloudflare and Math-Inspired Sewing

Hello, I think we are starting now. We are live. Hello, welcome to Inspired Sewing at Cloudflare.

I'm Suzy Bates, I am the program manager for www here at Cloudflare.

And I'm Nadine Nack, I'm one of the engineers on the application services team so we do audit logs and alert notifications.

And so we are here Suzy what are you here to talk about today.

So, I have been for many, many years been making quilts.

And I'm going to talk about some of the quilts that I've made, and where my inspiration came from, which is a lot of it was inspired by math concepts, which I love to be nerdy in my quilt.

Yeah. What are you going to talk about today.

So I have, I'm going to be give a I have, I've had a lot of experience with various needle work crafts throughout the years so I'm going to talk about some knitting I've done, and also some more recent selling that I've done.

Unfortunately no math inspired quilts you have inspired my future of crafting.

So, I am going to attempt to share my screen it didn't go very well in the practice round, but hopefully, hopefully we'll be okay I think we're going to get it.

Okay. Suzy Can you see the slides.

I can see your cover slide yes. Yes. Woo hoo. Did it. Awesome.

Did it live. All right. So I come from a very big DIY family. This is my sister back when she was very adorable wearing a dress that my dad had made.

Nice.

Yeah, right. So, I'm way back a long time ago in fourth or fifth grade I want to say.

I found my mom's knitting needles, I was just on summer break rummaging around, you know, wreaking havoc on the house, and I found all my mom's old knitting needles so when she got home from work.

I had her teach me how to knit. Those are little mittens on the right are one of my first project the first ones were like little washcloths or whatever.

You know, gone away. But I still have these, you still have, you know, just a minute.

Yeah. Oh wait, actually no I do, I do still have the gloves. Nice. So I'd like to first apologize for all the pictures they have terrible lighting our house just move on with your life it's fine.

Yeah, oh yeah. So, I ended up making my first pair of socks, several years later after a lot of practice, the blue ones here are where the first adventure.

And you can see the other ones, one that is right next to it is one that actually fits my foot.

So, I really just keep those as you know keepsake memories.

Um, so, throughout the years I've made. So I took up crocheting for a brief period of time and that blanket on the left, and in college, I made this gigantic Afghan.

I, you can see a cable net it's cable net isn't it yeah yeah it is it is pro knitting.

Very, very good. I love cable knitting I love just seeing the magic of how it all goes together.

It's great. I'm delighted to hear that you were doing that in college because I also have a lot of very nerdy things in college.

Oh, so here's my story.

So when my sister got married, I was one of the bridesmaids, and I was at the, I don't know why I did this but I was at the practice.

And I had, I had like my, it was so long and boring practice.

And I was just sitting there waiting like knitting.

And that pretty much describes me big nerd. I think we're, we're, we're, we're fellow fellow souls.

Yeah. So here I have cats be modeling some of my things that I've made my maze that Gatsby, but cat form.

Yep. Oh, excellent. Oh yeah.

Oh yeah. He is such a love muffin. He's actually snoozing right here next to me every day he rolls into the office office.

Those baby clothes that you're giving to friends.

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I didn't. So the, the best on the left I didn't actually end up finishing because when the baby was born.

It was an 11 pound baby.

Well, larger baby than average. Yes, and just these big cheeks. I thought about actually including one of the pictures of him in the slides but I should have.

He's adorable. But, uh, so here are some of the other things I've done those on the right are all of this, almost all of the socks that I've made.

Wait a second.

The one, the one on the left. That's a pattern in the knitting. Yes, that is impressive.

Yes. Wow. So essentially you just carry to your two pieces of yarn.

As you go. So I'm sure yeah but the flowers that's really intricate counted knitting, and the blue.

Wow, that's really good. Thank you. Impressive.

Thank you. It's not quite done because I technically haven't put the backing on it's a little smaller than I had hoped, or had expected, so I kind of want to find a way to be, unfortunately, every project you basically have to do it twice because the first time you're like, Oh, you know, and then so like if you did every project twice, then you would end up with wonderful wonderful things.

Yeah, but the first time is always like you learn, you learn, you're an amateur and then you have your skills.

Oh yeah, but that's beautiful. So here's your socks. Excellent.

Actually, on the topic of doing things multiple times you, you might well probably not because the lighting's not great in our house but there is one sock pattern that I've done 123.

I think four times, and then just because I loved it so much.

And the stripy one. The, so the, um, yeah, well some of the stripy ones but also there's like a pink one and the red one.

Oh yeah the oh yeah those are nice. Yeah.

Um, yeah, that that sort of Nordic looking one that one looks like it took a little while.

Oh I wish I had, I wanted to pull out my first go at color work socks like that.

