As I’m sure you’ve gathered at this point, my name is Tom! Below is a little about me, why I do what I do, and some of my favorite things.
I am originally from Georgia, and moved to Chicago to study video game design, which is what I do currently for my day job. Along the way I gained experience in a few different hands-on fields, and one of the cooler jobs was managing DePaul’s Idea Realization Lab (a makerspace) for a bit. This involved a lot of multi-disciplinary learning and teaching, which goes a long way when you start to understand how the principles of certain machines start to carry over to one another.
I didn’t begin sewing in earnest though until the pandemic hit and I was looking for a more hands-on but compact hobby to pick up. The first thing I sewed on my machine that wasn’t just pant hems was the LearnMYOG stem bag made from old backpack and shorts scraps. Fast forward to now, and sewing has been something that has held through all of the other various hobbies that have come and gone.
ALSO during the pandemic, I picked up biking. I hadn’t owned a bike for the first 5 or so years living in Chicago, and it really changes how you perceive and move through the world. That soapbox can be left for another day, but that hobby also stuck and landed me volunteering at The Recyclery for a while, and now part-time wrenching at Cog Cycles and Yarns.
What Tom’s Tinkerings has ultimately turned into is a place for me to meld my passions together, and spread a little bit of that passion to other people in my community. I don’t know what the future of this will hold, but I hope you find out alongside me!
Some of My Favorite Things
- Games
- Disco Elysium
- Lorelei and the Laser Eyes
- Baldur’s Gate 3
- Metro: 2033
- Pentiment
- Dishonored
- Books
- The Southern Reach Trilogy, particularly book #2 Authority by Jeff Vandermeer
- Every Tool’s a Hammer by Adam Savage
- The City & the City by China Miéville