knitasha

[knitasha]

SarahBucky Renaissance Songbook

Masterlist!

Alternative timeline time, readers.

Inspired by a wonderful series of pictures done by the amazing @petite-madame for her Avengers of the Tower series.

Much is different for Lady Sarah Wilson and Lord J. Buchanan Barnes in this mythical past. But much remains the same.

Between Dinner, Breakfast, and the Fog of War

Lord Buchanan of the Order of the Avengers was sitting at the long kitchen table in his home along the walls of Avengers Tower. Freshly back from fighting God only knew what, he was still in his traveling clothes. The night was chill, the damp clung to his cloak and thick fur collar. Even from behind, Sarah could see he was exhausted, his mind still out there, fighting the endless war even though his body had come home.

Mille Regretz

O Rosa Bella

5+1: Children

The first time

The second time

The third time

The fourth time

The FIFTH TIME

The LAST time

[knitasha]

Vampire who dresses in short slutty white dresses instead of long flowy black dresses so you don't realize she's a Vampire when she seduces some lesbian on the train and sucks all the lesbians blood out in the restroom before leaping out the window and running off into the woods

[knitasha]

The further I get into rebels, the more I realize that Hera Syndulla is only the voice of reason among the Ghost crew by default.

Like, this woman is not normal. She could have anybody in the galaxy and she went for a wanted criminal with superpowers. She ran away from her family's palatial mansion to go live in a camper with said criminal boyfriend. Her job experience includes "getaway driver" and that's it. Some punk tried to steal from her and she immediately went "where are the adoption papers, I'm ready to sign". The only reason Hera seems normal is because her family consists of a kleptomaniac, a pyromaniac, a man who spent the first fifteen years of his life in a monastery and the next fifteen years of his life getting drunk, a mass murderer trapped in the body of a trash bin, and a guy who probably lists aggravated assault as a hobby on his Grindr profile.

Hera is the most reasonable member of the Ghost crew. Which is kind of like being the tallest Ewok.

[knitasha]

I mean, yeah.

[knitasha]

Untitled Solarpunk Story Excerpt

I pulled something in my back while ironing 2 days ago (yes, really) and I've spent most of my time since trying to sit very very still so it stops spasming.

On the down side, it's kept me from my sewing, baking, and socializing plans. On the plus side, it's been good for storyboarding a short solarpunk story I'd like to get out.

Here's a little piece of it. Mostly a brain dump, very little editing. Also you will never convince me that names aren't going to be absolutely ridiculous in the future. Lean into it.

----

The oxygen mask bumped rhythmically against her left leg as she walked down the narrow passageway. She synced her breathing with her steps, keeping her mind on the brief echo of her footsteps and the bobbing of the light from her headlamp and definitely not on the question of just how much dirt and questionable infrastructure sat above and around her.

2 steps, breathe in. When was the last time a real earthquake had come through?

2 steps, breathe out. When was the last time someone had checked the walls down here?

2 steps, breathe in. How long ago did those cracks show up?

2 steps, breathe out. How long would the air down here last if the air pumps stopped? How long would she last until her tank ran out?

Olive’s nails bit into her palms, bringing her mind back to the job, and she quickened her pace.

The next section of lights blinked on as she passed the motion sensor. A cold wave of anxiety churned in her stomach at the idea of the now-empty sections behind her going dark, a seemingly endless tunnel of blackness. Even after a decade of working in the pipes, Olive had to force herself not to give in to the ancient instinct whispering urgently for her to run from the dark and whatever watched and waited in it.

Her eyes scanned for the latest section number. She’d gone deep enough that she should be getting close to the offshoot. 220Z, 221A, there – 221B. Digging her pad out of her tool bag with one hand, she wiped years of grime off the code beneath the number with her other.

The screen flashed to life and the EcoSphere logo appeared, its 10 colored rings pulsing around the Earth, one for each of the services the utility company oversaw globally. Her foot tapped impatiently as the logo dissolved only to be replaced by the AquaTech sector’s logo. Her finger was already hovering over the screen as the authentication prompt appeared. She pressed firmly against the screen protector that was already peeling in the corners and WELCOME OLIVE MCGARDEN greeted her.

“Come on, this century already,” she muttered as the pad struggled to find its connection to the wireless this far from the hub.

Finally in the system, she quickly scrolled to her active work order and scanned the code beneath the section number. She made sure the check-in had registered before stowing the pad back in the bag and pushing the old offshoot door open with a resisting creak that echoed down the hall.

She recalled Apple’s teasing when they had received their work orders that morning. Apple was overseeing the installation of the main pipes for the new office wing on the north side of town – “I’ll bring you back a bar from the fancy new replicator they just installed” – with its brightly lit corridors and smooth automatic doors.

Olive, on the other hand, had been assigned to one of the oldest pipe sections on the flow. Not that she minded. She’d take grimy doors and stale air over running into whatever found a way to survive just under the subscape any day. Nothing survived this deep in the sections.

Stepping into the offshoot, Olive widened the scope and increased the brightness of her headlamp. The AquaTech system could determine there was an issue in the section, now it was up to her to figure out where it was coming from, what was causing it, and get it fixed. The newer pipe areas could self-service most leak alerts, but the maze of aging pipes and narrower tunnels this far down hadn’t been worth the trouble – and cost – to upgrade and so required manual inspection and maintenance whenever a leak alert was picked up.

