Second draft, probably done.

055-free-soft-wear.txt

@@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ M: So this is maybe one of the more "making things together" episodes of this po
 
 C: Mm-hmm. Who came up with that term?
 
-M: Well, it was kind of workshopped in the Foss & Crafts channel--
+M: Well, it was kind of workshopped in the Foss & Crafts channel so--
 
 C: On irc.libera.chat
 
@@ -25,7 +25,7 @@ M: If you want to join that community. So, Elena Valhalla, just Valhalla on IRC,
 
 C: Cat Walsh comes in with free-space-soft-space-wear, W-E-A-R, and says, "I'm going to see myself out." But in fact...
 
-M: We loved it. And we kind of ran with it. So Valhalla had already been making and releasing sewing patterns under creative commons licenses long before this discussion happened in the Foss and Crafts channel. And I had kind of like a mental backlog of patterns but hadn't really released any, but I really liked this idea.
+M: We loved it. And we kind of ran with it. So Valhalla had already been making and releasing sewing patterns under creative commons licenses long before this discussion happened in the Foss and Crafts channel. And I a mental backlog of patterns but hadn't really released any, but I really liked this idea.
 
 C: And it's something you've been building upon, right? And like kind of encouraging other people to build upon too. But in a certain sense, this is building upon a long social history of sewing, right? And like other textile work.
 M: Yeah.
@@ -36,7 +36,7 @@ M: Well, yes and no. It depends on what you mean by new. But there's a long hist
 
 C: Mhm.
 
-M: We've talked about this other times when we've talked about the social history of women and textiles because, as you may recall, this is what my dissertation topic was on. But this is one of those things where you have something that's seen kind of as maybe an amateur or domestic thing when it's done by women at home. But then once it is something that is commercialized, that's when you start getting more kind of like trade secrets with patterns or techniques or technologies. So what we're talking about here is more on the social side. In the modern world, we still have, you know, groups of people getting together and doing 'stitch and bitch's or craft circles or whatever. A lot of the way that I learned my craft skills was because of doing crafts with my mom and my grandma. And to some extent, my sister, though she lost interest in it way sooner than I did. But we now have different ways of learning as well. So a lot of the craft patterns, if I'm looking at patterns that I use, I'm not going to the store and buying my calls patterns or something like that. Like the pre-printed things that you buy at a craft store and you cut out the size you need and you create it. A lot of times if I'm looking at patterns that are other people have made, I'm looking at things that I find on tutorials that are mostly on people's blogs and stuff like that. So the social circle of craft knowledge has expanded to the internet now that it exists. And we're talking a little bit more about that side of things.
+M: We've talked about this other times when we've talked about the social history of women and textiles because, as you may recall, this is what my dissertation topic was on. But this is one of those things where you have something that's seen kind of as maybe an amateur or domestic thing when it's done by women at home. But then once it is something that is commercialized, that's when you start getting more kind of like trade secrets with patterns or techniques or technologies. So what we're talking about here is more on the social side. In the modern world, we still have, you know, groups of people getting together and doing 'stitch and bitch's or craft circles or whatever. A lot of the way that I learned my craft skills was because of doing crafts with my mom and my grandma. And to some extent, my sister, though she lost interest in it way sooner than I did. But we now have different ways of learning as well. So a lot of the craft patterns, if I'm looking at patterns that I use, I'm not going to the store and buying McCall's patterns or something like that. Like the pre-printed things that you buy at a craft store and you cut out the size you need and you create it. A lot of times if I'm looking at patterns that other people have made, I'm looking at things that I find on tutorials that are mostly on people's blogs and stuff like that. So the social circle of craft knowledge has expanded to the Internet now that it exists. And we're talking a little bit more about that side of things.
 
 C: And yet, I think in some ways, fewer techniques are known than ever before by the average person doing crafting because people need to less, right? So having resources available, having a common set of patterns that are freely available for people to use (in both senses, the term free) can be really powerful maybe as a way to be able to kind of bring some of that back.
 
@@ -48,7 +48,11 @@ M: Yeah, she has a whole directory on her website of sewing patterns. And this p
 
 C: That's great.
 
