life in projects

a collection of knitting, reading, and engineering posts peppered with comics and cute things | twitch.tv/miikarin for game and craft streams

[kosmogrl]

[lunarriviera]

[transfemmbeatrice]

thought of this immediately and was delighted to discover it’s the same op

[archipithecus]

softshell and hardshell books

paperback and hardcover turtles

[pusheen]

[nattousan]

ok so, I approached my local library with a proposal to donate a mural as a way to A: build portfolio/gain practical experience and B: give back to a beloved public institution. The director was very enthusiastic about it and i've been working on it since the beginning of March. Come with me as I endeavor to paint what is in all honesty an excessive amount of birds

I wanted the birds to look like they were actually in the space so first thing after doing the draft was to do a lighting study

after that I covered the walls in letters in lieu of a projector/vr headset bc i have neither of those :) Then i take a picture of the section of wall and superimpose the lineart over top of it so I can pencil in the lines

et voila

and that was a whole week on it's own so next comes the paintin' >:)

[nattousan]

and now, the birds

Birds 1 and 2/14: Red Winged Blackbird, Male and female, Agelaius phoeniceus

[nattousan]

Bird 3/14, American Robin, Turdus migratorius

[nattousan]

hoo boy, ok *out of breath*

GIVE IT UP FOR BIRD NUMBUH 5, THE CANADIAN GOOSE, Branta canadensis!!!!

this guy took me about 4 days to completely finish, all of those freakingk coverts were a bear to render

[nattousan]

speaking of obnoxious coverts:

bird 5/14, Bluejay, Cyanocitta cristata

the friggin stripes almost got me chat, i may not make it

[nattousan]

Madam....

[nattousan]

birds 6 and 7: American Goldfinch, Spinus tristis, male and female

pleasantly simple to paint! next is the flickerrrrr

[nattousan]

*melts into goo*

BIRD NUMBER 8, (yellow shafted) NORTHERN FLICKERRRRR, Colaptes auratus

genuinely made me start questioning my sanity around day 3, it's half the size the of the goose, WHY did it take me 4 days to finish??

nothing but pain and suffering, i'm sure hope the next bird will be much easier and with FAR less barring :)

[nattousan]

in other news, I am losing my mind hairline

[nattousan]

SHE'S DONE!!

Bird number 9: Red-tailed hawk, Buteo jamaicensis

my chains are broken i am FREE. although i did have a great deal of fun with this, the barring on the wings itself took me like four days and i am READY to move on

this was a week and a half of continuous work so please excuse me for getting a little emotional in the bg 🙏

[nattousan]

*does a little jig*

BIRD NUMBER 10!!! The Male Mallard Duck, Anas platyrhynchos

the male and female ones are gonna be posted separately bc they're taking a lot longer lol but yea! super happy i was able to capture the iridescent green of the head, i found metallic green and blue paint at a craft store that really made his head POP. it looks better in person i promise

ALSO!! As this is the 10th one, BIG announcement. The end is in sight!!!!! I plan to finish within the next 3 weeks and there will be a small dedication ceremony/ unveiling happening at the library to commemorate its completion on the 16th of May. If you live in the Western New York region and want to check it out for yourself shoot me a dm!

Also thank you everyone for your kind words and support throughout this whole process, it's been a genuine treat thinking there are potentially thousands of you out there cheering me on while I paint this 🥹

[nattousan]

aaaand another one bites the duck,

we're movin right along with bird numero 11!! The lady Mallard!! Anas platyrhyncos

the 16th is looming in the distance so i'm trying to get thru these as quickly as i can so i can have as much time for the GBH as possible. i still need to do the names next to all of them so i've got about a week and a half to finish everything which is GREAT because i have adhd and nothing gets my ass in gear like a fuckin deadline, let me tell you