They are tiny. Those stitches are real tight. Yeah, I didn't even bother making the second because I was like, this is not going to go on anybody's feet.

See you just you have to do everything like once, and then throw it away, and then do the second one and then you could give that to people.

Yeah. Oh yeah, excellent, excellent.

So I did also do a little bit of cross stitch for a while I never finished this because it looks like the gingerbread are dead with the X's in their eyes.

So I want to go back and use some thicker yarn so it looks like they're happy and live.

Okay. Um, and this is if you're not familiar a quote elf elf. Yes, my son was actually in a play, and he was buddy vo.

Wow, that's awesome. Yes, it was.

We love. Excellent. Awesome. I don't think the gingerbread men look dead. Okay. All right.

Thank you. All right. Yeah, look a little bit too. You know, maybe they're, they're straight mouths.

Yeah, you know, a little, a little, a little smile on the end then it would be like mouth eyes.

Yeah. Anyway, no, those are excellent.

I like them. Yeah. I've done the whole like washing it and blocking it and all that business that goes with with cross stitch.

I've never legitimately finished any cross it because I just, I saw it, and then I don't want to deal with like framing it.

Okay, we'll talk about my issues with finishing later.

There's no shame in that there's no. Anyway, okay, moving on shouldn't be.

Um, so, kind of going back to sewing. Most recently I took up sewing face masks for current situations.

Wait, what's, what are you talking about. For a coronavirus.

Everybody stay safe, wash your hands.

Yes. So I've made about 600. That 600 is a lot of math.

Yeah, I wear three of them at a time, just kidding. So, you did you is it all donated fabric or is your own fabric stash What are you doing for fabric.

Um, so I have used a little bit of my stash that I admittedly should have gotten rid of years ago.

Oh yes, that's perfect fabric to use. Yeah, I took about a 15 year hiatus in my sewing.

So, like that was 15 years of that fabric being around. So, um, but no for the most part, it's been fabric that I purchased.

I wanted to learn I wanted to also make a shout out to honeybee quilting honeybees great.

Yes, yes, yes honeybees awesome.

Actually I'll show you one of the quilts I made we got the fabric and honeybee so you get there.

Yes honeybees really wonderful and they've done a lot of coordination for masks and support and, you know, all that kind of stuff so they've been really super in this coven times mask making world.

So, and they've been there always super super kind, like even the first time I was ever in there I was like, part of your family now.

I even took my husband with me to pick out the fabric, and they were very kind to him to.

Oh yeah, of course, I would many quilting stores are not the most common situation.

Yeah. Anyway, um, so they're free.

I've been donating them to various organizations I have friends who are involved in.

Like nonprofits for underserved communities. And I sent some to a one of my friends her mom manages a low income housing for the elderly.

It's like a complex that she manages, and I was able to send some off to her, and she actually was super adorable.

Her mom recorded a voicemail that she received from one of the people that got the mask, like, Oh my god no I'm crying.

That's so great.

That is really like the, the reason you do it is to help to try and like, I'm a prisoner in my home but I want to help.

And yeah, really good to hear back from someone who actually said like, Thank you.

I didn't have a mask. Yeah, you know, or, you know, I had one that I've just been wearing every day for the last eight months, you know, having to make a huge difference in my life.

So, that's wonderful.

So they do come from a cat household but they are washed in as, as evidenced.

Yeah, sure. But they are washed in hot water dry completely cat free. So if you personally need some yourself.

Susie any of our viewers, please please please reach out to me as many as, or as few as you want.

I'm, I actually have about 150 that I'm about to send out.

So there are tons of grabs. I just got 14 more yards of fabric.

So, email, free masks from Nadine at gmail.com. Yeah, so it's really super.

Yeah, it's been. Yeah, it's been, it's good to keep my hands busy and.

Yeah. So, Susie, I would love to hear about all of your notes. Okay, hold on, we'll stop sharing a little bit about how you got into sewing.

All right. All right. I mean I can do mine and then we can do chit chat, whatever you want.

Okay, I'll do mine.

All right. Present and share. All right.

Okay, can you see my thing. Yes, you got it. You disappeared. So let me get you back.

Wait, no, I didn't share magical devices.

Where's the sharing gone here it is. Nope. So, this is actually more difficult than it, I practiced for a good 10 minutes before this, it's incredibly, it's way more challenging than it should be.

How is it got lost and then okay now I'm, I'm at the last page of course so let me.

But thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.

All right. Oh, hello, man, I it's like I've never done this before. Wow.

Okay. Here I am.

Oh, I know what the problem is I have actually two screens of the same thing.

Okay, hi. We're going to talk about. I'm going to talk about math and Cloudflare inspired quilts I have both, they are two different topics.

So, wow. Okay, this, this sounded better in my head.

All right. I like making quilts. And I started making quilts when I was in high school.

