This is the main blog for the person behind a number of sideblogs, including: @tuiliel (witchcraft/paganism/fae) @eyes-of-ra (kemetic) @potsiefaerie (spoonie, lgbtqia+, some politics)
This blog is mostly for my artistic endeavors and personal stuff that isn't about my spoonie life. It started out as modeling/costuming, but I haven't been doing much modeling lately so I thought I'd expand the focus a bit! Expect some photography. My creative writing has its own blog, though: @nathaira-stern
Reminder that I have like a billion side blogs, most of which are witchy/pagan (the main one being @tuiliel ) and one of which is like spoonie/queer/random (@potsiefaerie )
So if I liked your post and you don’t know who tf I am, you’re probably looking for one of those two.
Full List:
@potsiefaerie - queer stuff, spoonie stuff, memes, a fair sprinkling of leftist politics
@athena-columbia - e-shrine to a local cultus form of Athena, as patron goddess of Washington DC, rarely updated
@nathaira-stern - reblogged writing advice, some of my old D&D campaign stuff, some of my AO3 nonsense, updates from several failed NaNo attempts… You are not actually looking for this blog, I promise.
it is human nature to weave strings of yarn, threads, or fibers together to make cloth and textiles
humans will see a soft cellulose plant material or downy animal coat and say is anyone going to twist that staple fibre in order to make a cohesive thread and then not wait for an answer
Seriously, spinning as a craft is ancient. Archaeologists recently discovered three-ply fiber that’s around 46,000 years old, blowing the previous “oldest fingers” out of the water by thousands of years.
But get this: It’s made from fucking TREE BARK. Can you imagine the dedication, foresight, and experimentation involved in figuring out how to harvest and spin that? On top of everything, it’s also lace weight. What the fuck, Neanderthals?
it’s very cool that neanderthals managed to get yarn out of bark fiber, but i think you might be under the impression that all tree bark is like, oak, or sycamore, or something, and only exists in ‘thick chunk of wood’ or ‘flake of wood’ form. but there’s lots of bark like elm and cedar that peels away from the tree in long, tough strips, like so:
like, look at it. it’s string. it’s obviously string. you don’t actually have to be a genius to look at this and think ‘ah! string time :)’
i’ve picked up shed pieces of elm bark on a golf course, stripped and combed out the fiber with just my fingernails, and started hand-twisting good strong cordage right then and there as i walked. you don’t even have to soak it first, though i think if you want finer/softer cordage it helps to soak, beat, and comb the fibers.
the people of the pacific northwest, where there’s so many cedars, developed really wonderful textiles out of cedar bark fiber, pounding and soaking and combing it a bit like linen. i’ve never gotten to touch any, though i’d really like to.
here’s a whole page on all the different stems and barks that can be used for cordage! how cool is that?
so, not to denigrate the skill and intelligence of ancient people, but if you already know how to hand-spin grass and hair, then spinning bark is an extremely obvious and easy thing to do as soon as you encounter the right kind of bark.
i remember when we were in typography II and also editorial design I we got shown the fucking text hierarchy image
and I’m seeing more and more people not grasping this concept when editing so i thought that if for some reason you haven’t seen this image i probably shouldn’t gatekeep it. Text hierarchy is literally essential knowledge to make yourself understood. Try to have an order in your text, investigate, test things, show your edits to people and ask “hey what order are you reading this on?” because the golden rule is that your design should be easy to interpret most of the time.
Nobody talks about how hobbies like crochet and knitting have suspense, anxiety, and gambling involved and it’s all thanks to a self inflicted game called yarn chicken
Where is the lie though???
I am knitting a shawl in a cotton yarn that’s a light fingering weight, and I lost yarn chicken and then had to take out like fifteen rows and find a different edge motif to use and hope that one works.
I’m coming to change how I think of “historical accuracy”, which I used to think was the highest peak of perfection when it comes to making historical clothes, or writing fiction, or whatever. Because that ideal, or the way I was using it, have turned out to be really toxic for me; it sets up a world where there’s Good and there’s Bad and if you’re not historically accurate enough it’s okay for all the other kids to make fun of you. And you have to suffer and be virtuous an appropriate amount before you’re allowed to feel good about your art.
I’m so sick of the way costumers talk about their own projects, picking them to pieces. “I made this dress ten years ago before I knew very much about historical costuming, and it’s just a disaster. Everything is polyester, and the hems are all done by machine…”
I think I used to want to disappear into historical accuracy like a person hiding in a hollow tree; if all my work was perfectly accurate, there was nothing of me to criticize or laugh at. It would finally be safe and okay for me to be a weirdo dreamer who loved creating things and wanted to look fantastic, because I had created an armour of artifice. I had slipped entirely into a world that would support and enclose me.
