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[felren13]

The first embroidery pieces for the Tiffany Aching books on my Discworld jacket:

-a chalk horse (the Uffington Horse)

-a stylised frying pan with the quote "Make all things yours!"

[felren13]

[felren13]

why is it when you go to a hair salon as a transmasc/nb person and go “i want something very short and simple. masculine. here’s a photo of a man. that’s how i want my hair to look.” without fail your middle aged hairdresser is like “yes. right. i know exactly what you’re looking for. let me just ….. snip snip” and you come out of there like 2007 kate gosselin

[felren13]

[felren13]

All repairs have been made. All ends have been trimmed. The shawl has been dragged through a ring.

This is a mostly accurate reproduction of an 1880s-1910s Shetland lace ring shawl.

I used Jamieson and Smith Shetland Supreme 1ply in natural white. This yarn was developed with Shetland Museum and Archives as part of the Shetland Fine Lace Project, and is a 100% Shetland wool reproduction of the original handspuns used.

For additional historical accuracy, I also had borderline severe anemia for this entire project without knowing what was wrong with me.

Dimensions are 5 foot 8 inches square.

Detail shots:

Bonus slow-mo gif of it in motion. You can kind of get a feel for how it tries to velcro to itself at the very end (the edging points are flipped up and stuck) which is the main reason I didn't try other methods of capturing the drape capabilities. You'll have to take my word for it that it's super drapey.

Ring shawls got their name from the fact that one of the ways to prove the authenticity and quality was to pull it through a wedding ring--provided, of course, that the diameter of the ring was half an inch or less.

I do not have wedding rings.

I have goth rings.

I dragged it through a size 5 (approx 1/2 inch diameter) coffin ring. I do not recommend this.

There is some BBC archive footage on YouTube of a reporter interviewing two lace knitters who demonstrate this at the end of the video. The reporter stated the shawl being used for this demonstration is 27 square feet.

Mine is a little over 32 square feet.

This was made particularly challenging by the fact I could NOT block it at max tension--the cotton thread that strings it up to the blocking frame sawed through part of the edging, and I had to stop at the dimensions I had. As a result, the density of this fabric is thicker than it would have been otherwise.

But I did it and I retain the bragging rights forever.

@battleblaze I'm going to beat you to the punch this time and tag @knottybliss myself. Thank you for the object lesson in "don't post pics when still in the pits of stress over blocking going horrifically wrong" lmao

@the-fibre-stuff Thanks! I made the frame, too! I think the skew in that very hasty photo is largely the angle--there's just not enough space without moving very heavy furniture to get a good head-on angle. But my crochet cotton DID saw through an edging point while I was trying to make sure that it was all perfectly even (and it's hard to get my frame to stay square) so I think there is a skew, but hey, if I'm the only one that knows, I'm chill. Glad to hear that it passes the galloping horse test, in any case.

@ghostrepeater I'll never tell. You can't make me.

@invisiblefoxfire I still think you said it best: This thing is determined to simply not exist at all, but my will is superior.

And finally (maybe) @lacewise as predicted, now that the finishing details have been completed, better pictures taken, I AM proud. Exhausted. But proud. It remains to be seen how often I allow this thing to leave the house.

Everyone else that complemented my very hasty, zero contrast, probably super eye-strainy "please send help and/or booze" quick pic--thank you. I legit never post anything, I truly am a habitual lurker. I've only ever gotten that many notes on boop day. I'd tag some more mutuals, but honestly, you're seeing it in more than one place.

[felren13]

i just made this for myself, but multiple people have told me they find it really useful so i thought id share it!

[felren13]

[felren13]

mr. boombastic

[felren13]

Velvet lynx spider, Oxyopes flavipalpis, Oxyopidae

This species comes in a pretty wide range of coloration, which you can see here if you’re curious!

Photographed in Zimbabwe by spidermandan

[felren13]

My very small high school - graduation class of 12 people - had an equally small library and a librarian with a love of books inversely proportional to everything else's size. By ninth grade I had long since exhausted the library's wealth of books, and the librarian had taken to going to the big city library every couple of weeks and checking books out for me that she thought I'd like.

One of those books was Wizard's Dilemma, newly out in hardcover.

I was immediately enraptured, and almost as immediately devastated, as I devoured that book in a day and then had to go have a long cry. I had lost my mom to an accidental drug overdose when I was ten. I knew how Nita and Dairine felt. I would have done anything to save my mom too.

I read every other book in the series that was out at the time. I remember how especially cathartic it was for me to read about happy and functional families. The line in Deep Wizardry, "Don't you understand? There are some things more important than doing what you tell me!" and that being RESPECTED by Nita's dad was especially powerful. The day I read that I started a list, hidden in the middle of an old social studies notebook, called Things I Will Not Do When I Have a Kid, and the first thing on that list was "I will not demand unquestioning obedience," as my abusive parents did.

As an adult, I created a personal Code of Conduct that was heavily patterned after the Wizard's Oath: Take responsibility. Do no harm (as much as possible.) Encourage growth in self and others.

