Lost my mind a little and added (if my math is correct) 5,615 beads to Nim Teasdale's Odenwald pattern. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing!
The goal was “soothingly weighted but not uncomfortable to wear, even as someone with chronic pain.” It could have been a little heavier, so maybe I’ll make a shawl with larger beads another time, but I’m very pleased with this one. I used size 6/0 seed beads, applied as I go with a .6mm crochet hook.
Yarn-wise, used 2 cakes of YarnArt Flowers. I knitted the fully purple sections from both, then knitted all the way through the yellow-oranges with a single ball. When I hit the beginning of red-oranges, I used yarn from both cakes, alternating between them. (Not the entirety of both, I played it by ear to make sure I made it through the full rainbow.)
I do have edited charts with bead placements. I will only share them with Nim's permission.
I've done A LOT of knitting/crochet this year while chronic illness kept me from my sewing machine, but I'm feeling much better now. There will be new quilts to look forward to soon, plus a few more yarn crafts to share in the meantime!
Pretty much since I started putting my art online I've struggled with like... How to do that.
How to do it safely, how to do it in a way that feels organised and makes sense, how to have my art reach the people who are gonna enjoy it.
I think part of the problem is that I'm not dedicated to it in the same way that others are so I post so rarely. But I'm also too scared. I'm scared of my art getting reposted as someone else's and I'm scared of my watermark being too obstructive and I'm scared I'm taking myself too seriously and I'm scared of taking myself not seriously enough and I'm scared of ai and I'm scared of spending money on a domain or a website for something I'm not as invested in as my other hobbies.
And I'm still figuring out what to do about that. I think I might go back to putting up any hobbies. I might also do a bit of a clear of old stuff. Restart. And maybe if it's about more than drawing I can justify paying for a domain.
I couldn’t resist starting another Luminous once I saw this line of fabric. It’s called Color Collage by Shelley Davies from Northcott and it’s been in the back of my mind for ages.
I’m using six colours in the piecing, which should make it 92”x109” (unless I mess with the pattern even more and take one of the rows out completely) which will technically be a king size LOL The seventh colour pink is gonna be used on the binding so I get to use alllll the colours we had in stock in the shop 🎉
Someone please stop me, I can’t stop making these fucking things lmao 😭😭😭😂😂😂 I had a plan to do something else but I couldn’t help it!
I did take one row out of the centre so there are only two red centre blocks instead of three. 109” is too big for my queen bed, but I can work with 101” LOL
Technically this will still fit a king at 92”x101”, but I am a blanket hog and that feels like a really skinny king to me.
ALSO??
Because I altered the amount of rows (downsizing) but did not alter the amount of blocks I made, I ended up with just enough left over to make two matching pillow cases! They are even on point like the quilt.
Not as big as the greyscale king for my brother, but still. It feels big.
As you can see a little from the roll on the back of the long arm, I found a fun rainbow universe print to put on it with all the colours on the front.
I’m quilting the pillowcases too, though in a tighter pattern so they can handle more washing.
I love it so much. My favourite Luminous, I swear.
The pillow cases look so good too. As I mentioned, I quilted them much tighter than the quilt so they can be thrown in the wash a lot more. Same pattern, just smaller design.
It’s so busy, I could stare at it for hours finding things in the prints.
Also? I love the pink binding. I really did want to use every colour, so this was a nice compromise to having to resize everything LOL
The backing is also so busy LOL You can hide a lot of pet fur on both sides of this thing.
The pillowcases turned out great. I used the leftover from the backing to back the pillow cases so that everything matches. And they’re envelope style so the pillows won’t slip out. Hate it when the pillowcase slips off my pillow.
I had to sew three 45” wide strips of fabric together for the backing to fit on the long arm. Since the quilt was only 101” at its widest, I had a whole 30” strip that was usable and perfect for this.
Gender Census 2025: Oceania Report is complete! Sorry it's so late, life as a university student has definitely changed how quickly I can do this and how thoroughly I can edit.
You can find it, the report without an Appendix (Which cuts down the page count significantly), past reports, and the summary here: Google Drive Folder
Or just click below for the full Oceania report:
@gendercensus has the worldwide report! (and is the epic data collector whose data I used for this)
Who? Everyone whose gender doesn’t tidily fit into the female/male binary. (Oceania participants isolated)
What? An online survey asking participants how they describe themselves and how they would like other people to refer to them.
When? July to August 2025.
