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[spoopierpumpkin]

me before starting tristamp: aw this funky little guy seems so loveable, I’m going to give this fun anime a try and have a good time!

me now, tricked, backstabbed, bamboozled:

[spoopierpumpkin]

[spoopierpumpkin]

What happens when I impulsive sign up to pinch hit in the RFFA exchange?

Expedition happens.

Summary

When the Millennium Falcon crashes into the icy wilderness of Jakku’s snow-covered Southlands, Rey must rely on everything she knows to keep herself and her mysterious companion, Ben, alive while they try to make it back to civilisation.

❄️ Woman vs. Nature

❄️ Rey is the GOAT

❄️ Ben is trying his best but is more of a nuisance than a help

❄️ Enemies to lovers

❄️ Happy ending

❄️ 5 chapters/ 15k / complete

❄️ Rated M for swearing and implied sex

Check it out if you're into that kind of thing 👉

Happy February Reylos! All 89 fics in this year's RFFA Valentine's Exchange collection are now fully revealed with their writers attached. Go forth and read, and leave our writers some love!

If you wrote a fic as part of the collection, you're now free to promo it as your own. Remember to also leave a comment for your writer on any gifts you received! All our writers put a lot of work into their fics, and we want to make sure that's appreciated. 💜

Thank you so much to all the writers that were a part of this project and all the readers who took the time to leave a comment. This fandom is full of such talent, and we're thrilled to see it in this exchange!

Read all 89 gifted fics here!

[spoopierpumpkin]

A whole lot of love and talent has gone into its creation, so if you're as feral for Reylo as I am, be sure to check out the now-revealed Reylo Valentine's Day exchange!

From tooth-rotting fluff to filthy, filthy smut, this exchange was blessed with a little bit of everything ❤

Happy February Reylos! All 89 fics in this year's RFFA Valentine's Exchange collection are now fully revealed with their writers attached. Go forth and read, and leave our writers some love!

If you wrote a fic as part of the collection, you're now free to promo it as your own. Remember to also leave a comment for your writer on any gifts you received! All our writers put a lot of work into their fics, and we want to make sure that's appreciated. 💜

Thank you so much to all the writers that were a part of this project and all the readers who took the time to leave a comment. This fandom is full of such talent, and we're thrilled to see it in this exchange!

Read all 89 gifted fics here!

[spoopierpumpkin]

Hello, I am once again back on my ceramics bullshit.

Remember how I said that old-school ceramics LAST?

Well, a cargo of Staffordshire-made ceramics was found during the exploration of a 167-year-old shipwreck, and it's still in *perfect* condition.

They're going on display as part of a temporary display next week, then after that they'll be archived for protection.

The items found in the wreck were from three Staffordshire companies; Davenport Pottery, Longport Pottery, and Charles Meigh & Son in a variety of classic patterns.

And true to form, there was a bunch of Blue Willow in there 😂

[spoopierpumpkin]

Me and my husband watching my younger cousin dive headfirst into weebery when he doesn't realise we're both elder weebs

I see you with your deku pfp.

You go, lil dude.

[spoopierpumpkin]

Apparently, I once spent an entire anime convention being hit on by this guy who latched onto our group and I had no fucking clue the whole time lmao

I wonder how many times someone has flirted with me and my dumbass just didn't comprehend that someone actually liked me and thought they were just being nice 🤔

[spoopierpumpkin]

[spoopierpumpkin]

Me @ many groups but especially @ companies bragging about their diverse hiring.

Cool beans, hun, now lemme see the retention figures.

[spoopierpumpkin]

WISHBONE!!!

When I was a teeny tiny pumpkin, I had a talking Wishbone plushie and it was the best fucking thing ever and I still think about it to this day

we desperately need someone to encourage childhood literacy in America again. desperately

[spoopierpumpkin]

Your daily dose of cat memes

[spoopierpumpkin]

can someone please get these hoes under control i’m BUSY

[spoopierpumpkin]

It's me, I'm girls, and the oven is my overly excited air fryer.

Girls who say "yeah yeah I hear ya" When the oven beeps to show its done preheating

[spoopierpumpkin]

me and my pile of hastily scrawled fic ideas

One of them will have to get finished eventually, right???

[spoopierpumpkin]

trigun is like what if bugs bunny from looney tunes was a biblically accurate angel with every mental illness imaginable who martyred himself over and over and over again out of love for humankind.but hes still bugs bunny about it.