-M: So even before this whole conversation was brought up in the Foss and Crafts community, the first time that I really thought about licensing for sewing patterns was at the beginning of the pandemic, when everyone was making face masks because the supply of personal protective equipment was extremely low, given the sudden increase in need for it. And one of our friends, Dan Gilbert, made a pattern that was released under a Creative Commons attribution share-like license. And I started thinking about the idea of iterations for patterns specifically with the face masks because at the beginning of the pandemic no one really knew what was going on health-wise and transmission-wise. So there were a lot of healthcare professionals on social media saying, "if you're making your own face masks, here's the things that are going to help." So having a mask pattern that you could use the bones of, but also iterate on as you got more accurate information or as better materials became available, that was appealing to me. So the pattern that I used, as I said, was made by our friend Dan, who you may remember from the episode on the Tiny NES. And since he is pretty active in open hardware, he already kind of had the mental blueprints for creating things that could be released in free culture ways. So those are the people within my social circle that I am aware of that have done these kinds of things.
+M: So even before this whole conversation was brought up in the Foss and Crafts community, the first time that I really thought about licensing for sewing patterns was at the beginning of the pandemic, when everyone was making face masks because the supply of personal protective equipment was extremely low, given the sudden increase in need for it. And one of our friends, Dan Gilbert, made a pattern that was released under a again Creative Commons attribution share-like license. And I started thinking about the idea of iterations for patterns specifically with the face masks because at the beginning of the pandemic no one really knew what was going on health-wise and transmission-wise. So there were a lot of healthcare professionals on social media saying, "if you're making your own face masks, here's the things that are going to help." So having a mask pattern that you could use the bones of, but also iterate on as you got more accurate information or as better materials became available, that was appealing to me. So the pattern that I used, as I said, was made by our friend Dan, who you may remember from the episode on the TinyNES. And since he is pretty active in open hardware, he already had the mental blueprints for creating things that could be released in free culture ways.
+
+C: Mhm.l
+
+M: So those are the people within my social circle that I am aware of that have done these kinds of things.
 
 C: And what about outside of that social circle? Have you found other blog posts, etc? And are they using Creative Commons licenses or for other free culture licenses? Are they all rights reserved? How generally hard is it to find things in such ways?
 
@@ -56,13 +60,13 @@ M: So the problem is, in similar ways that this is a problem with lots of things
 
 C: But I mean, there's also stuff in the public domain. For example, you get stuff off of Project Gutenberg and there's a bunch of old public domain books because it was very common in, for example, guides for housewives to have like these sets of patterns for like, you need to make your kids some socks. You need to make your own suit even, right? You know, your common dress patterns, right? And stuff like that.
 
-M: Yeah.
+M: Mhm. Yeah.
 
 C: These are just something that you were expected to have on hand.
 
 M: And following historical sewing patterns is a unique and interesting skill set because one, as you mentioned earlier, people don't have as solid a skill set for sewing like everyday items anymore as they used to, right? Back when it was expected that someone in your household was going to sew your own dresses and suits and stuff like that. So a lot of things, they just kind of assume knowledge of what things are. There's shorthand in the way things are spelled out or written out that would have been common knowledge then that isn't now. Measurements are very hit or miss with historical patterns, but if you're just looking for like, cut this shape out and then sew it to this side, you can usually recreate a more comprehensible pattern. And in fact, a lot of Valhalla's patterns are recreated based off of historical patterns.
 
-C: And also as a side note, my experience with doing software development is that in software development, early on, I would get really frustrated when trying to read almost any code that didn't lay out all the concepts with like way dramatic use of comments that I would not use today. Now that I have more experience, in my earliest code doing programming, I would add stuff like array.set and everything like that. And I'm like "this inserts an item into the array" and later on, you're like, "why would I have ever added that pattern?" But it's also because eventually a lot of these things and a lot of these shorthands that I can see in the content, they're familiar, right?
+C: And also as a side note, my experience with doing software development is that in software development, early on, I would get really frustrated when trying to read almost any code that didn't lay out all the concepts with way dramatic use of comments that I would not use today. Now that I have more experience, in my earliest code doing programming, I would add stuff like array.set and everything like that. And I'm like "this inserts an item into the array" and later on, you're like, "why would I have ever added that pattern?" But it's also because eventually a lot of these things and a lot of these shorthands that I can see in the content, they're familiar, right?
 
 M: Mhm.
 
@@ -78,13 +82,13 @@ C: For like three years? Yes.
 
 M: So yeah, the way that these patterns are made, yeah, you have that kind of presumed knowledge of the task that the modern audience may or may not have when they're looking at historical patterns.
 
-C: So where else can you find free software patterns?
+C: So where else can you find Free Soft Wear patterns?
 
 M: So most of the places that you can find aggregated information on patterns, places like Ravelry or maybe even Etsy, where the creator has the option to choose their own licensing, you can choose free culture licenses. The problem is those sites aren't necessarily designed to search for that. The way that I actually found specific patterns on Ravelry that were released under Creative Commons licenses was by doing a web search that had, you know, in quotes "CC by" and then in a second pair of quotes, "Ravelry patterns" or something like that. And I was able to find quite a few, but if you're just looking in the search features of Ravelry, and please correct me if you know a way to do this within the website that I couldn't find, but it doesn't have a convenient way of searching for that.
 