Oceania Participants: 2,419
Worldwide Summary: https://www.gendercensus.com/results/2025-worldwide-summary/
Full Oceania Report: [GC2025] Analysis of Oceania’s results from the Gender Census
Q1. Identity words
The Top 5 were:
nonbinary: 58.8% (up 1.2%pt.)
queer: 53.5% (up 1.9%pt.)
trans: 44.5% (up 1.7%pt.)
transgender: 40.1% (up 3.2%pt.)
a person / human / [my name] / "I'm just me": 36.3% (down 1.0%pt.)
Q2. Titles
Titles (with name)
Here’s the top 5:
No title at all: 38.2% (up 1.2%pt.)
Mx: 19.7% (down 3.1%pt.)
Mr: 10.8% (up 0.3%pt.)
Non-gendered prof/acad.: 6.4% (up 0.5%pt.)
Ms: 6.0% (down 0.7%pt.)
Titles (without name)
The top 5:
No title at all: 70.0% (up 3.4%pt.)
Friend: 31.3% (up 1.8%pt.)
Sir: 28.9% (up 0.7%pt.)
Comrade: 20.3% (down 0.4%pt.)
Mx: 18.3% (down 2.0%pt.)
Q3. Pronouns
The top five pronouns (or lack thereof) are:
They - they/them/their/theirs/themself: 76.9% (up 1.1%pt.)
He - he/him/his/his/himself: 39.6% (down 0.9%pt.)
She - she/her/her/hers/herself: 32.9% (down 4.3%pt.)
It - it/it/its/its/itself: 21.1% (down 0.3%pt.)
Avoid pronouns / use name as pronoun: 12.1% (down 0.9%pt.)
Hey! All of your drawings do not need to be completely unique from one another. Do you know how many versions and replicas of his Sunflowers Van Gogh actually did? Just draw that naked guy ten times. Reuse that colour palette. Do that pose again. Follow your heart for real, no one can care as much as you do.
This goes for writing too. Reuse characters, settings, lines, titles, paragraphs. If it feels right there, or you're having fun exploring it, then do it!
A few years ago I saw a broken but cool umbrella on the side of the road. (The Welsh climate kills tens of thousands of umbrellas every month, it's very sad.) Someone had hand-stamped yellow bees onto a black umbrella and it looked badass. I rescued it with the intent to turn it into something cool, and recently I got around to it and succeeded:
It's a super-lightweight, fast-drying, very strong shopping bag. Umbrella fabric is perfect for this. The only part that didn't get used is the very tip of the umbrella, and there was enough fabric for TWO bags.
It was pretty easy and fun, so here I am to show you how I did it.
You will need:
Sewing machine (though you could do it by hand)
Broken umbrella with intact fabric
Stitch ripper, or tiny scissors, or big scissors and good fine motor control
Reel thread and bobbin thread that you think looks nice with the umbrella fabric
Pins
Set square
Tailor's chalk
Wide drawstring band type stuff for handles - about a metre? (Or you can make something from random fabric in your stash.)
Scissors
The chalk and ruler and stuff are pretty optional if you are happy to just eyeball it and hope for the best.
How to do it:
The bag bit
Remove the fabric from the umbrella frame. Take your stitch ripper or scissors and very carefully snip the stitches at the point of each umbrella spoke. You will then find that there is probably another set of stitches around halfway up each spoke, so cut those too. Then cut the fabric around the tip of the umbrella, because it's probably attached very securely.
Then fling the umbrella frame into a bin and never think about it again, or turn it into a cool spider sculpture.
Carefully remove the velcro fastening strap. We will need it later, so keep it all in one piece - use the stitch ripper or tiny scissors.
Cut the umbrella fabric in half. The umbrella will have an even number of segments, probably eight. It's tempting to cut it along a seam, but if it has eight segments it'll work better if you cut it along the middle of the opposite panels, like so:
Fold your semi-circle in half with the seams on the outside (right sides together), like this:
Roll-and-pin and sew the open side - this one:
Trim the bottom off. How much you trim off will depend on how big your starting umbrella is and what shape you want your bag to be, but maybe 10cm or so?
Make a mark about 10cm from the bottom along one of the pre-existing seams.
Use a ruler (or a piece of string or whatever) to measure the distance along the pre-existing seam from the top corner to the mark.
Measure the same distance along the other seam from the other top corner, make another chalk mark.
Draw a line across the whole width of the quarter with the ruler, joining the marks. This should make the chalk line parallel with the top flat edge.
Make another line about 2cm below it, and then cut along the bottom line.
Then roll-and-pin and sew along the remaining chalk line.
Sew the side seams. Mark them on using the set square and the chalk, and then pin them and sew. Make the sides square with the top edge.
