It Was A Dark And Stormy Night…

Call me Stormy. She/her. Amateur costumer and writer, Victorian goth, doll collector, weaver, and lover of historical clothing

[darkandstormydolls]

Choices are being regretted

[darkandstormydolls]

When the project calls for a vair lining and also you have no fear of hand sewing or god

[darkandstormydolls]

Choices are being regretted

[darkandstormydolls]

Choices are being regretted

[darkandstormydolls]

Continuing with the recent theme, I made some doll-sized shields! I had a cereal box on hand and wanted to play around with some of the heraldry from Lighthouse (without, y’know, making another eight big cardboard human-shields)

These five are the arms of John and his childhood friends at the beginning of the story (Wren doesn’t have arms, so he is not included). Per tradition, the girls should have theirs in lozenges, but I had already cut out shields so I worked with those (plus, the system of heraldry in my world is slightly different from the real world one, both historic and modern). For the most part, this follows the rules of this world that anyone can bear their father’s (and in some cases, their mother’s) arms. From the top left is: John (undifferenced Collymar arm. Yes I know it looks wonky, painting two inch badgers is hard), Keshan (the undifferenced family arms are just the blue with the white stripe, and it’s what his grandfather, uncle, and some of his cousins bear. His father added the white crescents [I have a system of cadency in this world, although it is not quite the same or as rigid in the real world ones]. Again, these are his arms at the start of the story: this may change later, as I am considering adding a plot bit of him differencing his arms as part of him basically becoming his own person), Nikol (most oldest sons in this world don’t adopt cadency marks, but the exception generally stands for royal families, since no one except for the reigning monarch should bear the arms of the crown in their entirety. Because of this, back when he’s still the crown prince, there’s a red chief added to the top of his arms), Sorrel (these are just her father’s arms; various branches of the family bear variations of these arms, witj and without the shells and in various colors. Her father, being a wizard, never had a need to use or really have arms, so his are undifferenced from her grandfather’s despite him being the third child; the star was inherited from her grandfather’s differencing of arms), and Viktoria (which is the same as the crown arms; having it in a lozenge instead of a shield is considered enough difference, since their mother had it on a shield by virtue of being the reigning queen)

The dolphin is the arms of Nikol and Viktoria’s father’s family. Under normal conventions, they would bear this (with his appropriate cadency mark, which I am realizing as I type this that I should have added) quartered with their mother’s arms (since she’s a heraldic heiress and also because in my world’s system of cadency, sometimes arms are also quartered if someone’s mother greatly outranks their father), but again, rules get bent for royalty; since they were in the direct line of succession and also because their father was a foreigner and they were not in direct line to inherit anything from his family, they just have their mother’s arms. Nevertheless, this does make an appearance, mostly in the form of Nikol’s dolphin ring

The one on the top/left is the Hallermill arms, and therefore Lucia’s arms originally, and the second one is her impaled arms after her wedding

And this one was just for fun: the arms that I designed for myself

Next up: add ribbons to the back so my dolls can carry their shields!

[darkandstormydolls]

Armed and ready (now if only they could bend their elbows…)

[nobrashfestivity]

Unknown, more illustrations from the late 1800s of Japanese fireworks bursting into life. Taken from catalogues published by the British company CR Brock and Co

Photographs: courtesy of Yokohama City Central library

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

i get so freaked out by like. pictures of really big rope

[clintwaffle]

I’d like to say that’s normal but I’m a frayed knot

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

i’m so fucking annoyed at this, just for that you don’t get photos of the rope

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

i changed my mind, this is just too horrifying not to share

it’s called a Hawser and is the thick cable or rope used for towing/mooring a ship

in conclusion, i have nightmares beyond description

[arithmeticanimaniac]

NO it would NOT be cool

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

well i fucken disagree

[goeswiththeflo]

@scumrunner do you have any cursed facts about hawsers to share ?

As a fiber nerd, i am personally very enthusiastic about them….

[scumrunner]

Ohhohohoho DO I EVER. Meet the “snapback zone,” not an area with cool hats, but instead the unintuitive range at which a hawser can kill you if it breaks under tension.

[cloud-and-proud]

What if we kissed in the snap-back zone? 😳 😳 😳

[talus-the-broken]

I don’t think you guys understand how much force this is, a tow rope used to move a 20 foot boat snaps under tension with enough force to dent metal, shatter glass and seriously injure anyone in its way. A Hawser on the other hand… Well I’ve seen a concrete pier with a chuck the size of a sedan ripped out of it by a line failure, and anecdotally, I’ve heard of a 2 ton heavy cargo forklift being skidded sideways, then knocked over. These lines snap with enough force to noticably dent the hull armor of navy ships.