 C: Right. So Google images was a tool made specifically searching for images and also you've got the same thing with DuckDuckGo's images which has the same design. And they're reading some metadata that's being put on various images are uploaded. The positive output of the more obscure Creative Commons, machine readable stuff is that some of these engines let you search. But there isn't really a specific search engine made for sewing patterns. It's crawling them. And it's not aggregating. It's basically just, there's no way to basically do this combination of like, "I want sewing patterns and I want this license thing specifically".
 
-M: So yeah, there are all of these blogs and video tutorials and stuff like that that if you specifically go out looking for it, you can find them in random places. But when I was doing this search of places you can find free culture sewing patterns and, you know, textile patterns, I was not able to find any of my free software patterns that showed up in those search results. I didn't find any of Valhalla's and I didn't find Dan's, so I didn't find any of the ones that I already knew about, which obviously means that there's not a failsafe search web for this thing.
+M: Mhm. Yeah. So yeah, there are all of these blogs and video tutorials and stuff like that that if you specifically go out looking for it, you can find them in random places. But when I was doing this search of places you can find free culture sewing patterns and, you know, textile patterns, I was not able to find any of my free software patterns that showed up in those search results. I didn't find any of Valhalla's and I didn't find Dan's, so I didn't find any of the ones that I already knew about, which obviously means that there's not a failsafe search web for this thing.
 
 C: Yep, so there's an interesting aspect here though, which is that textile patterns are not actually copyrightable--
 
@@ -94,7 +98,7 @@ C: in the United States at least.
 
 M: I mean, there's only so many types of stitching. There's only so many ways that you can put together fabric and it's really difficult to copyright things like that.
 
-C: Well, let's actually be clear. The techniques are not copyrightable. However--so this is a lot like recipes--So in cooking, obviously lots of people make things from recipes. Sometimes they have something memorized and they just make something from their personal memory, but you can't actually copyright a specific dish, right,  the end result in or even the method of preparation. But you can copyright a specific text describing how to make the dish, which means you can take a recipe from a famous cookbook and you can rewrite the recipe from scratch, or maybe you've made it a number of times and you've kind of memorized it and then you can write it back down. No problem. There's no such restrictions on copyright for recipes. And the same thing applies to textile stuff, right? The actual, like, jpeg or SVG that you might download, the actual text saying do this and that, those are copyrightable, but the particular technique and pattern is not. Is that right?
+C: Well, let's actually be clear. The techniques are not copyrightable. However--so this is a lot like recipes--so in cooking, obviously lots of people make things from recipes. Sometimes they have something memorized and they just make something from their personal memory, but you can't actually copyright a specific dish, right,  the end result in or even the method of preparation. But you can copyright a specific text describing how to make the dish, which means you can take a recipe from a famous cookbook and you can rewrite the recipe from scratch, or maybe you've made it a number of times and you've kind of memorized it and then you can write it back down. No problem. There's no such restrictions on copyright for recipes. And the same thing applies to textile stuff, right? The actual, like, jpeg or SVG that you might download, the actual text saying do this and that, those are copyrightable, but the particular technique and pattern is not. Is that right?
 
 M: Yeah, which is one of the reasons why if you go back to that list of ways that you can find things, most of the places that you can concretely find things under Creative Commons or other free culture licenses are places that you search for images, right? Because you can find the image of the actual components of the pattern--which may or may not have the text with it--in fact, the things on Wikimedia Commons, for example, are mostly just the pictures of the patterns without any text explaining it, which is again kind of incomprehensible unless you already know what's happening.
 
@@ -134,7 +138,7 @@ C: Or Wiki.
 
 M: The only Git repository that my patterns exist in would be the Git repository for my website, my blog, which doesn't necessarily have a good way for other--I don't even know if that's public. So it doesn't really have a way for other people to, you know, do a pull request to, you know, iterate on it, which, I mean, I think that there's definitely ways that we could improve upon this and make it more useful.
 
-C: If somebody creates a wiki, should they call it WikiWeave?
+C: [GASPS] If somebody creates a wiki, should they call it WikiWeave?
 
 M: That would be great.
 
@@ -158,7 +162,7 @@ C: Right? And it's like you've got a function. I'm going to get very lispy here.
 
 M: Mhm.
 