I made my first quilt out of sort of leftover fabrics.

And I went ahead and I made one in college. I remember sitting and making a quilt while everybody else is going out to the bars.

Anywho, I think it was now that I know more about introverts and extroverts and sort of recharge time, I think that's what I was doing is I was actually sort of forcing the world to accept my recharge time by having a project that I needed to work on.

Yeah. And so, so that was good.

It was good because I had things that I could really focus my brain on.

Yeah. And while I was doing it, and then I was also recharging and getting away from people, because, you know, that is super important, I totally can empathize I'm an ambivert, so I yeah yeah I'm like right on the line.

Yep, yep. And I'm a, as someone told me, you're an extrovert amongst introverts so when you're in a room full of introverts, you'll be like the life of the party, but you put me in a room full of experts and I'm like, No, you, you go.

So, okay well I'm just always loud so I'm not allowed.

Sure. Yeah. So, as time went on and I, you know, there are patterns out there in the world that you can use to make quilts traditional patterns are a lot more like you know you make this basket and you make 15 of these baskets and then you put it all together with some sashing.

And so I did, I've done those I have a number of those and I've given them away.

And then I sort of discovered that what I really like is I like making my own patterns and I like making things that are challenging, if it's easy I don't want to do it.

If I have to like lay awake at night and figure out how am I going to make this work.

This is the kind of quilt I like so that's where I sort of like veered into this math based things and anyway so my first one I'm going to show you is really not so much, I mean it's math based but I was inspired all of these sort of have different So I was inspired I went to a quilting.

I went to the quilting show in Houston, the really big international one in November.

Many years ago and I bought this ombre fabric where this company actually uses the same die, but they dilute it so it's the same fabric same died, so you know it's all an ombre.

That's cool.

Yes, I was like, Oh, what can I do about this. Yeah. What I did, if I can click.

There we go. Okay, so this is a pattern and my goal was trying to make the pat the fabric swirl in one direction, but the colors swirl in the opposite direction.

So you can see it like the actual fabric is cut this way. But the colors go the other way.

That's beautiful. Okay, funny story, funny story, I pull I was pulling these out to take this is actually just a top I have not quilted it yet, pulling these out to take pictures and my husband saw this picture and he's like, I've never seen that quilt.

Like, I was like, yeah, I made it and then I just kind of folded it up and worked on the next one.

So, let's talk about some finishing issues.

I love thing, love thing, hate quilting. Yeah. Unfinished projects on my end.

No it's finished if you consider just piece of fabric finished.

Anyway, so this is, you can see a little like intro, so you can see like I got really good and I would say that my trying to do the thing, you know, swirl out was mostly successful again if I did this again, it would be better.

But you can see like these two, like the light colors don't quite match but I like it I think it's really pretty, and I think it's it's interesting so moving on.

Okay, I got very into tessellation.

A tessellation, you might know, MC Escher made them very famous but it is a single pattern, which repeats to cover a plane here's his lizards, and if you look at the black ones, then you kind of don't see the white ones and if you look at the white ones you kind of don't see the black ones.

So that is a tessellation.

So, when I was in grad school, I made this quilts, which is actually from pattern this is the only one I'm going to talk about today that was from a pattern so it's if you look again look at the dark space.

And then you don't see, then the white becomes a background if you look at the white than the black becomes a background.

And so it just a little bit of detail so these are actually pieced as like there's a rectangle and then you do this angle bit, but when you put it all together and stand back then it's a tessellation.

That one was pretty cool.

And it's hand quilted, which, man. Yeah. Wow. Okay, so then another Asher inspiration we went to Fort Lauderdale, and went to the, to the Dalai Museum, and they had a huge Asher exhibit.

So I loved all of the I basically like skip the Dalai part and just went to the Asher bird.

So saw the Asher stuff it was really really cool and then we went to the bookstore, and something you probably haven't thought about but coloring books are really really inspirational for quilt patterns, because there are a lot of lines.

Right. So if you think of this as like, oh, I could stick fabric into each of these white spaces.

It's a quilt, right, but, but you have to figure out how to make it work.

So I was very inspired by this I call it weaving hexagons, but I've never seen this pattern anywhere so what I did is I went to honeybee.

And I got some Andre blues, and I made patterns for every single one of these pieces and put it all together.

You can see it's really big it's actually a king size quilt.

In the end, and it's got an irregular outside as you can see, like you have to, you know, it's got all the, it doesn't have a line or straight line on the outside, but to make my life more challenging, because I do love a challenge.

My husband wanted it to be green, and I wanted it to be blue. So I did it twice.

Wow. Side A and this is side B, and they are both the top. So there is no back, it is a two, two sided quilts, and then I hand quilted through, so it's really hard to match up fronts and backs.

