CHIT CHAT:

I have been on a productive roll with the king size Irish chain quilt piecing. One of the things that has made the piecing of this quilt much better is a new rolling cart I got from Amazon.

When I got this roller cart, it took me about 20 minutes to assemble it. The assembly was very easy. The provided tool that tightens the screws worked well. The casters are great and smooth. Then seeing the size of this cart 3D was a little worrisome for me. I still decided to give it a try. I put my too large size wool pressing mat onto and it flopped over the edges and used that for a couple days. In the meantime I ordered a 14" square wool press mat - and this was not the nicer one that I have at my main ironing station. It was inexpensive and came with a silicone iron mat and a purple thang tool. It was quite the deal. The quality of the mat is as I expected not excellent, but not terrible for what I need it for. The press mat fits perfectly across the width of the top, but is two inches larger than the depth. There just is not a press mat that I could find in an 11 x 14 size. I don't want to cut this mat down because it would compromise the construction and eventually fall apart. So, it works just fine as is.

Then, my mini Steamfast iron fell and a foot broke off. I have had this iron since 2015. I remember I got it from Craftsy before it was Blueprint. This is the best mini steam iron out there in my opinion. I also have a mini oliso iron that I use downstairs. It is also a good iron, but not great due to the awkward grip and how hot the grip gets when the iron is on the highest setting. The mini steadfast iron is not only a fraction of the oliso mini iron cost, but it also designed better. The grip is raised and never gets hot. The steam function works very well, although I usually use dry heat when pressing quilt piece seams. It lasts a very long time.

Knitting: I am still on a break but...I cannot resist making a few of the Arne & Carlos knitted easter eggs. I just completed a cute pink and white cherry blossom design. I am knitting these on 4" long double pointed needles, which is my first project on these. I would actually recommend either the 5” dpns for these eggs and also the Christmas Balls projects. Below is a photo of the cherry blossom egg I knitted - I just need to weave the ends and stuff it!

I have not made a bag pattern in a very long time. Well, I saw that Sara Lawson over at Sew Sweetness is releasing a new Minikins group of patterns - Minikins 4. April 16th. Minikins are a group of 12 patterns that are usually small bag, organizers and storage patterns. IG and their Sunday Sewcial YT show, reveals the upcoming patterns in the Minikins 4. Enigma pouch opens flat, large storage cubes, zippered book cover with handle. Yoga bag, water bottle bag, pencil pouch, small purse type bag, sewing machine cover. There are 4 more patterns that I am sure Sara plans to reveal soon. This Minikin 4 pattern group will be available to purchase on April 16th - just a week and a half away.

My website host has put 30 minute limits on embedded videos, so I have the links below to Sara Lawson’s Sew Sweetness Youtube videos about the Minikins 4 pattern bundle:

https://www.youtube.com/live/39_ZUN4FTFU?feature=share

https://www.youtube.com/live/jytpU26ef14?feature=share

Main Topic: AI in our Maker LIfe

What is AI - Artificial Intelligence: Artificial intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems

The development of AI can be traced back to the mid-20th century. The term "artificial intelligence" was first coined in 1956 by computer scientist John McCarthy, who organized the Dartmouth Conference, which is considered the birthplace of AI. However, the idea of creating machines that can mimic human intelligence has been around for much longer. In the early The first practical applications of AI were developed in the 1950s and 1960s, including the first AI program, which was designed to play chess. Another thought to be the first AI program was ELIZA, a chat bot that simulates talking to a therapist developed in 1966 at MIT. Since then, AI has continued to evolve and advance rapidly, with breakthroughs in machine learning, deep learning, and other AI technologies leading to significant progress in recent years.