This is a line designed to hold in place a moving object that can be easily in excess of 10000 tons. AND THEY CAN BREAK FROM THAT TENSION ALONE.

THESE THINGS ARE TERRIFYING RUBBER BANDS FROM HELL.

[butch-of-the-blades]

Nope Rope

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

NOPE ROPE

[jeremy-ken-anderson]

I’m once again reminded of its much smaller cousin, the haywire.

You’ve heard of the term, “Going haywire,” right? Ever spared a thought to why that term exists?

See, time was there was a prototype automatic hay-baler. But this was in that magic period juuust before we really got into standardized sizes. So calibration of the machine was handled manually - a mix of guessing and learning from the results of guessing. If you’ve read Raising Steam by Sir Terry Pratchett you know that many people don’t get to learn from the results of their own guesses, due to being dead.

A poorly calibrated hay-baler had the mechanical strength to smush the hay into a tight bundle, wrap the wire around it, and tie that wire off to maintain the bale’s form. But the pressure of the over-packed hay was a constant outward force. Each bale made by an over-tight baler was potential energy in physical form. We have a word for “potential energy in physical form” and that word is “bomb.”

So sometimes, a man would toss a hay bale and it would land with a twang and the man who’d been reaching down to pick it up where it landed was dead.

And that is what “haywire” means.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

oh nice. i knew hay bales occasionally spontaneously combust, didn’t know they used to have an explosion factor too

[marlynnofmany]

I am learning multiple things today

Normally I’d expect wet plant matter to be less likely to go up in flames, but not hay bales! Those pesky bacteria really like to party in damp conditions. And by party I mean “create heat.”

[clove-pinks]

Portrait of a Seated Man with Large Bow Tie.

Daguerreotype made 1854 by unknown photographer, American.

[cuties-in-codices]

genealogical peacock (displaying coats of arms of members of the hainhofer family of augsburg)

double-page miniature from a heraldic manuscript (stammens-beschreibung des hainhoferischen geschlechts), augsburg, 1626

source: Augsburg, SuStB, 2 Cod Aug 14, fol. 5v-6r

[darkandstormydolls]

Was moving a very heavy table today (probably not actually that heavy but you know I don’t carry a lot of heavy things) and was having a #notgoodtime and my mom commented “looks like you need a strapping young man to help you” and so I became even more bound and determined to move this table by myself to prove a point I guess but in conclusion I did kind of want a strapping young man to do it for me. But also I can and did do it myself. So. Feminism

[meiosys]

really happy with how this sweet babe turned out :-)

[aeide]

test weaving of penelope's tapestry on the chiusi skyphos:

reference:

there are some adjustments I need to make for tension, but I'd like to make the next version into a header band for a warp-weighted loom so I can try weaving the whole pot, including telemachus and penelope.

[aeide]

progress?

the proportions on the header band have improved, but I think I maybe should have doubled the weft threads for the warp.

also if anyone wants to knit the heddles for me, please be my guest. the last time I tied on heddles, I put the bar in the wrong place and had to redo the whole thing.

[aeide]

in true penelope fashion, I may need to unweave and start over, but at least now I've got the loom weights and heddles in place.

I started weaving the spear, penelope, and the right border via double-weave with the intent to leave the remaining warp threads unwoven (as they would be on penelope's loom on the pot), but predictably this is giving me tension problems. I either need to increase the loom weights or just weave the black layer and leave the orange warp threads unwoven, and then switch colors once I get to the heddle bars in the drawing, with the black warp threads floating on top. (I guess weft-faced tapestry would be a third option, if I add a ton more tension.)

either way, this is going to take me the full three years of penelope's stratagem, or perhaps the entire twenty years of odysseus's absence, primarily because clearing the sheds takes a monumental effort each time with this double-weave setup (which I'm not even sure is how it's supposed to be done, I kind of set it up based on vibes and what I thought made sense from floor loom setups).

[aeide]

I have 999 problems and warp tension is 997 of them (the other two are my selvedges).