So this was a challenge but I think it turned out really well we put it we have it on our bed pretty regularly we have sort of a blue green master bedroom so it goes with it.

That's phenomenal. All right, moving on to the real hard hitting math, so I got very interested in pentagons.

So as you can see here a regular Pentagon, which is this this little one down here.

Where's my mouse. This is a regular Pentagon where all sides are equal.

And there are five sides so a hexagon tiles the plane covers the plane really well that's why you see a lot of hexagon quilts out there they're just hexagons are great for quilting because one shape.

You could do an entire quilt or variations on a theme or whatever but pentagons, they're, they're, they're not very helpful because when you put pentagons around a single pentagon, you actually have this gap in between.

So you can see like you can stick a star in there, but if you wanted to have a single pentagon tile the plane not possible, not for a regular Pentagon.

So, but there are very special pentagons out there all defined in the math world that do tile a plane without any additional spacing.

So there's multiple types.

So let's, I'm not going to go through them all, but here's type four, you can see that type four actually is a variable Pentagon so you know the rules here are like this has to be 90 degrees and this has to be nine degrees but that doesn't and that doesn't So you can see this animation, which is from Wikipedia, by the way, is showing you the variations if you if you vary the length of this and very length of this and very these angles, all of these are type four pentagons that tile the plane, but they're really cool like there's a lot of different things you don't think of like that's just a plus.

Right. So then there so here's type eight, which is a little more irregular looking and has more rules like a B has to equal see which has to equal D which has to equal E so if you if you could actually see my pixelated image here, then you would see that you know that these four sides must be the same length so the only side variation is a, and these angles blah blah blah so it's got as as more types were discovered by mathematicians, the rules became more sort of locked in.

Yeah, here's another one. Type 13.

This one is actually in order to tile they call I think they call it a Chiron, where you have to place them mirror image against each other in order for it to tile, so you see that this one has to be flipped with its partner.

And so again this one's got a lot more rules going on with it.

But here's the rules. So, then in 2015, there was news I'm sure you all remember it, it was huge news.

There was a new tiling Pentagon discovered.

I was very excited about it. And so here's the rules for type 15 tiling Pentagon.

As you can see, every single angle is fixed, there is no variation in angle, all of the sides are fixed, there is no variation in the sides.

This is literally like this one very specific shape will tile the plane and if you look at it, it is super bananas like it is like oh and then this one sticks in here and then you have to put it over here and then these are over here.

So it is a very precise tiling.

There's not a lot of there's no variation at all. So, anyway, again, inspiration.

Then I was like, let's make a quilt. Of course, I distinctly remember the day I decided I was going to do this.

So then I started kind of figuring out how to do it.

I decided on a gray palette so this is again I'm totally into Andre you might be able to tell these are all lips Hello, I'm going forward.

These are all grays from the same company. And then there's one white one in here.

And as you can see I also did the quilting in kind of a weird way where I did I quilted all the way across the quilt and then I have this sort of like I was inspired by the contrails around like a wing.

And so it goes up and around, and then comes back down on the other side of it.

So, and then I also wanted to make sure that nobody forgot what the equations were for type.

So embroidered it on to the actual with the with the block.

And then it's all in there so you can see you know D to B plus C equals D anyway.

So moving on. So that they're all there so here's type 13.

Here's type fit famous type 15. See, here is the entire quilt in one at 15 is kind of hard to lay out.

Well, 16 would have been a lot easier, but 15 looks fine.

And of course it's white so just to make sure I added on the back, you can see it through the quilt, the back is the regular pentagons not styling the plane.

And you can see that there so that pentagon and this was sort of the cliff I jumped off of for math, I was like, Oh, this is excellent.

So, then I got into fractals. How are we doing on time. Oh, we're good. So, then I got into fractals now fractals are so interesting.

It is, you may know a pattern like a Nautilus is a fractal you've seen a lot of patterns that are fractals it's a pattern, which each part has the same statistical character as the whole.

So if you zoom in on a fractal, it looks the same as if you zoom out on a fractal.

Fractals are patterns which recur at progressively smaller scales. This is my favorite vegetable because it's a fractal.

It's a Romanesco, which is basically a broccoli that's a fractal.

It's so beautiful. And every time someone goes to the farmers market and comes home with one I'm delighted.

Yes, they're just broccoli, but there are broccoli cauliflower ish thing.

Well, they say that you eat with your eyes.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I mean like you can't deny how beautiful that is.

I know it's it is beautiful so they're not inspired by this fractal situation so I was like well how can I make a quilt that's a fractal that seems like a challenge that I'm willing to take.

So I found a Coke fractal, which is sometimes called a Coke snowflake.

It was discovered by Mr Coke Von Coke, and it is a iterative pattern which thirds the side of side of a triangle with another triangle so you can see here in this illustration that when it starts out again at the top, there's a triangle, and then you take a third.