Machine Learning: Machine learning has been widely used in recent years to develop predictive models, recommendation systems, and autonomous systems, among others. Examples include Google's search algorithm, which uses machine learning to improve search results, and Netflix's recommendation system, which uses machine learning to suggest movies and TV shows based on users' viewing history.
Natural Language Processing: Natural language processing (NLP) has made significant strides in the past decade, with advancements in speech recognition, language translation, and text analysis. Examples include Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, and Google Assistant, which use NLP to understand and respond to voice commands.
Computer Vision: Computer vision has been used extensively in fields such as image and video recognition, self-driving cars, and facial recognition. Examples include Tesla's Autopilot system, which uses computer vision to recognize and avoid obstacles on the road, and Facebook's face recognition feature, which uses computer vision to identify people in photos and videos.
Robotics: Robotics has also made significant strides in recent years, with advancements in autonomy, mobility, and dexterity. Examples include Boston Dynamics' robots, which can walk, run, and jump with remarkable agility, and iRobot's Roomba vacuum cleaner, which uses sensors and machine learning to navigate and clean homes autonomously.
And this last example of AI is what I will be focusing on for this segment….Generative AI: Generative AI has become increasingly popular in recent years, allowing machines to create realistic images, videos, and text. Examples include OpenAI's GPT-3, which can generate human-like text, and Nvidia's StyleGAN, which can create photorealistic images of faces, animals, and objects.

What is GAI? Genitive Artificial Intelligence? Aka GAI. “Generative AI is an umbrella term for any kind of automated process that uses algorithms to produce, manipulate, or synthesize data, often in the form of images or human-readable text. It's called generative because the AI creates something that didn't previously exist. “ from InfoWorld article
There are two GAI programs that I will present to you today. These are newer releases and for right now are free to use. These programs are in a sort of beta testing and we are “training” the ai with our human text input from all of the users like us to improve the GAI performance. These two programs are CHATGPT and DALL-E . I hear about ChatGPT everywhere almost every day and I suppose you have too, but what do you really know and understand about it and how can you utilize it with your everyday making like sewing, quilting, knitting, gardening, cooking etc.? I did a lot of my own research on these topics with ChatGPT. By the way do you wonder what the gpt stands for? G is Generative, P is Pretraining and T is Transformer which basically means that the program scours the internet with information that will be a most probable response to human input. Algorithms. There is no self thinking bot …yet… if I think about it too much it is kind of scary. Plus, I watch too many AI shows where AI takes over humans and the world…like Westworld, where the human ai’s take revenge on the humans that made them and more recently on Peacock is the movie Megan…an AI doll that is a companion to a lonely girl who just lost her parents and lives with her aunt - an AI scientist developer of Megan. This doll becomes an out of control murdering monster. No wonder I am hesitant of AI. LOL
The second type of GAI I want to present to you is DALL-E. This is a program that generates vibrant and realistic images based on text prompts. We often refer to these systems and others like them as modelsbecause they represent an attempt to simulate or model some aspect of the real world based on a subset (sometimes a very large one) of information about it.

My first text request was to make a watercolor of a terrier shepherd mix dog knitting. It makes four images, and had one that was kind of close but I wanted to see if I could get a closer image that represented cooper, I had to get more detailed in my request…a watercolor of a staffordshire shepherd mix dog knitting. Poof - a super close image of cooper appeared on the screen. The dog was wearing a knit sweater and looks like he was unraveling a knit blanket. Photos of these will be in my podcast blog post at makeanddecorate.com
Then I wanted an impressionist painting of a woman with black hair hand sewing with her staffordshire Shepard dog in a field of poppies. It gave me black colored dogs, so I redid the query with a brown dog description. I got better looking dogs, but worse looking compositions - the first grouping was the best.
I uploaded a photo of me and Cooper - this one was a major fail - it manipulated us the shapes of our faces and switched our positions in the photo gave me two pics with super fat faces and a smaller face on cooper with his ears folded back - awful.
Another fail was my request for a logo for make and decorate - terrible!
Finally, I asked for an oil painting with a woman black hair wearing liberty tana lawn in the Wiltshire pattern and a sewing machine…first with a purple background…next with a landscape background with cherry blossom trees.