the resourcefulness of rot, the wholeness of fungi

Call me Lichen, he/they. header quote from "A Psalm For The Wild-Built" 18+

[inatungulates]

European wild pig Sus scrofa scrofa

Observed by tsyld, CC BY-NC

[helenvaughans]

Things don't have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What's the function of a galaxy? I don't know if our life has a purpose and I don't see that it matters. What does matter is that we're a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass.

–Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

[the-merry-otter]

Looking back through my photos, and the anniversary of my first ever SCA event was June 6th. So yay happy 5th anniversary to me, and also I think this makes my SCA persona a Gemini

[the-merry-otter]

How it started (top) vs how it’s going (bottom)

[jbbartram-illu]

Some snapshots of the lichen mugs now that the sunshine has returned! I'm generally happy with these mugs, but these ones are my personal favs :)

[bookshelfdreams]

sowing: I learned how to use a handspindle with a distaff recently (like you see in historical pictures) and it's SO easy, it's literally so easy, I never really got the hang of hand spindles before but this is so easy, the yarn almost spins itself, I could go through this entire 200g braid in 3 days, I could spin enough to make a whole garment!! Bow before me! I am the king and queen of fibre crafting!!!!

reaping: ouch my hand :(

[feralbiologist]

So happy with how this turned out!

[chimaerakitten]

So here’s the thing about the division of “aro” “ace” and “aroace” into three separate identities with three separate flags: it makes no sense to me, personally.

See, I understand the utility of the split-attraction model. I even understand that “romantic attraction” feels like a meaningful category to many people separate from sexual attraction.

But in my personal experience of the world, romance is too much of a construct for “romantic attraction” to make any sense as a coherent thing that I consider myself as having or not having.

And look, everything is a construct, including sexual attraction. But sexual attraction is a construct in the way a brick is a construct; simple, definable, easy to say whether I have it or don’t have it. Romance, on the other hand, is even more obviously entirely culturally defined. It’s a construct in the way a house is a construct. What makes something a house? If I got ten people in a room we could probably cobble together a decent definition of a “brick” that we are all mutually satisfied with, even if it’s not perfect at including all things that are bricks and excluding all things that are not. There might be edge cases but we could do it.

But a house? What defines a house? Is a house that is not currently livable due to damage still a house? What about a house that doesn’t look like an American white picket fence stick built house? Something made of grass or mud or stone. Something for a climate where roofs or walls are a poor choice. What about house boats and RVs?

What defines romance? Is it sex? Non sexual physical intimacy? Emotional connections? Some odd cross sectional grid of the myriad possibilities for human interaction?

Every experience is an edge case when you drill down in it. I have a structure built out of bricks, and there’s a hole in the structure where the brick that is sexual attraction goes for other people. Is the structure a house or not? Could you even tell, without me describing a great deal more about it, its size, its shape? Would you and the person next to you agree, once I did?

And all this means that while I’ll call myself aro and aroace for the purposes of communicating with others, (the size and shape of the brick structure has no bearing on the fact that I do not plan to ever be in a monogamous partnership, and that’s the important thing to convey) the concepts actually have not much real impact on my subjective internality. Being aro or being aroace are not to me separate from my being ace. Or rather they are not to me a reified part of my identity the way being ace is.

So I find it SO WIERD that everyone assumes that they would be. That by default anyone who has an a- identity is going to have a complicated interaction with the split attraction model, that, as @specialagentartemis put it, “the canonical ace is alloromantic and the canonical aro is allosexual, and aroaces are a third thing.”

I recognize it has utility to other people. I like the green aro flag and appreciate having a word to communicate my disinclination to date even if sex weren’t involved. I understand the theory behind the split attraction model. It just doesn’t feel like it applies.

[tri-punisher]

hi. did you know australia has a fairywren species called the superb fairywren

and another species called the splendid fairywren

...and one called the lovely fairywren

[naamahdarling]

They just named these by showing pictures to some elderly woman and noting down her first delighted exclamation.

[aenglaland]

The Yarn Market in Dunster, Somerset. Since 1222, the town of Dunster was a busy centre for the production and trade of wool and cloth. In 1590, the Market was constructed to shelter traders and their wares from the rain. One of the roof beams has a hole in it, a result of cannon fire from the English Civil War

[lichen-bones]

scribbling the heron 🌿

[mikeybooch]

I feel like by now we've all seen the medieval marginalia of nuns diligently picking phalluses from a tree. These illustrations were drawn by 14th century artist Jeanne de Montbaston who worked alongside her husband Richard. To the best of my knowledge, there is no clear reason for the inclusion of these illustrations, but perhaps there was some contextual evidence that was lost to time.