And then you put a third another triangle on that side and you put another triangle on that side and then, you know, add infinite item.

So then you know how do you turn that into a quilt. So here it is, this is the top on quilted just hung up.

I'm going to zoom in here in a second so you can see a little more detail but there are small, small ones, then medium ones and then larger ones then larger ones then larger ones.

So here we have this is quilted.

You can see that if you, you know, here's a large triangle with a triangle with a triangle.

And this is, you know, the other side with the triangle on it now.

Now, because of the way the math worked out, this is actually sort of based on a base for measurement so this is like four inches, two inches.

And then this ended up being base six or base three I guess.

So this is six inches and three inches and one and a half inches.

So, so when I was like okay when I'm doing this so I ended up quilting it.

This is a base six quilting system so there's always six lines on this guy and then there's four on this, you know, and then I'll show you the largest ones are here so this was a four, but then it has a triangle and a triangle.

These little ones are about. They're about three quarters of an inch these triangles.

Wow, little, little, little bitty ones. So yeah. May I ask how difficult was that to line up because that's not this was a challenge.

Yeah, you end up building these big triangles here.

Right, and then stacking them with the big triangle you know the triangle with all this bit in it and then you stack it together but yes it took a long time.

And as you can see even here I didn't my precision quilting kind of fell down on this point.

But hey, man, I'm not even notice.

Yeah, yes, exactly. Only I would notice that. So, anyway, so that's my coke fractal quilt which my husband threw on the bed, even the other night because I was cold.

So, there is also this is other 55 fold Pentagon based math concept called a Penrose tile which was it just a non periodic tight tiling, which I'll go into in a second, discovered by Roger Penrose, so you can it's basically these two shapes so as you can see they're rhombuses of a very specific, you know, angles or whatever.

And then all the lengths are equal. So, you know, this side is the same as this side which is the same as every side of these two promises.

So basically periodic tiling as you can see with this is like you can.

It is, it's like a period is assigned cosine so this is very predictable it's very the same it's you know the beginning and the end it's all the same.

So this is periodic tiling of these two shapes.

So, these two shapes are that tile. But if you talk about non periodic tiling which is what Roger Penrose discovered.

You can see that it's the same shapes, but they've ended up in, and there's actually five fold symmetry so if you start from the beginning and go straight out the point of that inside star.

It is the same. That fifth is the same as that fifth is that fit so it's five fold symmetry.

Wow. So yeah, so it's really pretty. I thought it was gorgeous. So, I was inspired when my husband and I got married 21 years ago.

Then I had I love hydrangeas hydrangeas I'm very inspired by hydrangeas my husband buys them and brings them home because he knows that I love them.

We tried to grow them here in Austin they do not grow.

But anyway, so my bouquet for our wedding had a lot of blue hydrangea in it so I was very inspired, and I made this, it's a quilt top because I have not quilted it hydrangea inspired Penrose tile.

So it's got a little bit of green, but then this again on blue ombre Wow, kind of a one note blue ombre lady.

So it's all blue, and it's really really pretty. I, I don't know if you can see I zoomed in, but I actually did the Penrose tile all the way out to the edge.

Wow, it's not it just it stops there, but only the color so then I did this all in white.

Wow, that's cool. Yeah, so, and this one, I need to quilt it because it's really pretty.

I like it. It could go on our bed. All right. So, I, when I came to Cloudflare a year ago, about a year ago.

There was a rollout of the city clouds.

Carrie lender designed them and I think there have been some design since she, she moved into product.

She was in the brand design, and then she moved into product, but she made these and I thought they were beautiful and they're totally my style they're very clean lines.

And, you know, just interesting uses of a number of like not a lot of color but you know they're very like if you look at them you're like that could be a quilt, which is of course what my brain did when I saw it the first time I was like, that could be a quilt.

Well, what do you know, I decided to make a quilt.

So, I, it's related to the fact that I have this shed in my backyard which she sheds their thing.

And obviously the pandemic has just encouraged more of those sort of private spaces in the spaces that you have.

Yeah, I re renovated this potting shed into a sewing shed, about 10 or 11 years ago.

And then when I went to work from home.

I had a place I already have a spot, right. Got windows and a door and I've got all that stuff but you know I also have a lot of fabric back here that I try and make it neat but you know it could be a little more professional so I made a quilt to be my backdrop.

I love it. Yeah, and this is I didn't piece this as you can see it's actually a piece of printed fabric sent to Spoonflower from Carrie's design.

And then I hand quilted around all the little elements.

And so then hung it on a made it into a Roman blind so that I can pull it up and get to my stuff behind it.

