mordacitatis

[mordacitatis]

OK, so while I sew a lot, I've always thought of embroidery as something I Just Can't Do Properly, because I was bad at it when I tried to learn it, while other crafts I've picked up easily.

And then I realised what had happened.

Mother often offloaded me on her three great aunts when I was a kid and they had the tools, knowledge and supplies for knitting and dressmaking, and soon figured out that teaching me to Make Things was a great way of keeping me quiet.

And they'd all done a lot of embroidery when they were young, beautiful tablecloths and things, BUT they'd stuck to more practical things as soon as they were out of what passed for school then, so they didn't have the stuff for doing embroidery, so when they tried to teach me it was with a crappy kids' kit with a plastic hoop that couldn't hold its own shape never mind the fabric and a blunt needle, so no wonder I sucked at it.

What would be your recommendation for someone getting started?

Hey there! Damn, that's pretty insightful for you to realize and it makes a lot of sense. I'm happy to help you get started!

My usual recommendation from absolute zero is to just buy a kit with everything you need from a reputable vendor. Since you have a crafting history I think you're good to not be overwhelmed by the stuff you need to buy. You'll need:

a pattern

a hoop (plastic are totally fine, just not the kids ones you used)

non stretchy fabric (I like kona quilting cotton for beginners, it's a name they can search for easier, is widely available, and good quality without being expensive)

embroidery floss (dmc, anchor, or cosmo are available worldwide depending on where you are and are high quality)

embroidery needles (larger eyes, sharp tip)

scissors

way to transfer your pattern to your fabric

Transferring a pattern is as simple as using a window as a tracing pad and copying the pattern from the paper printout to your fabric using a washaway or heat erase pen. You can also use chalk. There are fancier ways to transfer, let's keep it simple for now though.

I like patterns that casually integrate a large amount of stitches into a design. The ones that are like, carefully laid out sections of DO A BACKSTITCH 5 TIMES. DO A CHAINSTITCH 5 TIMES. DO 3 FRENCH KNOTS - those don't teach you anything in a way that matters. it's not enough repetition to make the stitches stick in your mind nor is it integrated learning to see how stitches look in situ in order to get a grasp of how to use them for your own art.

To learn to do stitches, I like the Royal School of Needlework stitch bank. Other stitch banks online don't give the historical citations for their stitches and often make shit up just to look more impressive or have options not on any other site. Yeah, of course other sites wouldn't have your made up stitch name.

DMC's free patterns are high quality, tell you what threads to buy, and are aimed at all skill levels. I'm linking the list of the ones I personally think are good for beginners to learn on under a cut here because this is getting long!

Blue Hill - wreath with blue flowers

Etoile Constellation - celestial star/moon/sun tableau. Ignore the call for etoile threads tbh and just use the number codes for the plain colors

Etoile Magic Star - tri-toned shooting star. Ignore the call for etoile threads tbh and just use the number codes for the plain colors

Strawberries - a scattered ditzy design with strawberries, leaves, and flowers

Lemons - a scattered ditzy design with lemons and sprigs of flowers and leaves

Oranges - a scattered ditzy design with whole oranges, orange slices, and sprigs of leaves

Raspberries and Roses - a scattered ditzy design with raspberries, roses, leaves, and flower bits

Toadstool - an amanita mushroom scene. This one's really fucking popular online, you see it a lot.

Jellyfish - uses a variety of stitches to give texture to the titular sealife

Octopus - uses a variety of stitches to give texture to the titular sealife

Seahorse - uses a variety of stitches to give texture to the titular sealife

Shrimp - uses a variety of stitches to give texture to the titular sealife

An Hee Jin, Toucan - cute lil toucan on a branch with leaves and flowers

Flying Snakes - snakes but theyre circus performers. lean into the whimsy. life is short.

Woodland Bear - forest scene with a bear. Lots of french knots for the trees, still a beginner pattern. Get that practice in.

[mordacitatis]

I truly believe we could fix so many problems if the world wasn’t making us all so dang tired

[mordacitatis]

I was doom scrolling your page and saw a lot of stuff about Finland

do you live there or were you like born there and moved?? of you have lived in a different place, how different was it?

Oh, I'm a native, born and raised here. The reason I'm seemingly implausibly fluent in english is a combination of random factors, both odd and not that odd. When I was like 3-4 or so, mom put me into an english-speaking daycare for a while so that I could pick up the language properly when she noticed that I was learning to understand english faster than I was learning to read subtitles on TV (unlike in many other countries, finnish TV is never dubbed save for children's cartoons).

Both of my parents needed english for their jobs - my father was an IT wizard and my mother an international sales agent - so they were both fluent and understood just how important knowing the lingua franca du jour is going to be in an increasingly international world. The fact that they were willing to put this much thought into our future wellbeing but I was still bullied at school for being filthy because nobody kept an eye on my hygiene probably illustrates what kind of a odd mish-mash of being neglected, materially spoiled and randomly well-provided for my childhood was.

Then I turned 11 and was allowed to free-roam unsupervised on the internet. This was back when "grammar nazi" was a scalding insult and not a government job title, so whenever I got into arguments on the internet with strangers who had no idea they were arguing with a child, aggressively correcting the opponent's grammar was considered a winning move. My grasp of english grammar rules was honed on the brutal battlefields of obscure 2005-2010 forums with no sympathy for angry teenagers with an undiagnosed Something Wrong With Them.