I reread the series regularly for comfort. A Wizard Alone is my all time favorite. (NME, thank you for the revisions you did.) It's my little pillow fort in book form. And I'm eternally grateful to you and my high school librarian for bringing that to me.

In gratitude and appreciation, I recommend it and your other works every chance I get. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

You're very, very welcome. (And I'm very glad the Abroad [ARGH, MISTYPE, SORRY...] Alone revisions worked for you. They plainly needed doing, so I did them.)

You probably wouldn't be surprised to find that the issue of family relationships is always on my mind in the YW series (and in the Middle Kingdoms books too, in different ways). My early family life wasn't truly awful, but it wasn't anything like ideal, either. There was routine emotional (and occasional physical) abuse on my father's part, starting from a very early age; and a mother who was experiencing the same kind of thing, and who was punished for pushing back against it or trying to defend me.

So good parenting in the series, and participation in a family where that's going on, is a constant concern. By the time I'd started writing about families, I'd already been looking around me for a good while at people I knew who'd seemed to be getting it right with their own families. And I always kept in mind, during these contemplations, the Tolstoyan concept that "all good families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

By and large I found Tolstoy to be right on this—which probably isn't much of a surprise. But I privately often thought that more could be said about the subject, so I spent some time trying to get a sense of what routinely seemed to underlie the goodness. And respect—especially toward children who don't yet have much power in the world—seemed to be a very common ingredient.

Therefore, if that's perceptible in what you've seen in the YW families, then my job is getting done. :) Thanks for letting me know.

[felren13]

When Apollo 11 successfully landed and the images were released, ‘The Sun’ newspaper in Vancouver changed it’s name to ‘The Moon’ to report it.

[felren13]

Had an impromptu chat with @ushi418 about fashion history the other day- thought I’d post it here as a quick ref for people!

[felren13]

Hey.  Hey, our historian isn’t at her desk today—we’re not sure why.  Humans are so soft and fallible.

But not YOU.  No, out of all the humans we’ve ever known, YOU are by far the most [competent|proficient|dependable].  Why, we can’t IMAGINE trying to do this without you!

Now we want you to look in the nearest reflective surface—a mirror if you’ve got one, a shiny pot or the back of a spoon if you don’t—and repeat after us:

I am amazing.

I am clever.

I am strong enough, I am good enough, and even if I weren’t either of those things, I would still be ENOUGH, because there has never been anything else like me in all creation, and there will never be anything else like me, ever.  I am a universe unto myself, filled with tiny gods no one else will ever worship or know, and I deserve to feel happiness.

Do you feel better?  Even if you thought that was silly, we have found that humans talk down to themselves far too [often|regularly|reliably].  Speaking words of happiness and love toward the self will make you feel more as if the self if something worth celebrating.

Whatever you want to achieve in this world, we have absolute faith that you can do it.  We only need you to have the faith in yourself that we already have in you.  Together, we can move mountains.  Together, we can accomplish anything.  And we will be with you every step along the way, small friend, because we believe in you.

Now, if you could find our historian, we would really appreciate it.

[felren13]

URGENT EVICTION HELP

Hey guys? I could really use some help paying rent this month. My court date to be evicted is on the 21st of June. My boyfriend lost his job recently, and his workplace is refusing to pay him

I… really need help. I don’t have much food. My blood sugar is always out of wack because I’m not eating.I’m… running out of options. I need help. Please. Even a share helps.

I can’t work because my back is really messed up but the disability process where I live can take YEARS.

Another thing: I have an emotional support cat and I really don’t want to give her up but I’m not gonna make her live out of a car. I’m really scared of losing her.

Please help if you can.

Cshapp | Vnmo | PayPl

[felren13]

Dog having fun

[felren13]

Night Parade of a Hundred Ghosts

My comic for “Queer Compassion in 15 Comics,” a collaborative anthology that blends social science and art to illustrate LGBTQ+ experiences of compassion. You can read it online for free, or purchase a physical copy at that link :)

I was asked to write a statement about this piece, which I will share here:

There are some difficult feelings in the comic about estrangement, belonging, and cultural longing. The story didn’t click for me, though, until I started reading the stories of others in the community from the research. There’s a lot of beauty in there, but there’s also a lot of hurt. I wanted to squeeze everyone’s hands and somehow find the perfect words of comfort— and isn’t that all that anyone wants to do when they see family going through it? So I started thinking of it as a call-and-response between you, at your lowest point, and the ghosts of your ancestors. If they could talk to you, what would they say? “Look—you’re safe and fed.” “You’re alive.” “How magnificent!” “You can cry, but wouldn’t it feel better if you did it in the shower?” “Now hold my hand and walk with me.” “Take care of yourself.” “Brush your teeth.” “Text her back.” “We love you.”

It’s surreal to share this. I began working with the anthology crew in 2021, towards the beginning of my undergrad. In just under a week, I’ll be graduating. This project has been living in the back of my brain for the past three years, a source of comfort and catharsis. Now we get to inflict it on all of you, hahahaha…!! Sincerely, I feel so lucky to have been able to participate in it. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, to everyone who leaves their touch on this anthology— scientists, artists, interviewees, readers, and beyond.