So then I also have. I also made a San Francisco one, which I actually sewed sewed quilted rather than you know machine rather than hand quilted this one, and use the colors of the design a little more effectively than the other one.

But yeah I like this one I sent this one off to my grand boss, Jake Anderson in the, the CMO of marketing, so he has it at his house because he's going to take it to the office but it was nice when I sent it to him he we had a call and his family has a long tradition of quilting so he was very.

Yeah, he and his niece was like running some sort of sewing camp over the summer I don't know it was very, it was right up his alley so that was you know you just like you want to give mass to people that appreciate it.

When I send it to him he was very appreciative, and it'll go up in the San Francisco office and you know 2020 or 2022 or 2050 whenever we actually office.

So anyway, here we are. That's it. Those are my math inspired quilts.

Look at those quilty lines, maybe there's some new inspiration out there.

Oh, I love it. I love it. So that's, that's, that's my stuff.

What so yeah, I think there's some. We had some, well, sorry. Okay, yes. So, um, I'm curious to know how you I'm assuming you have some background in math.

Um, where does that come from, well I have a two engineering degrees.

I went and I'm chemical engineer, and then I got a master's degree in mechanical engineering.

But it was, you know, then I got into the Internet and web sites and all that kind of stuff so no I'm really like a heart mentally hard problems, like even home improvement, you know we run into some sort of problem and I'm like, yeah, we're gonna figure this out.

You know, so, so yeah sort of those like intellectual pursuit problem solving.

And then also I think, working in a pretty, you know, I, I manage our JIRA board and I talked about, you know, requirements and execution and content management system and all that kind of stuff which is very sort of, you know, pushing bits around and so then I like to do these sort of things because it's hands on it's, you know, home improvement it's sewing it's, you know, there's a tangible result for your time, which feels good too.

Yeah. And I bet there's lots of problem solving when you when things maybe don't quite line up.

Oh, I love that part.

Yeah, my favorite part. Well that's why I like make my own patterns is like I don't, I don't want to like, Oh, here's the pattern and you cut it out and you sew it together.

And the worst problem you have is that you did it wrong.

You know I like the worst problem I have to be like I don't even know where to start.

Right, like, like, I don't know how to make this work and not look terrible. Okay, well I'll do it and then take it apart and do it again.

Yes. Um, that's actually one of the things that I love about knitting too.

I love a lot of, I don't, I don't have a lot of pictures of, of it but I love doing really tiny intricate lace.

Oh, oh like adding. Adding. So I very briefly did get into actual tatting.

Yeah, in high school I took up tatting.

My dad got me the stuff because, you know, DIY parents, they're always, you know, willing and happy.

Oh yeah, no I, it's nice. It is nice to have parents that even if, like, my mom was very crafty, and she's owed and, you know, she, she kind of like just sort of like here, you know, let me show you what I know and then go in whatever direction you want to go to and I was like, what's this knitting book what's this crochet book.

How about this, what is this, you know, she had all these little like 60s, you know, printed on faded paper sort of booklets to teach you how to, you know, needlepoint or whatever.

And I was like yes this Oh what is that one you know so it was great to sort of like tour of crafts.

Yeah. And then you find the ones you like, right, like, I did. Oh, you know when I did do recently that I didn't know how to do it all is you get linen, and it what's it called.

You actually cut the threads and you pull the threads out. And then you, you so like around all the threads that are left.

And then you can make him stitch.

And, oh my god it's so intricate, but it was so cool I was doing that for like a month.

Yeah, I mean I made like four napkins and I'm like, this is not done.

Like I know how to do this and now I'm going to go do something else. So my parents got a basket weaving kit for my boyfriend.

Like, my boyfriend is the type of person that he like gets into something and he really just dives deep into it and he does like tons of research and finding out about you know this that and the other thing and.

So, he's not a very like craft hobby DIY type person. So I ended up doing it.

Oh, so, oh I thought you were gonna like have this like and then he became like a master.

I was, he was, he, he already has his things.

He's really into like rum and tiki culture.

Yeah, that's a terrible thing to live in the same house. So maybe I shouldn't admit this but my office is actually our bar room.

That's fine. Okay. All right.

Yeah. Nobody has enough room to have just a bar room. Yeah. So, but yeah, I am the one who took up basket weaving and that was a one month thing and I was gonna say you may like three baskets and yeah, I actually only one basket.

Okay. Yeah, I know how to do this now don't have to do that again. It was just too much prep work really really.

Yeah, because you have to soak the reads and the act of doing it was awesome.

But, like, I had to fill up my bathtub, it was just the problem I have with a lot of crafts, is that the commoditization of craft work is really sort of frustrating because you go to target, and they're selling crap.

$5 and you're like, Oh my god this is like $150 basket if I charged $5 an hour.

And so, you know, like, I like quilts not because I sell them but because they feel like they have more value for the time you put into them.