These triangles on the sides are going to become inside pockets, so also sew a square line along the bottom. That'll stop tiny things from getting stuck in the point of the triangle.
Sew the top edge of one pocket to the side of the bag. The bag is inside out at this point, so when you sew the pocket to the "outside" (wrong side) it'll end up inside the bag when you turn it right-side-out at the end.
I recommend pins for positioning the pocket. The stitches will show on the outside of the bag, so bear this in mind when choosing your thread. Try and keep everything nice and flat so there's no bunching; the triangle should fold over exactly on the vertical stitches along the side and then the pocket should lay flat against the side of the bag. Be careful to only sew through one side of the bag, and only through the adjacent side of the pocket.
Flip the bag over, and do the same on the other side.
The top left and right corners can be pretty weak because the ends of several seams meet there, so...
Roll the top over outwards and hem. That's wrong-sides-together.
That's the bag part finished!
Handles
Grab your wide drawstring fabric tape stuff. (Or, cut a really long rectangle 6-8cm wide, sew along the long open edge so it makes a tube that is open at both ends, and then turn the whole tube inside out so that the seam is on the inside.)
Choose how long your handles will be. This is a very personal choice. Do you want to carry it on your shoulder, or in your hand?
Or... both, like this Ikea bag??
It can help to pin them onto the bag to get a feel for what it'd be like to hold. Here's what we're approximately going for, with your bag inside out:
Add 3cm to the length of one handle, cut it, and then cut the second to match the length before you sew anything on.
The extra 3cm is because you're going to fold over 1.5cm at each end when you attach it, to stop it unravelling.
Pin one end of one handle. The bag should still be inside out, i.e. the "wrong side" is still facing outwards. First fold 1.5cm at the end of your handle, and then attach it about a third of the way along one side of the bag, on the wrong side. The 1.5cm flap should be tucked underneath itself, between the handle and the bag.
I often have to use two pins to keep the handle really square with the top edge.
Measure how far it is from the side seam, and pin the other end of the handle the same distance from the other side seam, being careful not to twist the tape.
Sew the handle to the bag. Start with a square, remove the pins without lifting the sewing machine foot or breaking the thread, and then sew a cross through the middle of the square. Sew over some stitches you've already done and then reverse over them, to make it really secure.
See how sewing the handle down secures and tightens the loose woven ends of the handle stuff:
Do the same on the other side of the bag with the other handle tape.
Fastening
Turn your bag right-side-out. Lay it flat and then fold it up the way you kind of instinctively want to when you're trying to pack it away really small.
Grab your little velcro fastening strap from earlier and play around to find a good place to put it. The back of the soft side of the velcro will get sewn onto the bag.
Grab your tailor's chalk and draw an arrow where the stitched-down end of the velcro is going to go, with the arrow pointing in the direction that the tape will be lying when you unfold it.
Flatten out your bag again, and pin the back of the soft end of the fastening strap down onto your arrow, with the flappy end lying in the direction of the arrow. Again, you may need to use two pins to keep it square. Make sure you only put the pins through one layer of bag fabric.
Use the same technique as you used with the handles to sew the fastening strap down.
YOU ARE NOW DONE.
Lay it down and roll it up and fasten it a few times and bask in smugness. You earned that dopamine, and you should enjoy it. Fill it with tins to test the strength and marvel at your handiwork.
You can also make a second bag with the other half of umbrella, if you're into that. It will be exactly the same, but without the little velcro fastening strap.
My Parish Plushie today! I have swapped his original Hawaiian shirt for a soft crocheted cotton vest (especially due to the summer heat!), curtesy of my friend @apollo-moonfyre :)
Remember June's DYO Pride event on patreon? The winning cat was finally finished a few weeks ago! Congrats again to Taylsbucko, definitely go and check out their original entry for all the design details ❣️
After the results from the 2022 Gender Census came out (check out @gendercensus), I was itching to isolate and analyse the Oceania results. And this is that! Also, look forward to seeing me post a bunch of the visuals I made. As well as maybe the basic summaries of the data for anyone who would rather that lmao.
Presenting… Oceania Results from the Gender Census 2022!
The ninth annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 13th August 2022.
After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a report summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.
If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, retweet this tweet, boost this Mastodon post, check out this post on Reddit, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks like Facebook. Every share is extremely helpful - it’s what helped us get 44,000 responses last year.
Survey URL: https://survey.gendercensus.com
The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.
Thank you so much!
[ Link to survey ]
Apollo Moonfyre @apollo-moonfyre - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
