At the event and later with the beautiful people who won the auction

I recently made a set of very special tapestry for a special event in Pittsburgh USA. It was a conference for a programming community using Python as their programming language, and the conference is called PyCon US.

I have not been programming a single line of code since university and I have never experienced using Python before. My husband is an entrepreneur and use Python, while being very active in the community that surrounds this programming language. This is the reason why I had the chance to connect with this community.

This auction is held during their conference to support women in programming and the profit from this event is channeled to a special Python community, the PyLadies. I think that it is a great initiative as many, especially women are still underrepresented in various fields of sciences and technology. The challenges that they face are different and are often overlooked. Although I am not currently working in the tech industry myself, as a woman who had been trained in science throughout school and some early part of my professional life, I do understand the difficulties that one may face being in a usually male dominated environment. I am very excited to know that that there is something that I can contribute now through my art.

I have made 2 tapestries with the Python 2-snakes logo on them. I used linen as the background and wool for the design. I choose these 2 materials because I have recently started to think more carefully about the materials that we use everyday in our clothings. Linen and wool, as far as my learning so far has taught me, are materials that are less impacting on the land, the culture and to the people in the community where they are harvested. This may not be the case for cotton. I may write down about this again later one day. Linen and wool are also two materials that are quite joyful to work with, from my experience. I have really enjoyed making these tapestries, it was a good opportunity to try out techniques that I have acquired all these years weaving, into something that is purely decorative.

The main aim of this auction event is to collect donations so that the PyLadies community can create support and opportunities for their members. The second aim is of course, to have fun and enjoy the presence of the community members and show support for each other.

I got very excited and at the same time nervous when my tapestries were up. Will people like them? Will they accept the rustic look of my pieces? All the excitement and anxiety passed by so fast, there was no time to think! My tapestries were being shown across the room, and I have a clip of my weaving process up on the screen for people to see. I hope that with the video, people could see and appreciate the work that is done in a weaving process, something that is fundamentally still the same even if its made by mega machines in the factories.

Finally my peieces were sold, for $1400 and $2000 dollars each. I cannot be happier and hope that my contribution will make the tech community more inclusive and in return make more people happier. Even though I am not currently anywhere close to any STEM work, I am honored to be able to contribute to the advancement of underrepresented individuals in STEM in some way.

I thank the beautiful souls who bought my pieces of work. I am very happy to know that my tapestries are now home with cool engineers that are also extremely kind hearted people. Your support contributes not only to the Python community worldwide, but also helped boost my confidence in my art. This gives me motivation to create more art that I can now believe will actually be useful in contributing towards any field of work, even the sciences. I thank the Python Software Foundation (PSF) as the producer of PyCon US and the PyLadies community for the opportunity.

This means a lot for me and I cannot be any more grateful.

I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Supporting others one yarn at a time

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