Letting go of historical accuracy has meant I’ve had to accept who I am now. I’ve got to understand and see the beauty in the modern world and all its strange complexities. And I’ve also got to accept and defend myself in the face of derision or disrepect or criticism, instead of blaming myself for not being perfect enough to avoid them. (To be clear: Sometimes that “defense” just means tuning out or walking away. People aren’t automatically correct just because they’re critical of me. Which was kind of a surprise.)
The mindset that works for me now is that I am a modern person, living in modern material reality. I am making works that are in conversation with the past. They will never not be modern works, but they’re worth making and appreciating no matter how unhistorical they are. Sometimes their conversation with the past is shouting and waving at someone on the other side of a crowd; sometimes it’s a deeply braided multi-year friendship that infuses every fibre.
This also opens up a whole dimension of attitude, where sometimes I love the past and want to hold it up as amazing, and sometimes I think the past should go fuck itself and I’ll do what I want instead. History isn’t a dictator.
it isn’t though!!! it’s because most relationships aren’t worth the effort. The “sweater curse” is actually most commonly called the “BOYFRIEND sweater curse.” Which=heteronormative, but the curse most often falls on a woman knitting a sweater for a boyfriend. Before she finishes the sweater, they break up - pop culture would have you believe it’s because the boyfriend freaks out do to the weirdness/clinginess of having a sweater made for you, but I think knitters are wiser than that.
It’s because after spending serious £££ on materials, and then HUNDREDS OF HOURS OF LABOR on the creation of the item, with every stitch a prayer of totally focused intent, creating a large display of technical skill - it is then gifted to a non-knitter who does NOT APPRECIATE the work/effort/skill/cost/TIME it took to make it, and in fact thinks you’re a bit weird and making a big deal out of a piece of clothing, and after they go “oh thanks” and shove your creation in the cupboard next to a sweater they got for £15 at an M&S sale, then they never wear your sweater because it’s too tight because when you asked them how their favorite sweaters usually fit they said “I ‘unno” and when you measured them for the fifth time and asked, rather tersely, if they had enough room in the chest, they said “I guess,” and then if pressed they say they don’t really like the sweater design, but then you point out that they were supposed to participate in helping you design it and they say they don’t really care about how things look, and when you say that you tried to match it to their other clothes so how can they hate it, then they say that honestly their mother still buys all their clothes because they hate going shopping, and that they hate all their other clothes too, well. That’s when a sensible knitter goes “Fuck this shit. And you know what? Fuck this man.”
This is what happens when someone posts in a knitting forum “Attack of the sweater curse!” - this is the usual story. It has a rigid plot. It is as old as myth.
That’s when you look at the time you spent and realize, “I could LITERALLY have written the first draft of a novel instead of doing this.” That’s when you go “I could have taken that £200 and bought myself a new wardrobe.” That’s when you go “I could have taken all that intent, all that willpower, all that creative force, and laid down some fucking witchcraft, all right?” That’s when you go “I basically spent 100 hours straight thinking about this bastard while making something amazing for him, and I have no evidence that he ever spent 10 hours of his life thinking about me.”
And “I could spend this time and energy and money in making myself an enormous, intricate heirloom silk shawl with just a touch of cashmere, in elvish twists and leafy lace in all the colors of the night, shot through with subtly glittering stars, warm in winter and cool and summer and light as a lover’s kiss on the shoulders, suitable for draping over my arms at weddings or wrapping myself in to watch the sea, a lace-knotted promise to myself that I will keep for my entire life and gift to my favorite granddaughter when I die, and she will wear it to keep alive my memory - but instead I have this sweater, and this fuckboy.”
The sweater curse is a lesson that the universe gives to a knitter at an important point in their life. It is a gift.
Knitting a sweater for a husband or wife generally doesn’t call down the curse, because the relationship is meant to be stronger than 4-ply.
(Although I say this, but I’ve taken over 5 years to finish a pair of mittens for my husband, because he casually asked me to do something customized with the cables, and I still can’t get the math to work on the right hand.)
