a-mazy-web-she-whirls

[a-mazy-web-she-whirls]

omg…

[a-mazy-web-she-whirls]

i think the near-extinction of people making fun, deep and/or unique interactive text-based browser games, projects and stories is catastrophic to the internet. i'm talking pre-itch.io era, nothing against it.

there are a lot of fun ones listed here and here but for the most part, they were made years ago and are now a dying breed. i get why. there's no money in it. factoring in the cost of web hosting and servers, it probably costs money. it's just sad that it's a dying art form.

anyway, here's some of my favorite browser-based interactive projects and games, if you're into that kind of thing. 90% of them are on the lists that i linked above.

A Better World - create an alternate history timeline

Alter Ego - abandonware birth-to-death life simulator game

Seedship - text-based game about colonizing a new planet

Sandboxels or ThisIsSand - free-falling sand physics games

Little Alchemy 2 - combine various elements to make new ones

Infinite Craft - kind of the same as Little Alchemy

ZenGM - simulate sports

Tamajoji - browser-based tamagotchi

IFDB - interactive fiction database (text adventure games)

Written Realms - more text adventure games with a user interface

The Cafe & Diner - mystery game

The New Campaign Trail - US presidential campaign game

Money Simulator - simulate financial decisions

Genesis - text-based adventure/fantasy game

Level 13 - text-based science fiction adventure game

Miniconomy - player driven economy game

Checkbox Olympics - games involving clicking checkboxes

BrantSteele.net - game show and Hunger Games simulators

Murder Games - fight to the death simulator by Orteil

Cookie Clicker - different but felt weird not including it. by Orteil.

if you're ever thinking about making a niche project that only a select number of individuals will be nerdy enough to enjoy, keep in mind i've been playing some of these games off and on for 20~ years (Alter Ego, for example). quite literally a lifetime of replayability.

[a-mazy-web-she-whirls]

Love how the second person is literally stealing a plot point from "Ramona Quimby, Age 8" (1981). For... clout?

[a-mazy-web-she-whirls]

truly from the bottom of my heart i hate the level of enshittification etsy has reached because it's still the best place to buy patterns for my hobby and every time i go scrolling through endless ai-generated bullshit to finally dig up a human-designed pattern i like, i'm hit with a deluge of 'popular!! 563 people are looking at this right now!! it's in 134632 baskets!! you must buy immediately!!!' it's a pdf file. it's a fucking pdf file. do you get off on trying to give people fomo over a fucking pdf file. fuck off. get diarrhea forever.

[a-mazy-web-she-whirls]

I was working with an item today that just utterly flabbergasted a part of me (the other was deeply frustrated with the catalogue record AS SOMEONE APPARENTLY THOUGHT IT WAS PRINTED ON SILK, coming back to that in a minute) … but ANYWAYS … said item is a replica of a medieval manuscript prayer book THAT IS ENTIRELY WOVEN out of grey and black silk … WOVEN … text, images, intricate grey scale, WOVEN … NOT PRINTED …

And it’s flabbergasting because it’s from 1888, Jacquard machine, IT USED PUNCH CARDS to weave these intricate pages … something like 400 weft per near square inch … IT looks like a page of textured paper, but it’s not, it’s entirely SILK … F*CK …

Anyways …

[a-mazy-web-she-whirls]

do you have any suggestions for how to embroider fur? Also a good basic guide to stitches, I embroidered something from a kit once last year and that is the whole of my experience, and I think I've forgotten a few stitches in the meantime 😅

I don't use the exact technique she does but Michelle Staub is one of the leading educators right now on embroidering fur. The stitch is long and short stitch like I love to do, but she comes from a fine art painting background, so she focuses on color choice and selection as well as stitching skill building. I've lent my copy of her book to a friend who has been embroidering for under a year and the friend completed a pet portrait that looks pretty damn nice! For stitches I refer to the Royal School of Needlework a lot. I'm able to refer anyone to their stitch guides because they're available mirrored so my left handed buddies can also use them.

[a-mazy-web-she-whirls]

I am so bad at posting here consistently but I feel like Tumblr would appreciate my best friend Fishbag (and the various creatures that live within her)

[a-mazy-web-she-whirls]

I have found it: paper that dupes delightfully for mass market paperback pages! I don’t believe it’s acid free or anything archival which is FINE, because neither are my old mass markets. It is: Pacon Standard Weight Drawing Paper: https://pacon.com/drawing/cream-manila-drawing-paper-standard-weight-9-x-12.html

I was able to order it to a local Staples to pick up and opened the box in the parking lot to see if my paper journey had come to an end. So here it is in Southern California sunshine.

And here it is under house light, with some test printing.

I plan to do a bigger post over on my blog-blog about finding this paper but I didn’t want to sit on this find.

[a-mazy-web-she-whirls]

for any one else with a buddy running a table at Pride (or maybe you are the buddy?), please enjoy this plain weave inkle band pattern for a progress pride flag band, designed using this site.

[a-mazy-web-she-whirls]

16th century flower illustration PNGs.

(source: Book of Flower Studies, ca. 1510–1515)

[a-mazy-web-she-whirls]

what brand/s do you prefer for metallics?

either au ver a soie or kreinik. I'm really fond of kreinik for both performance reasons and others. Their factory is located in west virginia. during pandemic lockdowns the owner of the company went into the factory by himself and re-rigged the machines to braid elastic, to keep up with mask making shortages of materials. Their promo emails at the time showed the results of the tests along with offering rolls of elastic for sale for the mask makers trying to keep up with demand before better options were available than hand sewn masks mostly made by volunteers. actually i found my email from the time because i never delete anything

[a-mazy-web-she-whirls]

what a wonderful resource!

4 shaft weave structures with drawdown and! a photo of the cloth!!

[a-mazy-web-she-whirls]

Well my loves, it appears as though the answer to "Can the Big Pattern Company (Simplicity/Burda/McCalls/ect.) survive the death of JoAnn?" has come.

The answer is no. No it cannot. It has been sold to a liquidator just like JoAnns was.

So if there is ANYTHING you want I suggest you get it now. simplicity.com is currently having a pattern sale and I snatched up some that might be useful for cosplay purposes.

I am very glad these last couple of years I have built up my collection.

[a-mazy-web-she-whirls]

AT LAST....... I'M FREE

Approximately seven months and almost 12,000 stitches later...... behold :') I don't even know what else to write anymore gfdsgsd just look at it. Please.

Feeling brave enough to try it yourself? You can by the pattern here for as little as $1 👍

[a-mazy-web-she-whirls]

1985 Joyce Holder ad

[a-mazy-web-she-whirls]

[a-mazy-web-she-whirls]

Download this easy DIY clothing repair guide (only 10 pages) from Uni of Kentucky

link to PDF