Yeah, but you know sewing, I think like making clothes and making stuff like that.

Like it's really hard when when you know people are unfortunately be paying 25 cents an hour to create, you know, clothing to make high quality, you know stuff is really is hard so a lot of craft people turn to becoming the pattern makers.

A lot of quilters actually can become a quilt business by selling the quilt pattern.

Right. So you're not you're not making quilts and selling them, you're making quilt patterns for $50 $20 right and then you sell you know PDF downloads, whatever.

And so there's a lot I think, you know, the business of crafting is very complex.

Yeah, because you have to find the right way that your time is valued for what you're, you know what you're getting.

Yeah, the, you know, I tried to make custom diaper bags when I was when I was in the business of making babies.

No more babies for me I have two children, they're delightful but they are 16 and 18 now, and all of my friends are having babies so I would make diaper bags and they were beautiful and they were like you know this folded out and whatever and I use all this fabulous fabric.

But they're, you know, people didn't want to spend what it costs me to make.

So that didn't work. So, you know, it's just, I think that, um, you know, small businesses that try and live off of Etsy are really like that is a business that is hard work.

Yeah. Oh yeah, definitely. So what other crafts, would you ever want to learn that you don't know yet.

Um, you know, I've actually been thinking about this, I, you know, some, sometimes get a little stir crazy being stuck at home and I love making face masks and I don't really do much knitting anymore because I live in Texas.

When are you gonna wear that. And I showed you how many socks I have.

I do not need any more please like take some I will give them away.

Okay, maybe not that's a lot of a lot of work, actually. But, uh, um, I've been thinking recently about, you know, kind of what types of things that I would, I would like to get into.

This is not really a hobby, per se, but an interest in something I've wanted to learn that DIY ish is.

So I recently came into possession of several, like three boxes of my build up on this is huge.

This is going to be so amazing.

When you finally get to what this is go. This is how I do it. Huge introduction, disappointing ending.

Just so you know, you're going to be like, you know, making your own heat exchanger.

I came into possession of three boxes of my grandpa and great grandpa's records, like shellac records, and they spent, they're actually in pretty good condition.

Especially considering they were in my grandparents, like, hot and not temperature controlled attic for years and years and years.

So some of them have become a little bit warped. And I've heard of a few methods that you can actually like Latin them.

Yeah, and I wouldn't do them on all of them.

Right, right. I don't want to risk breaking it but there are some good try it out.

Before you're like, yeah, yeah. And I really only want to do it on the ones that are completely unplayable.

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We have, I have a Frank Sinatra's very first album.

Oh, yeah, that's pretty cool. Are you are you a musical Oh you said that you're a musical person on the regular right.

I've, yeah, I've been learning to play the saxophone for about the past year growing up.

I played the flute. What fifth grade through two years of college. That's, that's, yeah, most people get through like two years of high school and then they're like, yeah, requirement.

So, you know, fulfilled. Yeah. So I, at one point wanted to take up another hobby, and I was looking at various instruments I was listening to a lot of Milt Jackson for a while the famous jazz vibraphone is like, yeah, I was like, if I had the space and the money for a vibraphone.

That's what I would get.

How, I don't know how big a vibraphone is it large, it's huge it's like a room size thing no not quite room size.

Oh, hello. Oh, all right. We're okay, we're okay.

I can fill the space if you need to run and get a towel. No, no, we're good we're good we're good.

I do actually have a paper towel. Okay. Have you ever seen those, what is it the thermistors know that I'm using the wrong word there, it's like where you wave your hands, and they make their men that's it.

So I recently wanted to actually, um, I bought a theremin.

What? Yeah, I did but it never it was just like a, just a home there man, it was like a very bizarre one that I found it was like weird.

I don't know how to explain it but it was, it was really cool.

But it got lost in the mail. Oh no, someone stole your therapy. Yep. Okay, that's actually kind of excellent because you know somebody's like, man, I don't know what this is but I'm gonna, what, what.

Yes. Yeah, it's like, yeah, who knows, who knows, who knows, you never know.

You are there any things that you've been wanting to get into any other interests or hobbies.

I, so I have this year I am, I have taken up something that I used to do and I mean I'm right, and whatever.

I am making a gingerbread house and I'm going, Excel, like, like all the, the, all the things.

And so I have my mom gave me this cast iron gingerbread house form that has, it has 1986 on it so it's pretty.

It's been around. And I know I used it like 20 years ago and I ended we've just kept moving it.

So I was like I'm pulling this thing out this is the year right.

Nobody in our family really like gingerbread so I'm making just cookies.

So, the house. So I even and then I took a cookie making class last year where you learn how to flood the cookies, you, you know, this whole nine.

