Tired, perverted, and obsessed with textile art

23 sweden him

[cedarwool]

being an everything crafter is great but also sucks. like i want to get my watercolors out but i need to put away my microcrochet first. i want to do some leatherwork but my oil paints are on the table. i want to whittle but i'm using the bucket i catch wood shavings in to hold my papermaking mush. i want to write my book but my hands are too busy knitting a sweater. i want to code another video game but i'm too busy studying nalebinding. do you see my problem. the problem is that i need more hands

[oakapples]

Coats of some British and Icelandic sheep breeds:

Greyface Dartmoor; Cheviot; Icelandic; Beulah; Cotswold; Welsh Mountain; Suffolk; Southdown; and British Milksheep.

[headspace-hotel]

There is a lot of information out there about weaving, crocheting and knitting, but relatively little about spinning.

Which is a shame, since spinning is really where the "resource provided by the earth" tangibly becomes "object with a use."

Aspects of spinning, such as the amount of twist and the length of the fibers, are impactful upon the thread or yarn created, but lots of fiber crafters don't get to directly play with those variables...

It is so strange how textile production is so utterly dominated by very few fibers, when so many are possible. Industry keeps coming up with new ways to transform bamboo or something into fibers, which is all well and good, but we have yet to run out of easily usable natural fibers that have worked for thousands of years.

Dogbane—Apocyonum cannabinum—was called "Indian hemp" because it was used by Native Americans for ropes, cords and textiles. It's incredibly strong, soft, and easy to collect large amounts of it. But hardly anybody uses it.

[bookwyrmbran]

As far as yarn construction (twist, fiber staple, ply, draw, etc) goes, may I recommend the Spinner's Book of Yarn Designs (Sarah Anderson) and Yarnitecture (Jillian Moreno)? @dirtypuzzle mentioned SpinOff and Fibershed in the comments and those are great magazines and ways to find local groups as well. I've read some great articles on prepping and spinning flax, hemp, cotton, and silk on there in addition to the more popular fleece/fur/hair fibers.

For those especially I can't over-recommend the Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook or the Field Guide to Fleece (Deborah Robson and Carol Ekarius.) An awful lot of excellent fiber breeds and species are now unknown, under-used, and in danger of going extinct; Shave 'Em to Save 'Em and the Livestock Conservancy in general are good resources for finding local people working with those. There's a chiengora (dog wool) group on Ravelry that's great, too, and lots of easily searchable info on raising silkworms at home and spinning from hankies.

There really is a dearth of information easily available on most plant fibers, I too would love to see more of it for like... almost everything, really. At a guess, most potentials get ignored at an institutional level because they're a pain to grow and process in bulk, which in turn means there's little if any data on how they stand up to modern washing and drying and detergents. Bast fibers tend to be a pain to prep as an interested individual (and often smelly!) and can be hard on the hands while spinning, especially those with extra long fibers. Even so a lot of people would spin old/new/ignored plants if they didn't have to process raw plant into spinnable fiber. I suspect that and not knowing which plants might be good options are the biggest obstacles to at least hobbyist experimentation.

[lleyksie]

moles + worms + shrew

[squid-socks]

This is a hard thing to hear but i genuinely say it with care and best wishes:

Keep using your brain and trying that hard thing no matter how foggy. Feel stupid! It's ok! I promise you are not stupid. I promise your brain will appreciate it. And that with time it will be valuable that you tried.

It's so easy to lose a whole week to brain fog. But your brain and body don't just stop existing that week (though it can feel that way). It's so important to try to incorporate puzzles anyway. Cook a meal from a scratch, do a jigsaw, the wordle, sudoku, use your other hand, learn a new card game, watch a brand new show, do simple math equations, write words backwards, learn a new language (or even just random phrases from a few), play a podcast, read a fun article or magazine, try a new creative project. Something! To help you feel better longer and keep your brains synapses synapsing.

Find a way to push yourself into it. Ask a friend to do it with you, set a timer, build it into your routine, have a bunch of fun games on your phone, puzzles by the bed, set your google to open straight to wordle.

TO CLARIFY: neuroplasticity is magic. And CONTRARY to prior belief it does not just stop after like 25. The brain can recover in exceptional ways so if you feel behind, or feel like you lost so much of what you knew due to a deep spell of illness or depression or injury; it's never too late. Never too late to nuture your brain to a better state of health.

So have a glass of water, take a deep breath and please join me in feeling really stupid trying to finish a "simple" puzzle and know we are all doing a very good job. ❤️

[technofeudalism]

Declassified CIA Guide to Sabotaging Fascism Is Suddenly Viral

The World War II-era "Simple Sabotage Field Manual" is full of steps that office workers can take to resist leadership.

A declassified World War II-era government guide to “simple sabotage” is currently one of the most popular open source books on the internet. The book, called “Simple Sabotage Field Manual,” was declassified in 2008 by the CIA and “describes ways to train normal people to be purposefully annoying telephone operators, dysfunctional train conductors, befuddling middle managers, blundering factory workers, unruly movie theater patrons, and so on. In other words, teaching people to do their jobs badly.”  Over the last week, the guide has surged to become the 5th-most-accessed book on Project Gutenberg, an open source repository of free and public domain ebooks. It is also the fifth most popular ebook on the site over the last 30 days, having been accessed nearly 60,000 times over the last month (just behind Romeo and Juliet). 

Link to the Guide at Project Gutenberg can be found here

A Wikisource entry can be found here.

Mirrors can be found here, here, here, here and here.

[breelandwalker]

Gosh it would be a shame if this got even MORE visibility.

Whoops my cursor slipped.

[kilncreatures]

forest dogy

[peacozy]

Locked in? No. Im tucked in. Goodnight

[yaoiblackmold]

Top 3 things people love insisting they don't have despite it being impossible

Pronouns

An accent

Bias

[finalset]

anhedonia

[vampirebeverage]

psa

no one fucking tells you this so here it is:

when signing out forms to apply for disability / filling out a form for diagnosis

you’re supposed to fill it out as you on your worst days

like, I filled out forms that said I could do most things usually

like, my doctor added in the conditions like “yeah, they can feed themselves when not stressed” “they can do this when not stressed”

but how I should have filled it out was more like

“some days I can’t feed myself” “some days I can’t leave the house”

My doctor didn’t even know this, but I talked to someone who had worked with people with both developmental and intellectual disabilities for a number of years, and she told me to write down how it is for your bad days

this should be a thing they tell you, but it isn’t

part of the reason I didn’t get my autism diagnosis as soon as I should have is because I filled out forms wrong!

[reservoircat]

This also goes for filling out forms for disabled parking rights. I’ve been rejected multiple times for a pass cause I didn’t find this out till recently.

[deducecanoe-deactivated20161213]

Wow

[myceliorum]

Also you’re generally supposed to fill it out as you are without help.

That throws me too.  Because the more help I get, the more capable I get.  It’s easy to forget what happens when the help falls away even partially let alone completely.

[lavenderr-starrs]

What do you mean the my melody and kuromi Netflix series featured a town cannbilizing their king infront of his son

[sealsdaily]

Today's Seals Are: Smack The Baby

[justsewwhat]

[secretchordstyx]

me when im reading a good book, and it’s a good book, and i love a good book

[icaseybaybee]

[maryoliveoil]

Gonna chill out the rest of May and then change my entire life in June. Possibly July if that doesn't work out. Certainly no later than September or October.