In any case, I decided to illustrate these industrious ladies in my own style amidst a flurry of medieval inspired phallic references and symbols of virility and fecundity. By my estimation, there are about 130 phalluses in this picture.

Available to purchase on INPRNT

[persianpenname]

okay okay okay, so, I'm working on some yarn, right? chain plying

and I forget what I was thinking about but SUDDENLY brain goes 'hey what if another bobbin?'

and at first I was like 'pfft, no, that wouldn't work' but then I thought about it a bit more and

CHAIN PLIED 4 PLY YARN

CHAIN PLIED SELF STRIPING YARN

I'm really kicking myself right now for not having brought some emergency roving with me, but as soon as I get home and have access to more colors I'm going to try this!

[persianpenname]

@orangespicecake DO IT DO IT DO IT

[orangespicecake]

well it certainly does the thing

lessons learned so far:

doing this directly on the wheel is a nightmare task (and probably would get you more variegation than self striping)

if you're going to do a chain ply ball from across the room don't be lazy and just use the lazy kate pins

i'm going to take a break to eat breakfast + walk dog + collect myself after that harrowing experience but when i come back i will be continuing the chain ply ball and using my stoner engineered tensioned lazy kate

[orangespicecake]

on a roll (if it doesn't have a name already, might I suggest switchback chainply)(it is wordy but it also sounds cool)

[orangespicecake]

all done! about 206 yds and 154 grams

notes:

there's both yarn that i did with shorter stripes (chain ply ball from across the room) and longer stripes (chain ply ball from the kitchen table, through the kitchen and into the hallway beyond). the second one is with a measurement that i got from a ball of self striping yarn in my stash

personally i find it interesting how with normal chain plying there's less color mixing with short loops and more mixing with longer loops, but with the nature of using two solid/tonal singles in different colors it's the opposite

the knit swatch uses both yarn from the end of the long stripe skein (bottom) and from that early attempt at chain plying directly at the wheel (top, but there's not much)

the woven swatch turned out with a lot more color mixing even though it uses the long stripes because my pin loom does half the warp/weft at a time, so there's actually alternating between colors more (unsure if if this is how other pin looms work)

[henk-heijmans]

Herdwick sheep, crossing the beck - by James Rebanks (1974), English

[scribefindegil]

I know we need to cut down on craft supplies before we move but in my defense the textile thrift store had four yards of beautiful chicken-patterned batik fabric and I'm weak

[scribefindegil]

The irresistible chickens . . . I think I will turn them into a sundress

[scribefindegil]

Success!!

[canadianbakinblr]

It's been ages since I posted something I made. Mostly because it's been ages since I made something. Have the latest off my loom!

From the depths of my stash, I present Lion Brand's Shawl in a Ball, in Wind Chimes. Woven in a 7.5 heddle on my 24" Ashford Rigid Heddle loom. Final measurements were 72" long and 20" wide.

[interspadias]

Honestly the internet becomes a lot less anger-inducing and a lot more generally depressing when you approach batshit out-of-left-field seemingly bad faith takes, not with assuming the person behind them is some intrinsic evil failing to be "correctly enlightened" - but a hurt person, projecting their hurt in the only way they know how to do in the modern online culture of oversharing, overgeneralizing and needing everything to be poignantly tied to some flavor of "activism."

There's so many bloggers I see that when you look between the lines of their discourse, when you try extra hard to put yourself into whatever nonsense they must've been told or forced to endure to make them think that way, it becomes obvious they're desperate to find something to cling to. Someone to hold responsible for their pain and find their power in tearing someone else down. Someone who they can expect to say "sorry I did this to you" instead of the intangible institutional powers that dignify their abuse with accusations and excuses.

So today regardless of stances, of opinions, of discourse and drama - whoever you are, out there reading this - you didn't deserve the harm put upon you. You didn't deserve to be isolated, to be abused, to be strung up on a stage and expected to dance for a jeering audience.

I hope for a day we can all come together and accept whatever differences we may have and celebrate them instead of existing in a digital realm that demands we perpetually be at each other's throats in the name of justice that may never come.

We all deserve better.

[stitchposts]

thoughts on giving embroidery/art as gifts? im always wondering if people are actually gonna appreciate it enough

at the end of the day you need to, as a maker, reconcile that you're giving a Thing and not a manifestation rendered physical of the hours you spent on a single person. even if thats what it feels like. If you can't, then hey, you know gifting embroidery isnt for you.