#I know knitting and crocheting are different

[roserus-wizard]

I think I want to learn how to crochet, but every time I’m looking up yarn and shit I keep getting flashbacks when I was eight and my mom was try to teach me how to knit and she got SO angry and frustrated that I didn’t understand how to do it ( I thought it was supposed to be easy like in the cartoons) and mom kept throwing needles and yarn across the room and was yelling. I didn’t touch yarn for over a decade after that. But this time will be different I’m a level headed individual with the patience to learn and make mistakes!

[tinned-beef]

i woke up this morning and thought to myself, ‘i need to make something.’ and then i spent the majority of today working on this:

it’s five’s mittens from redaurorarora’s fic seven types of love ! here’s the excerpt i took to make these:

anyways here’s the start of what will (hopefully) be a little series of me recreating little things in tua fics. i thought this would be a fun little thing to make and i’m pretty happy with how they turned out!

[wandixx]

I made a prompt some time ago and my brain couldn't let it go so I want to write an actual fic about it. But I need your help to do it.

You can find the prompt I'm talking about here. To summarize it quickly because I know it ended up kind of long. Dani was traveling around the USA and met/befriended some people, heroes and villains include. And then she left to see another place. It wouldn't be a problem if before she left, she said goodbye. She didn't so now they she got kidnapped and are panicing.

I have some ideas, some serious chaos I mentioned (about 2500 words and counting) or super serious chaos if things'll go properly, who knows, some Dani hangs out with Duke during his patrols and is low key his sidekick (5500 words and counting, everything on paper because why not?), both in much different places on a timeline, untouched but thought about idea for Dani and Conner clone budding AND one bit for when she met Flashfam and one when she asked Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy for autographs for Jazz and Sam.

But here is a thing. All I know about DC is from dpxdc tag and some fics on AO3. Also from dpxdc of course. So it means I don't know a jack shit about people outside of Batfam.

So, what I'm asking for is, if you have ideas who else Dani could mess with or/and links to fanfics with your favorite characterizations or character analysis here or on AO3, any way of communication you are comfortable with is open, please send it (maybe not in actual mail that would be both creepy and unreasonably expensive)

I can't exactly watch movies/cartoons because I fear my computer wouldn't survive that (I had a moment of black screen two times in the last twenty minutes and three more temporary freezes, how is this thing still running, and how it became my most reliable internet connection device?)

Anyway, send the links I beg you

[cutearose]

working on a bunch of my christmas crafts at the same time!! I dont think its more efficient than finishing individual items but its more exciting for my brain and maybe even better for my wrists since I’m alternating between very different motions

[tealfruit]

it's really a shame I have to sell 40+ of my life hours every week for poverty wages instead of spending all my time and energy on dozens of creative and technical pursuits with unlimited resources

[ask-pavitr]

I made a lil guy do you like it

I very much like it

did you name it anything yet? I think you should name it fun-size (is that even technically a name idk)

I don't know why it just seems like a suitable name for such an adorable little guy

[exculis]

i like knitting way more than crocheting and yet i own way more crochet hooks. fascinating.

[lover-of-mine]

Sometimes I forget the ability to tell if something is hand knitted, machine knitted, or crochet is not something most people have.

[typheus]

easily the most annoying ppl in the crafting community are the ppl that get mad when others dont know the difference between knitting n crocheting

[doctahpants]

Inspired by @autumn-doodles charming Dogtors and Meowsters, plus chatting about knitting the s12 Doctor Who scarf (12? years ago) I've started knitting again.

It's SO soft and fluffy (and actually nowhere near the nightmare I thought it might be to knit with!)

This will be Thirteen's head. I also have the yarn to make Twelve.

[byanyan]

anyway i've been thinking about byan learning how to knit and crochet at some point during college. it starts because they want to make some cute amigurumi and maybe some accessories for momo & jjijji, and it spirals into scarves and beanies and blankets and more for themself, for sol, for anyone they like.

also it turns out it's super good for those not so great mental health days and any time they just need something to do with their hands but don't have the attention span for anything else.

[bookwormonastring]

i just went to get fabric to make a half circle skirt and when i told my mum it was £17 she was surprised like that was a lot?? it’s exactly what i expected??? she was like ‘you could buy a skirt for cheaper than that’ yes and i would be wary of the ethics that went into making it😭

[fingertipsmp3]

I wish the phrase “waste of space” wasn’t so overused because it’s honestly the perfect insult. The implications behind it. ‘We could’ve put a cushion on that chair instead of him’

[satans-knitwear]

Are you also a knitter?