[nattousan]

power couple that they are, here's bird number 12 and 13,

the Northern Cardinals, Cardinalis cardinalis

and NOW that they are complete, ITS GO TIME, in the next five days (library's closed for mother's day 😭😭) i need to have the GBH fully rendered, the names of the birds vectored, weeded, masked, applied to the wall, and then painted, plus additional cattails throughout. I may be able to get away with just getting the GBH done in time for the unveiling and then just have the names and cattails added later, but i'm gonna really try to get it all done in time. BUT, i have a plan. Part of why i take so long on these is because i really am just figuring it out as I do it lmao. there have been many a time where i am sitting on top of the ladder googling "how to paint birds" but I think if i take the time tomorro to do all that figuring out how to approach it beforehand, this will go a lot faster. I may also recruit some of my artist friends to help with the placing of the names... hrmm we'll see.

Anyways, shout out to the librarian who tracked down exactly the thing i needed so i could figure out where to place the highlights in my birds eyes, ur the real mvp

[nattousan]

thanks for the reminder, kid

[nattousan]

at long last, we've reached the end...

Bird number 14 out of 14,

The Great blue heron, Ardea herodius

thank you to everyone who reached out or got excited about this project, it genuinely gave me the fuel i needed to keep going. In total, the 480+ total hrs it took me to cover this wall pales in comparison to how long its expected to spend on there, hopefully imparting a sense of beauty and love for the natural world to the next generation and here's hoping i'm only getting started with these.

i'll see y'all soon :')

[miikarin]

finally decided to do something to my poor neglected balcony as it has been empty since I moved in years ago

so on Saturday I bought a chair! it is extremely comfy and I can fully sit in it with my legs crossed on it and it was also on sale so my balcony looked like this

but as I told a friend of mine: woman cannot live on egg chair alone. and so I also went out to get perhaps a table on Sunday along with decorations

and now my balcony corner looks like this

I was so tired yesterday that I didn't actually use the chair other than when I was sitting in it weaving lights and flowers in but I am ready to spend my afternoon reading there

my goal is to spend a bit more time outside and away from my computer so I will try and read here or play games or even craft

in addition, this is not finished yet! I want to do something to decorate my balcony railings and also maybe get a few (fake?) plants and then I also want to start looking into covers for the winter time

[miikarin]

I will also confess there was supposed to be a cushion on here but I got home before I realized I bought a cover that is 20" square and the pillow insert I bought sure was 26" square

[miikarin]

pixel Tentatively Approve? Not Strongly Opposed? Unsure But Game?

she's on the cushion, which took a long time let me tell you

[miikarin]

finally decided to do something to my poor neglected balcony as it has been empty since I moved in years ago

so on Saturday I bought a chair! it is extremely comfy and I can fully sit in it with my legs crossed on it and it was also on sale so my balcony looked like this

but as I told a friend of mine: woman cannot live on egg chair alone. and so I also went out to get perhaps a table on Sunday along with decorations

and now my balcony corner looks like this

I was so tired yesterday that I didn't actually use the chair other than when I was sitting in it weaving lights and flowers in but I am ready to spend my afternoon reading there

my goal is to spend a bit more time outside and away from my computer so I will try and read here or play games or even craft

in addition, this is not finished yet! I want to do something to decorate my balcony railings and also maybe get a few (fake?) plants and then I also want to start looking into covers for the winter time

[miikarin]

I will also confess there was supposed to be a cushion on here but I got home before I realized I bought a cover that is 20" square and the pillow insert I bought sure was 26" square

[miikarin]

finally decided to do something to my poor neglected balcony as it has been empty since I moved in years ago

so on Saturday I bought a chair! it is extremely comfy and I can fully sit in it with my legs crossed on it and it was also on sale so my balcony looked like this

but as I told a friend of mine: woman cannot live on egg chair alone. and so I also went out to get perhaps a table on Sunday along with decorations

and now my balcony corner looks like this

I was so tired yesterday that I didn't actually use the chair other than when I was sitting in it weaving lights and flowers in but I am ready to spend my afternoon reading there

my goal is to spend a bit more time outside and away from my computer so I will try and read here or play games or even craft

in addition, this is not finished yet! I want to do something to decorate my balcony railings and also maybe get a few (fake?) plants and then I also want to start looking into covers for the winter time

[boomer-mythology-destroyer]

[cryptratfromrunescape]

ohhhh dough with filling my beloved

my faves gotta be the pastelito and pan fried perogi :)

[tragedyposting]

Favorite Tamora Pierce series?