So I am not "officially" bilingual by many formal parametres since neither of my parents were native speakers, but the same standards also don't recognise "the living room TV" as a parental figure, or consider "feral child abandoned into the wild who was found and raised by a wild pack of internet strangers" a valid backstory.

[mordacitatis]

im going crazy you have GOT to decouple romance/amatonormativity and marriage in your mind. you have GOT to understand that marriage is a legal document that protects you from exploitation especially if you are a woman or a stay-at-home anything. it is not some evil unique to heterosexual people. it is a legal document that says 'this is who i want in my hospital room when i die, this is who i want to have my stuff when i die, THIS PERSON OWES ME RECOMPENSE IF THEY KICK ME OUT OF THE HOUSE I LIVE IN"

You are not immune to being taken advantage of by your partner if you are queer. do not wind up homeless because your garbage live-ins name is on the lease and they decided to drop you like hot coals.

[mordacitatis]

i love when you can feel the disdain dripping off of a wikipedia article

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IT FUCKIN YURI DAAAAAAAAAAAY

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I procrastinate so much that I have a gaping hole of dread inside my chest where I think my other emotions are supposed to go. unless a potential employer is reading this, in which case I don’t do that & I have all the normal emotions that human beings have & I love capitalism

[mordacitatis]

i’m like if an angel fell from heaven and got insanely fucked up from the impact

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The catnip just disappears....

[mordacitatis]

“I want you to do this with me for one month. One month. Write 10 observations a week and by the end of four weeks, you will have an answer. Because when someone writes about the rustic gutter and the water pouring through it onto the muddy grass, the real pours into the room. And it’s thrilling. We’re all enlivened by it. We don’t have to find more than the rustic gutter and the muddy grass and the pouring cold water.”

— Marie Howe, Boston University’s 2016 Theopoetics Conference  (via mothersofmyheart)

[mordacitatis]

Kinda horrified at all the people talking about using scratched up non-stick pans and not realising that Teflon and other coatings are so very carcinogenic. PFAS (carcinogenic forever chemicals) build up in your body like lead or mercury.

^ Don't fucking use this ^

I need young people and the older ones too apparently, to invest in at least one good thick based stainless steel pan. It's better for cooking and it won't give you cancer.

Stainless steel pan? You can scrub that shit with a steel scourer... If stuff won't come off? You can soak it in a laundry active oxygen cleaner for an hour or two and it will come right off, then rinse with clean water and you're golden. You want to whisk your eggs in the pan? Literally no downside, but in a non-stick pan you get CANCER flakes.

[mordacitatis]

the thing about being nonbinary is that you really do start to forget that other people have such strict walls around what is and isn’t allowed for genders. i thought we all agreed that we made that up. could you climb out of the cave real quick and feel the sunshine for a minute.

[mordacitatis]

I've been thinking of the "Can Granny Weatherwax beat Bugs Bunny" question and this is my full take for Discworld characters:

Vimes - Cares too much, too easy to piss off. Has the innate chase instinct that makes characters run into walls with realistic tunnels painted on them. Might get to arrest Bugs Bunny but the beast will just slip out of the handcuffs to help him lock them, then walk out of the jail cell to have a union mandated coffee break.

Ridcully - Classic hunting season scenario, but has enough charisma to probably still get a few good shots off before the inevitable.

Rest of the wizards - No survivors, only Bugs.

Carrot - The intense near-magical narrative aura of well meaning innocence should make him immune, Bugs will likely be forced to be the villain of the episode.

Lord Vetinari - Flattened by a comically large anvil in the first few minutes of the episode, unclear if it was all a part of his long term strategy or not.

Moist - Has the 'lovable trickster getting away with it' energy, but nowhere near Bugs level. Already fell for the "old lady who swallowed a fly" scenario with the stamp slugs once, won't fare any better here.

Death - Definitely one of those "character is trying to avoid death" episodes, would go back and forth. Might actually get to end Bugs but his spirit will reappear in Death's domain and ruin his garden.

Nanny Ogg - The ultimate in anti-Bugs technology, a gleefully annoying old lady who doesn't give a fuck and definitely won't be the first to instigate the plot bearing conflict. This is a full sweep, he's the episode antagonist.

Granny Weatherwax - Too win-motivated to not lose. Would have to break the story to have any chance. Might do it.

Magrat - Will have sappy ideas about helping the poor animal which honestly has the 50:50 chance of either getting slapsticked or Bugs ending in a ye olde stroller&pacifier gag.

Colon&Nobby - Designed in a lab to be totaled by Bugs Bunny.

Tiffany Aching - A child that also has a large pan that is the perfect thing to hit someone over the head with and make a BOIOIOINGGG sound, so great odds.

[mordacitatis]

[mordacitatis]

Do I have too many books? No. It is my shelving methods that are inadequate

[mordacitatis]

when the scheming advisor is exposed and detained and yells at the guards to unhand him thats actually a pretty reasonable response. up until like two minutes ago that wouldve just worked.

[mordacitatis]

Physical therapy is wild because they're always like "hey do this weird little movement" and you're like "hmm my brain doesn't seem to know how to activate that movement" and then they'll like trick your brain into doing it by making you do other movements first or making you resist against them moving you or some shit and your brain is like oooooh ✅ new movement unlocked. And then they tell you to do that movement 20 times a day and you do and it makes some part of your body you didn't even know was related hurt less. What the fuck.