Whoa, doing that for the last couple of days. And I have not you, I'm decorating flat and then I'm going to assemble.

So that's been kind of fun.

My, my younger son actually really loves baking and is very good at baking he was making sourdough all summer.

Neighbors had to beg him to stop baking, because they're like, I think I have 10 pounds of extra sourdough right now.

Stop baking. So, so yeah we do a lot of baking around here which is fun. We have been doing a major home improvement project, all by ourselves.

So the we have a room that what was like a carport that we turned into a covered deck that now we're putting walls and windows up and an air conditioner, so that we can have a kind of a den, we needed another space where Skyrim is not being played.

Um, yeah.

To go to. Yeah, yeah, like seven o 'clock. Yeah. So, anyway, so that's, that's actually been an ongoing project but I'm really pleased that the, like, you know, the family, all of us go and work on it, I'll work on it.

It's sort of like both an escape place to go and work on it by yourself.

And then also like on the weekends will make a list and then people, you know, work together and stuff so that's been very, again, I just need something that I'll be like, Okay, how am I going to run that electrical line from this weird plug over to the, you know, like, you know, wake up in the morning and start thinking about so.

So that's been good.

Um, and. Yeah, I mean I've learned over the years that I'm a good starter not finisher so I try and not start too many I'd like dangle the new one out in front of finishing the old one like you can start this new quote when you finish this old quote.

So, that's a, so I'm trying to not start too many other things, you know, I don't want to be an enabler here but I think that there really is no shame and not finishing projects, if you had enjoyed the project up to a point, and then there is something else that you would enjoy.

I think. There's a balance there right there's a balance at which like admitting defeat moving on with your life.

But then there's the also like start search search search search search search.

Yeah, you know, like, so trying to balance those two things.

So, yeah. Is there any part of being crafty and sort of all this stuff that both you and I have that helps with your job that you know being an engineer being a project manager product manager, like do you are there things that you find that that really benefit your job.

Um, yeah, actually.

So, we had talked about the problem solving and that's really, you know, like, as a kid I would do these like books of logic puzzles, because I was always, you know, cool.

And that was that. Yes, yes, yes. So, I really enjoy like looking at things really from like an analyzing patterns, learning solving difficult problems, and that really helps you know I'm an engineer so figuring out patterns of things that work or don't work are super important being able to creatively solve problems, and, you know, is also super super important.

So, yeah, I mean, really, I think that any, anything that you do outside of, you know, work can definitely serve to in some way, shape or form, you know, I was an English major and now I work in tech.

Yeah. Yeah. And I write documentation and my teammates love it.

That you have the unusual skill in the tech team, which is writing the good. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I like to have what I call a work hobby, which is like a project that you work on Friday afternoons, or something that you're learning something but eventually it might help somebody like you write a report, just to learn how to code in JavaScript, for example.

Love it. So, I love that because it is learning and it is sort of that problem solving, where you know one of the developers could write this report in probably an hour, and it will take me a week, but it's, you know, it's, it's, it's as much about the, the learning and the understanding your subject as much as like the result, right, it's the journey, not the, you know, not the destination.

So, so I really like having that I need, I wrote a bunch of really complex reports for localization team about the content on our website.

And really helpful, because, you know, it was good to know which pages had been translated and which ones had not and which one, because we're trying to evermore serve our many languages of on our website, which the localization team has a great great process to really get it localized, but it's that little like oh this one header.

Yeah, still in English, you know and so that makes it, you know, not a great process so I was running a report for that.

That was really interesting and I like to meet with them and sort of see what their issues are about, you know, quality in the report like the quality is theirs but like you just have to know what.

So yeah, I've been digging into that. And then I'm also I love saying like pattern matching pattern recognition is so valuable in process.

So, I think that, you know, strict process like you must do a and then be is not helpful for anyone.

I think people don't use processes like a checklist is helpful but sometimes you don't do everything on the checklist.

So I like to think of process as a pattern that you establish so that people can do pattern recognition is like, is this project going the same pattern as a good project, or is it got a big bulge over here.

That's not like a good project it's kind of got a bad growth over here well let's go see if we can make that growth a little bit, you know, more normal or, you know, or known like oh yeah no we knew that that was going to be weird in that way because whatever whatever.

So I like to use sort of those pattern matching in process.

You know for for establishing process reviewing process, you know, stuff like that.

So, all right, we're down to our last minute we did. We did I kind of figured we would not have.

No, I know, I know, but my pocket of nature.

Yeah, no. This has been wonderful things has been a great way to spend, spend the day.

So, let's let's do it again sometime. Yeah, and I want to see your gingerbread.

Okay. All right. Well, oh gosh now we did such a great job of wrapping.

It'll don't cut in. I don't actually don't have a second so.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. No, thank you very much.

Right. Yeah.