• Who: Everybody is invited!
• What: A workshop, wherein we’ll learn how to combine LEDs with textiles
• Where: At kwartzlab, of course!
• When: Saturday, April 13, 1-4pm
• Why: Because everybody should be able to make blinken lights.

Electronics aren’t just for geeks anymore! Learn how to add lights or sounds to your textile-based project, without picking up a soldering iron.

In this beginner’s level workshop, we will embellish a simple embroidery project with LEDs. Learn how to make a battery holder & push button out of textiles, and then sew everything together into a working electronic circuit. Basic embroidery skills are recommended, although not required.

kwartzlab Members: $10
Non-Members: $15

Fees include all project materials.

Pre-registration is required, and space is limited to 10, so sign-up soon!

To pre-register, email steph@kwartzlab.ca

Culinary airs & foams, those frothy darlings of the molecular gastronomic world. Like a sauce, but much lighter, more controllable, and not prone to making things soggy on the plate. And remarkably simple to make: take a suitably dosed liquid, whip it until bubbles form, then sit back amazed as those bubbles *don’t pop*.

All this magic happens by dosing your liquid with an emulsifier. And even though we aren’t technically making an emulsion, the science at work is nearly the same.

A Recipe for Mayonnaise. Sort of.

Get a bowl of water, and slowly pour a stream of oil into it, while whisking. The oil will break up into tiny droplets, evenly dispersed throughout the water. However, as soon as you stop whisking, those hydrophobic droplets will seek each other out, coalescing into a discrete layer of oil.

Now get an egg, break it into a bowl, and again whisk it to incorporate the white and yolk. While still whisking, slowly pour in the oil. Start with just a drop at a time; as the mixture thickens, you can increase to a trickle, and then gradually work up to a steady stream of oil. This mixture will thicken and look creamy. More importantly, even though the egg is largely water, once you stop whisking, the oil will not separate. Congratulations, you’ve just made an emulsion! And the world’s blandest tasting mayonnaise.

Emulsifiers are everywhere. Protein is one. So is lecithin, a fatty substance naturally occurring in, well, all sorts of plants and animals, including in egg yolks.

That mayonnaise we just made? That was an oil-in-water emulsion: the egg white is our continuous aqueous phase (the base, watery liquid into which the oil phase is dispersed), which was dosed with lecithin from the egg yolk.[1] As we add and agitate the oil, it gets dispersed into tiny droplets throughout our continuous phase. Before those droplets can coalesce, they are surrounded by emulsifying molecules which line up hydrophobic ends inward, bonding with the oil, hydrophilic ends outward, bonding with the water, locking the droplets of oil into a stable network. Presto emulsion.

Wasabi Air: Like an Emulsion, Only Different

So how do we get from an emulsion to an air? Simple: airs are bubbles of gas dispersed throughout our base liquid. The lecithin in our aqueous solution still surrounds the bubbles, hydrophilic end out. The lecithin molecules also bond to each other, forming a stable network. However, there is no oil for the hydrophobic end to bond to. Because the lecithin is only bonding to one phase, but is still stabilizing two immiscible substances (one liquid, one gas), it is now acting as a stabilizer, instead of an emulsifier.

To create the air, add anywhere between 0.3-2% (by weight) soy lecithin to a cold liquid. Place your bowl in an ice bath (lecithin works best cold), and agitate the liquid with an immersion blender. The foam which collects on top will remain stable at room temperature for at least 20 minutes, or can be frozen for longer life.

My project for the winter was to build a spinning wheel. Something utilitarian, like the Lendrum I learned on, but without the sticker shock. My mechanical requirements were pretty straightforward: a flyer-lead single drive wheel, preferably in an upright, or castle, orientation. Two treadles. This isn’t a difficult project, and if I were as interested in woodworking as I am in spinning, it would be finished by now.

In the meantime, fellow ‘Labbers Gus & Karl spotted a (very cheap) wheel at Value Village. They described it as having a single treadle, but missing the bit that connects the treadle to the wheel. Apart from that, it could be anything. The problem with spinning wheels is that there are many different types, not all of which are even meant to, well, spin. And unless you know what you are looking at, they all sort of look the same. But it was very cheap, and if nothing else, full of parts to be scavenged.

What they brought back was a home-made, flyer-lead, single drive castle wheel: almost exactly what I wanted to make.

The whole thing is made from 3/4″ plywood, so while it doesn’t collapse, it is still lightweight and portable. Being an upright, castle wheel, it doesn’t take up much space.

It has a fixed drive ratio of 9:1. This is a good, general purpose ratio, suitable for medium weight yarns. (The higher the ratio, the more twist is put into the fibre. The finer the yarn, the more twist you want.) The whorl is removable, however, so I could make different sized whorls without having to replace the entire flyer assembly.

