My local library has a makerspace on the first floor with a bunch of hobby stuff including a 3D printer, laser cutter, and sewing machines. It's all free and very cool and I've been meaning to check it out for the last ten years, but going there on my own without a specific goal in mind felt too intimidating. Also, most of the advertising seems geared at teens and groups of teens are super intimidating. So I haven't gone. Until now.
Silhouette Cameo
A week ago Tuesday, Facebook accidentally showed me a post I wanted to see: the makerspace was offering a free four-session class on the Silhouette Cameo machine and they still had five spaces available. Did I know what a Silhouette Cameo did? Absolutely not. (I googled — it's similar to a Cricut, which I've also never used, but at least I kinda know what it does.) This was my excuse to get a toe in the door, so I signed up. But first I checked and it said the class was for both teens and adults.
Class was supposed to be T, Th at 4pm for two weeks. Half an hour after I signed up, I got an email that due to scheduling conflicts and low enrollment, they were changing it to four weeks of Thursdays. It was a little weird that they changed the schedule an hour after posting on Facebook and the day of the first class, but whatever.
Week One: Vinyl sticker
I showed up, signed in, and was directed through a busy area to a room in the back. I took this picture seven minutes before class was supposed to start. I was the only person in the room.
This was the point when I started to wonder how low the "low enrollment" really was, but I took comfort in the fact that there were three computers set up, so it wouldn't just be me.
The next people through the door were a woman with her two kids — one child was probably less than a year, and the other little girl was... eight, maybe? She could have been a tiny ten-year-old. (I don't know. I'm terrible at guessing ages of kids.) Anyhow, I wondered how much the mom would be able to concentrate while riding herd on two (admittedly really well behaved) kids. Meanwhile, she looked at me and said, "Oh, is this class for adults, too?"
The third person never showed.
So it was me and the eight-year-old. She had the advantage of the confidence of a kid who knows what she wants to do, whereas I knew how to use a mouse and how to press the shift key to get capital letters. We were actually pretty evenly matched.
The instructor, who introduced herself as "Pam" to me and "Miss Pam" to the little girl, had prepared the class for teens and adults, but she's a school teacher and she had no trouble adjusting. She had a makerspace aide work with the girl and went through the software with me and it all worked out far better than I'd expected.
I made this vinyl sticker for my phone case:
I called week one a success and went home to prepare for week two.
Week Two: Cards Psych!
The Cameo can cut card stock, so you can make really intricate birthday cards, and the schedule said we'd be making cards during week two. This time, I had something in mind and I was all prepared when I went to the library, except...
The makerspace was closed for scheduled maintenance.
In retrospect, this shouldn't have surprised me because I had evidence that scheduling was not their strong point. Still, it would have been nice to know class was cancelled before I walked half a mile in 90-degree heat.
Oh well. Next week...