She spent the next hour walking through the tunnels, looking for puddles and other telltale signs of a leak significant enough to trigger the alert. As the tunnel began branching, she pulled colored flags out of a pocket in her bag and began to mark the forks. Blue for main pipe. Green for first offshoot. Yellow for third. They helped keep the paths organized for future maintenance needs while also making sure she could find her way out when she was done. The fact that there were none down here already here told her she was the first to come down this offshoot in a good, long time.

Expecting the leak to be deeper in the flow grid, she walked past the first dozen branches and picked one at random to begin flagging.

Olive had just pulled out a purple flag to mark the newly found fourth offshoot in her branch when her foot stepped on something soft. Flinching back, she shone her light down where she’d stepped, expecting to see some long-dead remains. Instead, she found a small green patch of moss.

She strained her hearing, listening around the sound of her pulse knocking in her ears. There it was. A thin but steady dripping noise echoed dimly down the branch towards her.

“Found you.”

She quickened her pace, stopping only to hang a fresh flag as new branches popped up to show her path forward. As she hung the last of her purple flags, she made a mental note to pick up more when she checked back in at HQ later and forged ahead regardless, determined to find the source of the leak after coming so far.

Olive pulled up short as she came to a fifth branch, her head whipping around to stare down the narrow tunnel. Her headlamp showed nothing and yet she could have sworn… Taking a deep breath, she turned the light off.

But where she expected suffocating darkness, a dim glow greeted her at the end of the branch and the trickle of water sounded like laughter calling her name.

[knitasha]

New Coraline design drop

[knitasha]

My first EPP top is done! In feeling good that I didn't let this sit in its bag forever and actually got it done soon after my class. Now there will be a bit of a break because my craft table is covered in costumes and Christmas gifts I need to wrap 😅

Now I need to:

Give it a good iron

Remove the papers

Trim the edges

Cut my batting (a layer of cotton flannel) and backing fabric

Sandwich the layers

Quilt it all together

Bind it

Hang it!

[knitasha]

When your cat won't stop licking his scabs open, you have to resort to the Head Donut of Shame.

I feel a bit bad for him. It's just awkward enough that he hadn't figured out a comfy way to lay down yet, so he hasn't been able to nap at all. He's so sleepy.

[knitasha]

Unemployment Update

Number of jobs applied to: 56 since end of October

Number of explicit declines: 24 including one that I *really* wanted

Number of interviews: 1! Finally! And they said they'd like to move me to the next round, but that was Tuesday and I haven't heard back. They say they want this person to start in January, so I'd hoped to have heard *something* by now. But trying not to overthink it. Possibly failing.

Focus for the week: Decluttering the house as much as possible

Current crafting projects: Back to full steam ahead on the sweater for my husband

What I'm looking forward to: Second part of the quilting class is this weekend! Also is it ok to want Christmas to be over? There's just so much to manage and I'm not even hosting anyone.

[knitasha]

I made a new dress for my first year back at Dickens since 2019. I puttered on it on and off over the course of last week while I made my kid's dress and then spent most of Saturday and some of Sunday morning finishing it up. My fingers were pretty raw for a while after.

I have some things I'd change in a next version, but I'm pretty happy with this one!

[knitasha]

Did I need to buy a fat quarter bundle today? No

Do I have a pattern in mind for it? No

Am I ready to start thinking about a quilt yet with everything else I'm working on? No

But... woodland animals drinking tea. There was no helping it.

[knitasha]

Did I need to buy a fat quarter bundle today? No

Do I have a pattern in mind for it? No

Am I ready to start thinking about a quilt yet with everything else I'm working on? No

But... woodland animals drinking tea. There was no helping it.

[knitasha]

Today I took an awesome English Paper Piecing quilt class and just finished sewing my first block. I need to make one more before the next class and then we'll learn how to put it all together.

Lessons learned:

Fussy cutting takes a lot of practice to get right.

Need to remember to give my stitches a bit of a tug as I go to avoid gaps between my pieces.

Definitely use clips next time to hold the pieces together when hand sewing.

No more than one full block a day. My finger joints are sore.

[knitasha]

Another day, another job rejection. But also another day of not letting my work define my worth.

whispers: another day {flying edna}

[knitasha]

This is Winnie. She decided the thing to do was to unravel an entire role of toilet paper and then lay in it like a nest.

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Boris, just being his usual Boo self

[knitasha]

Unemployment Update

I love and hate November. There's Foodsgiving, my birthday, my kid's birthday. But then my kid also has multiple weeks of school closures/half days and I lose all sense of time management. I'm just glad today everything is relatively back to normal, for now.

Still looking for work. Here's the latest:

Number of jobs applied to: 26 (last year, I applied to over 100 before getting a hit, so I'm trying not to be too pessimistic just yet)

Number of explicit declines: 15 (the rest are all in the black hole of no follow up)

Number of interviews: 0 :( I had high hopes for one in particular, but I think I have to set that aside now.

NaNoWriMo status: I hit 20K and think I'm going to call it on my current story here. See aforementioned hecticness of the month making it harder than I expected to keep at this. But.. more stories brewing.

Focus for the week: Keeping an eye on my cat, who was recently diagnosed with cancer. A second tumor has appeared and he has wounds that are not healing quickly enough and keep opening. Lots of worries.

Current crafting projects: A cowl for my mom, a sweater for my husband

What I'm looking forward to: Quilting class with a friend she booked for my birthday. Super excited for this!

What else am I supposed to use this space for? Should I post my knitting and sewing projects? Should I document the reboot of my sourdough adventure (that'll be, what, the third time)?