[spoopierpumpkin]

OH SHITTT!! IT HAPPENED!!! 😳🎉🥳👏🎊

Thank you all so much!! I truly can’t believe that there are 3,000 of you wanting to follow me!! I’m kinda a nobody really so to see what people enjoy my content truly makes me happy!! In the next couple of days I’m going to be doing a 3,000 follower sleepover! So please stay tune to that! Again thank you all so much!! I love you all 3,000!! 🥺🥹🥹

[spoopierpumpkin]

✨ Education Corner with Lili, or 'Surprise! I was a ceramics historian before moving into funeral care!' ✨

Wanna know more about these gorgeous designs? Buckle up.

Starting strong at the top, we have a pattern known as 'Blue Willow'. I can't make out WHO made this particular one as the main identifiers are missing but I'll use Mason's as a baseline since they made the second plate in the image set.

Typically, a piece of Blue Willow would have looked something like this:

(Mason's, late 1800s - early 1900s and Churchill China, current production)

There are hundreds of willow designs, each subtly different, but most share defining features:

- A willow tree

- A bridge over water with two, three, or four people crossing

- Pagodas and temples

- A boat

- Two birds flying above the scene

The Willow design emerged in England in the 1790s as a response to the demand for traditional Chinese designs. Because why spend money shipping pottery from China when you could just make dupes at home and pocket the extra profit?

Nobody is quite sure who created the iconic design (which is why so many copycats were able to flourish, even to this day). Regardless, Blue Willow was a roaring success and every manufacturer wanted a piece of the pie.

Over time, the pattern developed a story to help sell it to the public. Songs and poems were written to celebrate Blue Willow and its supposed depiction of two star-crossed lovers such as this one from the Victorian period.

"Two pigeons flying high

Chinese vessel sailing by

Weeping willow hanging o’er

Bridge of three men maybe four

Chinese temples stand

Seem to take up all the land

Apple trees with apples on

A pretty fence to end my song"

To keep a competitive edge, Willow also became available in many colours, thought blue remained a favourite with buyers.

(Black Willow by Burleigh, 2010s & Pink Willow by Victoria Porcelain, 1940s-1950s)

Willow came in all shapes and manufacturing types; plates, jugs, tea sets, ironstone, earthenware, bone china. You name it, there's a willow for it out there.

While Willow fell out of fashion several years ago, a handful of manufacturers do still make this traditional design. However, the quality and methods of creation are (typically) very different to older pieces.

✨✨

The second plate, which is more identifiable, is a piece of ironstone from Mason's.

(Mason's, 1940s - 1950s)

Now this!! This beauty is called Vista and is all Mason's.

Vista was designed to emulate the feel of willow whilst standing as an independent design. Vista was designed and produced entirely in-house by the artists at Mason's in a beautiful shade of red.

The process of making these is labour intensive and extremely skilled work. Creating the means for mass production of this pattern alone may have taken years, being painstakingly engraved by hand onto giant rollers which would be used to create the final design transfers.

As far as I'm aware, only a single company in the world still uses the traditional decorating method that would have used to create Vista and that's Burleigh. This is what an engraved roller looks like:

(Burleigh, current production)

Even today, with the advent of laser technology, these cost thousands of pounds and take months to make. And they used to do that by hand!

Anyway, back to Vista!

Vista was Mason's own design, patented and manufactured only by them in the mid-1900s.

The type of pottery seen here is called ironstone (also ironware), which is a type of stoneware made using a specific blend of clay and feldspar.

The manufacturing of this design was only for a short period of time and was very much a labour of love. Each piece could take weeks to be created, with multiple stages of manufacturing needed.

When it came time to add the pattern, decorators weren't even allowed to touch a piece until they'd trained for several years.

Bonus fact: Decorators were almost always women! They would have worked in a dedicated section of the factory (called the decorating shop or transfer shop) and were treated very well around the factory for their level of skill.

(Yes, internal pottery politics existed. It still does and is actually kind of hilarious to witness in action.)

Classic designs like Vista really are gorgeous and if you ever come across intact ironware like the above, I recommend you buy it while you can and actively use it in your home!

This shit is STURDY.

It's heavy duty and will survive most drops, bumps and other household accidents. There's a level of quality in the creation that you rarely find in modern ceramics.

I'm not exaggerating when I say this will outlive most household items if taken care of.

The method used to get the design onto the pieces is called 'underglaze transferring' which means the design is set beneath a seal and is very hard to damage.

Many modern productions place designs onto the finished whitewear without an additional glaze to lock it in place. This eventually leads to the design scratching, fading and even peeling over time.

My own ironstone is from the 1960s and has survived over a dozen babies, crazy pets, several house moves, and more drops than I'm happy to admit to. But it's still going without a single scratch or chip or crack.

It's a trooper and I love it.

Jewelry made from broken china by OneCharmingTreasure.