[darkandstormydolls]

Continuing with the recent theme, I made some doll-sized shields! I had a cereal box on hand and wanted to play around with some of the heraldry from Lighthouse (without, y’know, making another eight big cardboard human-shields)

These five are the arms of John and his childhood friends at the beginning of the story (Wren doesn’t have arms, so he is not included). Per tradition, the girls should have theirs in lozenges, but I had already cut out shields so I worked with those (plus, the system of heraldry in my world is slightly different from the real world one, both historic and modern). For the most part, this follows the rules of this world that anyone can bear their father’s (and in some cases, their mother’s) arms. From the top left is: John (undifferenced Collymar arm. Yes I know it looks wonky, painting two inch badgers is hard), Keshan (the undifferenced family arms are just the blue with the white stripe, and it’s what his grandfather, uncle, and some of his cousins bear. His father added the white crescents [I have a system of cadency in this world, although it is not quite the same or as rigid in the real world ones]. Again, these are his arms at the start of the story: this may change later, as I am considering adding a plot bit of him differencing his arms as part of him basically becoming his own person), Nikol (most oldest sons in this world don’t adopt cadency marks, but the exception generally stands for royal families, since no one except for the reigning monarch should bear the arms of the crown in their entirety. Because of this, back when he’s still the crown prince, there’s a red chief added to the top of his arms), Sorrel (these are just her father’s arms; various branches of the family bear variations of these arms, witj and without the shells and in various colors. Her father, being a wizard, never had a need to use or really have arms, so his are undifferenced from her grandfather’s despite him being the third child; the star was inherited from her grandfather’s differencing of arms), and Viktoria (which is the same as the crown arms; having it in a lozenge instead of a shield is considered enough difference, since their mother had it on a shield by virtue of being the reigning queen)

The dolphin is the arms of Nikol and Viktoria’s father’s family. Under normal conventions, they would bear this (with his appropriate cadency mark, which I am realizing as I type this that I should have added) quartered with their mother’s arms (since she’s a heraldic heiress and also because in my world’s system of cadency, sometimes arms are also quartered if someone’s mother greatly outranks their father), but again, rules get bent for royalty; since they were in the direct line of succession and also because their father was a foreigner and they were not in direct line to inherit anything from his family, they just have their mother’s arms. Nevertheless, this does make an appearance, mostly in the form of Nikol’s dolphin ring

The one on the top/left is the Hallermill arms, and therefore Lucia’s arms originally, and the second one is her impaled arms after her wedding

And this one was just for fun: the arms that I designed for myself

Next up: add ribbons to the back so my dolls can carry their shields!

[darkandstormydolls]

Oh my god

Lucia is Jolene

[darkandstormydolls]

Okay so

(While I can of course go on a long tangent about how the song Jolene is misinterpreted and is not about a homewrecker but about a woman’s self-consciousness but that is neither here nor there at the moment)

I am going with specifically the “Caroline” interpretation here

But I heard the song today and I was idly considering character design and then I realized

Not only does Lucia actually sound quite like Jolene description wise (flaming locks of auburn eyes, ivory skin, and eyes of emerald green) but she fits the same role in the story (at least, from Keshan’s point of view

She comes in and takes away the person that he loves, and he feels hopeless to do anything about it. She doesn’t know, and the one that he loves now has turned to someone else

His life has been torn apart by this woman, but even then, he can’t quite hate her. In fact, there are many things that he admires about he, and he knows why Nikol chose her, but he can’t help the fact that she has taken something fundemental from him

[claracedar]

it is funny to hear that wikipedia is apparently losing site visits to AI because let me tell you wikipedia is not losing site visits from me I am all up in that bitch 24/7 I am reading her down like an enemy I am on wikipedia like white on rice

[amazoogle]

i know every phone number

[sidequestsofacomposer]

do you know who they all belong to?

[amazoogle]

everyone that has phones

[woodrider]

what's mine

[amazoogle]

hole in the ground for extracting minerals

[serious-tabaxi]

can you tell me what my phone number is?

[amazoogle]

i can basically do whatever i want

[byjove]

One of the funniest things about Mormonism is that I’m sure Joseph Smith never believed any of the bullshit he said. There are some religions and cults where you have faith the original prophet actually thought they were talking to angels or believed the set of principles they laid out for their followers were for the greater good. Joseph Smith was a dumbass but like PT Barnum he realized a sucker was born every day and he was one step above the average 1830s sucker. He went from making people pay him to look at a rock in a top hat and ‘locate buried treasure’ to receiving lost bits of scripture, through the rock and top hat method. His wife caught him cheating and he said an angel visited him and told him men should be allowed multiple wives and not obeying that would send her to hell. I’m fairly convinced that dude was an atheist. He was on that hustler grindset. Brigham Young might have actually believed some of the shit he said but I don’t think Joseph Smith genuinely had faith in Mormonism or gave a fuck about humanity in the slightest.

[byjove]

Few people hustle and scam so hard that they’re considered a martyr and a prophet 200 years later and their fanfiction is considered serious lost biblical scripture even though they stole lines from Shakespeare.

[darkandstormydolls]