Song of the Lioness

The Immortals Quartet

Protector of the Small

Tricksters’ Duology

Provost’s Dog

Circle of Magic

Circle Opens

Circle Reforged

Numair Chronicles

I refuse to play favorites

Idk who that is but for some reason still feel the need to vote

Voting ended onMay 22

[targetedknowledge]

[kevinbparry]

Testing a new mirror trick

[pusheen]

[miikarin]

I'm taking phishing training at work and the narrator reading out "common types of phishing such as email phishing, spear phishing, whaling, smishing, vishing, and quishing" is sending me

[quietwingsinthesky]

its so weird to me that cis people will dislike their name so ardently and yet. not change it. you guys know that’s an option, right. no one can make you keep the shit name your mom gave you. no, not even her.

[penrosesun]

One of my friends in undergrad changed his name because he didn’t want to bear the name of his abusive and absent father. It’s been years since he did it, and he still says that it was the single best decision of his life.

One of my friends in high school changed his named as soon as he turned 18, so that the ethnic name his family gave him was finally the name reflected on all of his paperwork. He told me that he understood why his parents had given him an “English” name, but that he felt that if he needed to assimilate in order to succeed, then that was a type of success that he didn’t want.

When I was on my way home from the courthouse after changing my own name, I got into a conversation with my rideshare driver, who was extremely interested once I told him what I was in court for, and wanted to know how I’d done it, how much it cost, was it difficult, etc. It turned out that his girlfriend had chosen the name “Yo-yo” when she came to the United States, unaware of how rare that was as a name, and that she was frequently made fun of because of it. Neither one of them had realized that a name change was so easy, and he told me he was excited to let her know that she had options.

There was an intern at a summer job I had once, who changed her name to be the same name, but a different spelling. She said that she had no idea why her parents had spelled her name so oddly to begin with, and suspected that it was just an honest mistake either by them or by some nurse, but it had been a headache for her entire life, and it was a huge relief to not need to be correcting people’s spelling on important documents anymore.

One of my exes legally changed his name to have an exclamation point, because he liked to sign his name with an exclamation point.

You can always change your name if you don’t like it. You always have that option. It doesn’t matter why – it can be conformist or anti-assimilationist, serious or silly, a minor change or a major change. Your name is yours, and you have every right to change it to be whatever you want.

[myjetpack]

From my book of science cartoons 'Physics for Cats'. Get it here: www.tomgauld.com

[miikarin]

I just installed these rollerblade wheels on my office chair and one of these days I will push myself away from my desk and end up hitting the wall two meters behind me they're that smooth

also when I took my old wheels off I didn't realize how much hair and stuffing and yarn they had all tangled up in them. no wonder my floor is scuffed.

[miikarin]

I have put it to test and with a light push, I can indeed wheel to the wall behind me, which is actually close to three meters away

[ratatoskrr]

Finished Fancy Jacques sweater! Pattern by Johanna Gehrisch. Yarn is Hobbii Garland

I decided on a XO cable pattern for the hem instead of ribbing, in plain red for the back, in intarsia for the front, both with i-cord edges.

I did modify the pattern slightly, I wanted it less oversized so I did fewer stripes for the shoulders/yoke. Really wish the pattern had included a schematic with dimensions before seaming, otherwise really happy with the design and how mine turned out!

Featuring my knitted and felted blue green slippers! Another recent FO I'm really pleased with.