I should be. Im gonna get my mom to teach me at some point. Its long overdue.

[chornayadrakoshig]

Maybe I'll finally learn how to knit this year huh? On the fourth attempt?

[handweavers]

something that comes up for me over and over is a deep frustration with academics who write about and study craft but have little hands-on experience with working with that craft, because it leads to them making mistakes in their analysis and even labelling of objects and techniques incorrectly. i see this from something as simple as textiles on display in museums being labelled with techniques that are very obviously wrong (claiming something is knit when it's clearly crochet, woven when that technique could only be done as embroidery applied to cloth off-loom) to articles and books written about the history of various aspects of textiles making considerable errors when trying to describe basic aspects of textile craft-knowledge (ex. a book i read recently that tried to say that dyeing cotton is far easier than dyeing wool because cotton takes colour more easily than wool, and used that as part of an argument as to why cotton became so prominent in the industrial revolution, which is so blatantly incorrect to any dyer that it seriously harms the argument being made even if the overall point is ultimately correct)

the thing is that craft is a language, an embodied knowledge that crosses the boundaries of spoken communication into a physical understanding. craft has theory, but it is not theoretical: there is a necessary physicality to our work, to our knowledge, that cannot be substituted. two artisans who share a craft share a language, even if that language is not verbal. when you understand how a material functions and behaves without deliberate thought, when the material knowledge becomes instinct, when your hands know these things just as well if not better than your conscious mind does, new avenues of communication are opened. an embodied knowledge of a craft is its own language that is able to be communicated across time, and one easily misunderstood by those without that fluency. an academic whose knowledge is entirely theoretical may look at a piece of metalwork from the 3rd century and struggle to understand the function or intent of it, but if you were to show the same piece to a living blacksmith they would likely be able to tell you with startling accuracy what their ancient colleague was trying to do.

a more elaborate example: when i was in residence at a dye studio on bali, the dyer who mentored me showed me a bowl of shimmering grey mud, and explained in bahasa that they harvest the mud several feet under the roots of certain species of mangroves. once the mud is cleaned and strained, it's mixed with bran water and left to ferment for weeks to months.  he noted that the mud cannot be used until the fermentation process has left a glittering sheen to its surface. when layered over a fermented dye containing the flowers from a tree, the cloth turns grey, and repeated dippings in the flower-liquid and mud vats deepen this colour until it's a warm black. 

he didn't explain why this works, and he did not have to. his methods are different from mine, but the same chemical processes are occurring. tannins always turn grey when they interact with iron and they don't react to other additives the same way, so tannins (polyphenols) and iron must be fundamental parts of this process. many types of earthen clay contain a type of bacteria that creates biogenic iron as a byproduct, and mixing bran water with this mud would give the bacteria sugars to feast upon, multiplying, and producing more of this biogenic iron. when the iron content is high enough that the mud shimmers, applying this fermented mixture to cloth soaked in tannins would cause the iron to react with the tannin and finally, miraculously: a deep, living grey-black cloth.

in my dye studio i have dissolved iron sulphide ii in boiling water and submerged cloth soaked in tannin extract in this iron water, and watched it emerge, chemically altered, now deep and living grey-black just like the cloth my mentor on bali dyed. when i watched him dip cloth in this brown bath of fermented flower-water, and then into the shimmering mud and witness the cloth emerge this same shade of grey, i understand exactly what he was doing and why. embodied craft knowledge is its own language, and if you're going to dedicate your life to writing about a craft it would be of great benefit to actually "speak" that language, or you're likely to make serious errors.

the arrogance is not that different from a historian or anthropologist who tries to study a culture or people without understanding their written or spoken tongue, and then makes mistakes in their analysis because they are fundamentally disconnected from the way the people they are talking about communicate. the voyeuristic academic desire to observe and analyse the world at a distance, without participating in it. how often academics will write about social movements, political theory and philosophy and never actually get involved in any of these movements while they're happening. my issue with the way they interact with craft is less serious than the others i mentioned, but one that constantly bothers me when coming into contact with the divide between "those who make a living writing about a subject" and "those who make a living doing that subject"