-C: But of course, if we had things like there are things like computerized weaving machines and stuff like that, and computerized knitting machines and stuff, one thing we haven't talked about is how you could really bridge between free software and Free Soft Wear by making like free culture patterns for those machines,
+C: But of course, if we had things like there are things like computerized weaving machines and stuff like that, and computerized knitting machines and stuff, one thing we haven't talked about is how you could really bridge between free software and Free Soft Wear by making like free culture patterns for those machines.
 
 M: Mhm.
 
@@ -168,7 +172,11 @@ M: I feel like that is a separate episode. And it's something also at the Creati
 
 C: Were you talking about Cricut and how it's not free?
 
-M: Not quite Cricut, but similarly, computerized sewing machines that you enter an SVG file and it does embroidery patterns. And these programs--so Cricut, which is a kind of hardware that will cut out patterns out of basically paper products.
+M: Not quite Cricut, but similarly, computerized sewing machines that you enter an SVG file and it does embroidery patterns.
+
+C: Oh right, yeah.
+
+M: And these programs--so Cricut, which is a kind of hardware that will cut out patterns out of basically paper products.
 
 C: Can't it also like draw, too, a little bit?
 
@@ -187,6 +195,7 @@ C: I'm literally wearing the only skirt that I have made, the one that I made fo
 M: Mhm.
 
 C: And then also dice bags. You like to talk about, let's talk about each one of those in detail, but especially let's start with the dice bags because you like--
+
 M: That's where I start.
 
 C: That's where you get people to start.
@@ -195,13 +204,13 @@ M: And anyone who has asked me to teach them how to sew, I start with dice bags
 
 C: Four. You released two skirt patterns.
 
-M: Okay.
+M: Have I?
 
 C: Yeah, you released the one that was the circle tube one that you thought was incredibly basic, which is the one I made wearing and the multi layered one.
 
 M: No, I didn't release that yet because we didn't use it for the other episodes. I haven't actually released it.
 
-C: [Gasps dramatically]
+C: [GASPS DRAMATICALLY]
 
 M: This is one of the 10 patterns that I have--
 
@@ -225,7 +234,7 @@ C: But the RSI gloves. This one's really cool because like that's something that
 
 M: Yeah. So we've done a whole episode on repetitive strain injuries and that is a very common type of injury for both programmers and for crafters. So you can find RSI gloves usually at craft stores by the knitting supplies because any activity where you're basically making the same repetitive muffins with your hands and wrists...
 
-C: It was once called washerwoman hands. Because it was a common--because if you were washing clothes or other forms of washing, really, it's just like murder on the wrists, right? If you're doing that all day long.
+C: It was once called washerwoman's hands. Because it was a common--because if you were washing clothes or other forms of washing, really, it's just like murder on the wrists, right? If you're doing that all day long.
 
 M: The modern version of that, if you are making your own socks and then having to hand wash things for the first time, like, whatever.
 
@@ -235,7 +244,7 @@ M: Yes. I have not released any patterns for them because so far I am experiment
 
 C: Right. But why are you making your own socks?
 
-M: Well, and it's related to why I made the RSI glove patterns too. So I have a skin allergy to basically all synthetic fabrics and most things in my life, most things in my wardrobe, I've been able to find commercially available things that I can wear that have either no, or very low amounts of synthetic fabrics. So I kind of leaned into the lesbian look because jeans, t-shirts and flannel shirts are like three of the most easy things to find in 100% cotton. But one thing that I have not been able to find that's a daily thing that I need that doesn't have a significant amount of synthetic fabric in it is socks. So I have started making my own socks, which I'm trying to just replace all of my socks that make me itchy and break out, which means that I've started having to now hand wash loads of things more frequently. So the combination of actually knitting socks and washing those socks is not great for my wrists. And the reason that I made the RSI gloves initially, well it was actually to accommodate both of us. For me, because RSI gloves that you can find commercially are pretty much 100% made out of spandex, or some other type of lycra or synthetic fabric because the whole idea is to have compression, right? So I wasn't able to find any RSI gloves that wouldn't have synthetic fabric touching my skin, which meant that during a crunch period and I had to do a lot of typing, I had to choose between having RSI pain, which could accumulate and cause permanent damage if I didn't treat it properly, or having my skin break out because the compression gloves that I could find were things that I was allergic to. And for you, you have one style of RSI gloves that you found like a decade ago that you loved and you haven't found any other types of RSI gloves that you liked at all. And you wore the ones that you had out.
+M: Well, and it's related to why I made the RSI glove patterns too. So I have a skin allergy to basically all synthetic fabrics, And most things in my life, most things in my wardrobe, I've been able to find commercially available things that I can wear that have either no, or very low amounts of synthetic fabrics. So I kind of leaned into the lesbian look because jeans, t-shirts and flannel shirts are three of the most easy things to find in 100% cotton. But one thing that I have not been able to find that's a daily thing that I need that doesn't have a significant amount of synthetic fabric in it is socks. So I have started making my own socks, which I'm trying to just replace all of my socks that make me itchy and break out, which means that I've started having to now hand wash loads of things more frequently. So the combination of actually knitting socks and washing those socks is not great for my wrists. And the reason that I made the RSI gloves initially, well it was actually to accommodate both of us. For me, because RSI gloves that you can find commercially are pretty much 100% made out of spandex, or some other type of lycra or synthetic fabric because the whole idea is to have compression, right? So I wasn't able to find any RSI gloves that wouldn't have synthetic fabric touching my skin, which meant that during a crunch period and I had to do a lot of typing, I had to choose between having RSI pain, which could accumulate and cause permanent damage if I didn't treat it properly, or having my skin break out because the compression gloves that I could find were things that I was allergic to. And for you, you have one style of RSI gloves that you found like a decade ago that you loved and you haven't found any other types of RSI gloves that you liked at all. And you wore the ones that you had out.
 