It is 2020, we recently marked 9 years of marriage and no progress has been made
I was pretty sure I had a keeper when I married my husband - he was so appropriately impressed with my Estonian lace, crazy complicated, at least 25k beads wedding shawl. And then a year or two ago, I made him a super cool but also HELLA intricate cabled sweater in his favorite color. He doesn’t get excited about stuff ahead of time, but he dutifully let me measure him and check the fit, and as soon as it was on my blocking towel, he lost his mind with excitement. He wears it everywhere and proudly tells people his wife made it, and look, it’s got DNA on it!! He was so sad last spring because it got too warm to wear it. 🥲
Pictured: the sleeve of said sweater, the only thing Mr. Emi will let me put on the internet 😂
I had been married to my spouse for 2 years before I even contemplated making him a sweater. I had made him hats and scarves and ponchos, but no sweater because I didn’t want to get divorced.
But he loved everything I made him and showed off to his friends, so I had him pet some yarn and gave him a few options.
Readers, he LOVES that sweater. He takes such good care of it, tells every single person he neets that I made it, and confirmed the care instructions a bunch before washing it. So I made him another.
He now has three pullovers and a sweater vest. He is happy to try on pieces that have been safety pinned together and tells me where the fit is off. I am currently on month six of a cabled cardigan that I needed to redo for length, and he is so excited about it because it is exactly the color and pattern he wants.
Friends, get yourself a partner who will tell you their color, design, and fit preferences before you make them sweaters. It makes the entire endeavor worth it.
I have so many crochet things made by Wife and I love and participated with all of them. In fact, whenever they ask for my opinion, they roll their eyes a little and are like, you like everything I make. Because I do!!
The sweater they made me is my fave. I get compliments on it constantly and am so happy to tell people My Wife Made It.
This is how you do a meme. I don’t want to tell anyone my name or my bra size or my date of birth on the internet. Why can’t we make memes using useless and non-personal data points?
CRAB SEXYMAN 🦀
…this feels like getting a letter from the government informing me that I have been forcibly assigned Karkat.
Crab MeowMeow… Now I kinda want someone to draw the nyan cat but with a crab shell instead of a pop tart.
And some side blogs:
OP Core
Connecticut Sunday (that sounds like a Private Investigator Name)
My one tip for before I go to sleep is, “try to keep all the yarn for a single project the same weight.” I worked with a certain amount of random and sometimes secondhand yarn when I was first really getting into amigurumi, and not knowing the yarn weight, or even why yarn weight is important, definitely had an affect on some of my earlier patterns…
My three tips are:
Find free patterns on Ravelry
Look up how to do new stitches on YouTube
Try to learn one or two new things per project (too many new things and you’ll get overwhelmed, no new things and you won’t get better)
Please pick the answer that you think best represents your current relationship with creative hobbies. I’m aware most of us would pick multiple options, but due to poll constraints, one must do, so think carefully. Why do you create?
Feel free to add details in the tags. There is a follow-up poll in the reblog—check that one out as well. Thank you!
if you’ve been on tumblr for a while then you are one of three types of people. you either A) have kept one main blog since the beginning that you shift to revolve around your current interests and hope your followers understand. B) you have a main blog for general stuff and then 17 specifically curated sideblogs each dedicated to a different hyperfixation you once had. or finally C) you create a new email and make a brand new main blog every time you change fandoms whilst quietly deleting your old one and acting like it never existed. personally i’m C what about you guys
Get yourself a fabric store that will light your fabric on fire for you
No but legit I asked what the fiber content of something was and the guy didn’t know so he cut a chunk off and lit it on fire and felt the ashes and was like. Yeah this is mostly cotton with a lil bit of silk. And that was the moment I knew. This is it. This is the fabric store for me. Also that guy is marriage material. Not for me but damn some person is gonna be so happy with him.
Ok but this is actually one of the easiest ways to tell what something is made of! I did a textiles degree and one day as part of a class we all went outside with a pile of scrap fabric and set fire to the little pieces and recorded how they burned. We were given a chart that looked something like this to tell what each fabric was (it gets a little tricky is it’s a mix of fabrics though). Why did we do this? There is very little regulation in the textiles industry so a lot of materials are mislabelled as something they aren’t and sold for more than they should be, also sometimes people buy fabric second hand or discounted which doesn’t have any label at all. If you have a fabric you are having doubts about, cut a tiny piece off and do the burn test and you should know pretty fast what you are dealing with. Anyways your fabric store should be lighting things on fire because this means that they are actually checking what the fabrics are and aren’t trying to pass cheap stuff off as more expensive than it is.
Ooh! I knew it was a standard test but I hadn’t seen a chart as detailed as this thank you!