A lesson in problem solving, or, No to misery

This post has come out of Friday’s post, in which a light when wrong and I attempted to make myself feel better about it, and Monday’s post, which documented my weekend at OSH Camp.

As far out of my depth as I was, I found OSH Camp inspiring. It was full of people who liked problem solving, and who kept at it. It motivated me to have another go at fixing my problems, using tools instead of semantics.

It didn’t actually take me too long to fix the light, just a bit of creativity. The problem was that the lights were too bright, which meant I had to make them dimmer somehow. My favourite solution was to install a dimmer switch, but there wasn’t a sufficiently pretty one available. I could cut out some of the lights, so there were fewer strips. I could add in more fabric between the embroidery and the lights, so less of the mechanics were visible. I could give the lights a lower power supply, so they’d be less bright.

In the end, I used a combination of two ideas. I took the embroidery off the frame, and added some fabric, so there’s 4 layers of fabric in total. This worked wonders to hide the mechanics & diffuse the light. After much faffing with adapters and batteries, I finally settled on a 9v adapter (instead of a 12v adapter, which is my default for LEDs and the one I was using before), which softened the light.

It went from this: (which is the photo I was too embarrassed to show you on Friday, but as it no longer looks like this, I can!)

Pretty awful, eh?

To this:

Much better, no? (And yes, I did also learn a lesson in keeping the wrong side of embroidery neat.) I’m glad I took the time to fix it, and take pride in my work. The recipient is also pleased 😀