 C: I wore them to tatters. We talked about this in the RSI episode, but yes, it's been great having the RSI gloves. It's been incredibly helpful.
 
@@ -257,7 +266,11 @@ C: Mhm.
 
 M: You've basically got small, medium, large.
 
-C: Also, if you're trying to fix a defect and a piece of Free Soft Wear, you might patch it. I've got a couple more of those. We'll wait till the end. Well, at least one more.
+C: Also, if you're trying to fix a defect and a piece of Free Soft Wear, you might patch it.
+
+M: [REALIZING THE PUN] Aah!
+
+C: I've got a couple more of those. We'll wait till the end. Well, at least one more.
 
 M: So, so if you're making--let me finish the thought that you just interrupted to make that pun--so if you're making your own socks or RSI gloves and you have wrists or feet or ankles that are in between those three commercially available sizes, then you can, you know, make things that actually fit you instead of having to just deal with the best of the not great options.
 
@@ -271,7 +284,7 @@ M: So we talked about how finding Free Soft Wear things out there can be difficu
 
 C: Mhm.
 
-M: So what we need is better ways of searching and collecting or collating these things so that we can explicitly go out and look for patterns of, you know, whatever textile art you're interested in that are specifically in the Commons.
+M: So what we need is better ways of searching and collecting or collating these things so that we can explicitly go out and look for patterns of whatever textile art you're interested in that are specifically in the Commons.
 
 C: And we need people to believe that this is a worthwhile pursuit enough to start taking it on as a collective activity--for it to become a Free Soft Wear movement.
 
@@ -283,7 +296,11 @@ M: Okay.
 
 C: But it's an important one. There are other things you can wear, right? You know, that that might be made of various types of materials. For example, you can make armor that's made out of metal or ceramic plates. But in that case, would that be Free Hard Wear?
 
-M: I have already made this pun about what about your necklace that you made.
+M: I have already made this pun about--
+
+C: What!?
+
+M: --about your necklace that you made.
 
 C: Okay, I guess so.
 
@@ -301,8 +318,7 @@ C: For twice the price or--
 
 M: Twice the price of free is still free.
 
-C: I'm just referencing a movie that's maybe somebody listening to this will get and it's not important.
-Anyway, Free Soft Wear advocacy. Get out there. Sew some stuff, weave some stuff, whatever, share with the world.
+C: I'm just referencing a movie that's maybe somebody listening to this will get and it's not important. Anyway, Free Soft Wear advocacy. Get out there. Sew some stuff, weave some stuff, whatever, share with the world.
 
 M: And I think that like, the best way to make this usable would be if we had some sort of, you know, directory or way of both searching and also tracking iterations, which is not going to happen without volunteers. And I don't necessarily have the time to make it happen right now.
 
@@ -330,7 +346,7 @@ C: text you typed into a thing?
 
 M: Yeah.
 
-C: All right, whatever. That Free Hard Wear thing was supposed to be the end of this podcast episode. So now we've gone too far anyway. So goodbye, everybody.
+C: All right, whatever. That Free Hard Wear thing was supposed to be the end of this podcast episode. So now we've gone too far. Anyway. So goodbye, everybody.
 
 M: Christine's getting cranky, apparently.
 
@@ -370,6 +386,6 @@ C: Sure, why don't I add the one contribution I have to this?
 
 M: The places that you can find RSI gloves, um, like...
 
-C: And also this cat is staring at us. [paper waving noise] Staring at this paper.
+C: And also this cat is staring at us. [paper waving noise]
 
 M: Dude, there were two times that she jumped up and pawed at my hands, while recording.