The flyer itself is secured with a leather strap, and is far more stable than any of the Lendrum wheels I’ve used (which can unlock through friction & gravity).

The flyer hooks (which control where the yarn spools onto the bobbin) are made from bent nails. Seriously low-tech and functional, but Lendrum uses a nifty, single movable hook, which I’d like to try to replicate instead.

The scotch tensioning system uses a coil! All of the wheels we used in class involved a length of string tied to an elastic. Elastic sucks.

The bobbin is fairly small, and there is only one, so I’ll definitely need to make more.

The fly wheel has bearings made out of leather straps! So simple! And it actually works!

The footman (bar that connects the treadle to the fly wheel) is completely missing, but could be replaced with a length of 1×1 and some cord. Alternatively, I could remove the existing treadle, and build a double in its place. Which would make this baby near about perfect.

Here are pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gwendy/archives/date-taken/2011/10/29//

I’ve used the tag “HackyHalloween2011″ on Flickr, and encourage anyone else with photos to use it as well.

If you were there, and want to know more about the microcontroller kit you soldiered up to light up your pumpkin, then you’ll want to come out to KwartzLab’s Tuesday Open Night (every Tuesday, 7pm on). Kit designer, James Bastow, made the kits to be hackable — they can be reprogrammed to do all kinds of things, not just light up pumpkins.

We had a number of parents come because their kids wanted to carve a pumpkin, but being first generation Canadians, had only vague ideas of where to begin; it was very neat to act as ambassadors to the holiday.

The Musuem staff helped so much in every way possible; from making the space available in the first place (and such an ideal space!), to making sure people knew about the event when they came in at the front desk, to helping us clean up the goop from dozens of pumpkins, they made the perfect event partner.

There are so many people and organizations that went into making this a great success; the three that come immediately to mind:
– KWAwesome Foundation– for believing in the vision and funding the event
– The Museum and staff — for being the perfect organization to host the event
– KwartzLab — for coming up with the idea, and the volunteers to make it happen

Trying to list names here would be a mistake — someone who went over and above would inevitably get missed; you all know who you are, and mad props for making something awesome happen in our community.

There is no question that folks are interested in doing this again next year — if want to know when things start happening again, send an email to “info@kwartzlab.ca” and we’ll take note of your email address, and let us know in what way you are interested (you want to help, want to attend, want to sponsor it, etc.). Tentatively, we’ll start planning sometime in the summer. We’ll definitely need sponsorship, volunteers, and another crowd of eager pumpkin carvers!

You all rock,

-Cedric

KwartzLab friend and pumpkin carving guru, Jeff-o, held such a workshop for us on Wednesday evening. And as a graduate of the kitchen knife & stitches school of pumpkin carving, I was first in line! I’ll share some of the tips we learned after Hacky Hallowe’en. In the meantime, however, you can take a peek at our technique!

Andrew opts for a "fancy" lid.

Pumpkins are tasty.

Taping the pattern to the pumpkin.

Transfering the pattern to the pumpkin.

Doug shows off the KWAwesome pumpkin

Awesome-looking pumpkins, that don't require blood sacrifice.

More pics over here.

At KwartzLab, we dig the notion of community centered around activity — sure we’re all about the making, but we’re specifically about making in a shared space, pooling our resources, picking each others’ brains, and building a community around all that jazz.

A lot of the activity at KwartzLab revolves around electronics, but a number of our members (guys & gals alike) are at-home crafters too. The Stitch’N'Bitch aims to bring some of that craft into the lab.

This past Saturday, 9 ‘Labbers & friends joined us for delicious cake & apple fritters; conversation ranging from parenting to media; and projects ranging from knitting and crochet to chainmail. And we had a blast!

Here are some of the projects folks were working on:

A crocheted wrist-warmer, in super-soft milk yarn.

A robot in cross stitch.

A beautiful variegated baby blanket.

Some 4-in-1 chainmail, which may or may not become a shirt.

Some mittens, being worked up on 4 double-pointed needles.

A multi-coloured afghan.

And knit dish cloths!

Looking to get your feet wet with Arduino’s? They’ve got it.

Want to build a new USB charger for your latest gadget? They can get you started.

Have an old sim card that you want to hack? No problem.

Need to pimp out your ride? Its easier than you think.
And this morning, all of this just got a bit cheaper, for KwartzLab members.

KwartLab is ecstatic to be able to offer its members discounted pricing on most of the items in Adafruit’s catalogue. This means we’ll be organizing more group buys, more kit-based workshops, and who knows what else in the future.

Members can inquire about group-buy opportunities by sending an email to adafruit@kwartzlab.ca .