#flowersnteacups

[copperbadge]

Things I learned on Duolingo : the bear is taking bribes.

This would be even funnier in Italian, where I'm given to understand bribery is a contact sport :D But that's hilarious. Oh, my lovely bisexual polyamorous Jewish beekeeping bear.

For the holidays, Duolingo has released several stuffed versions of their characters including Falstaff, and also blind boxes of figurines; I don't really want a plush Falstaff but I'd like a figurine, and the problem is that all the figurines are of Duo the Owl and also FIFTEEN DOLLARS for a BLIND BOX seems like a lot. But someday I will have a tiny Falstaff figurine to keep on my desk. I might have to sculpt one in CAD and 3-D print it.

[ID: A screengrab of Falstaff, the bear from Duolingo, speaking German; the translation beneath reads "Buy me an ice cream first, then you can sit in the front."]

[seedstitches]

I read about your UnFinished Object Challenge and want to ask: Does having cross stitch projects in several stages of planning or several stages of progress count for the UFO Challenge? Or needing to frame a finished cross stitch?

Those sound like fiber arts projects to me, so yeah they count!

And I don't think they need to be framed to be finished, cause frames can be expensive and sometimes that's not an option for a while after the work itself is done. <3

I wanna see, i wanna seeeee, tell me everything!

[shitpostsampler]

Hi! Concerning '0 days since our last nonsense': Oooh! Could you give me a T and M so I can change your Glaring Error pattern to 'my last nonsence'? Or could you adapt the Error pattern to make a pattern for this tag?

Here’s the font used. If you’d like to purchase the book it’s from, it is in The Ultimate Cross Stitch Alphabet Book . Hope that helps you modify it! 

[unexpectedyarns]

I am so sorry to hear that your Sooty Onyx died!

Thank you.  He had never been an outdoor cat, but the day we got the new kittens, my daughter was also down with her female pit (who is very rambunctious and was excited even more by babies - which she licked until their fur was spiky), so the house was FULL of people and pets.  I think he got overwhelmed, and darted out the door when nobody was looking.  We called and called him but couldn’t find him.

Wolf and I left in the truck for Winnipeg the next morning, but our eldest son was housesitting, and continued to try to find the cat to no avail.  When we got back, Wolf found him in the flowerbed.  He had been out 8 days.  We brought him in and fed him.  The cat seemed to have sore left rear paw but I told the kids to leave him alone a day or two to heal.   Two days later, we found him lying on the bathroom floor, barely breathing and unresponsive.  We rushed him to the nearest vet hospital, where the vet said he was in critical condition.

See Onyx was a HUGE cat, over 4′ long stretched out, and weighed 17 pounds.  When we got him to the vet, he only weighed 13.5 pounds.  The vet said there was no telling if he got exposed to toxins that caused liver trauma (it is after all, fertilizer season), but that the rapid weight loss from having to forage caused lipidosis, which further clogs the liver, reducing appetite and causing a vicious cycle.  Because the damage was all internal, we had no way of knowing.

Our 18yos who is Aspberger’s had helped me take the cat to the vet, who died there before we were done talking to the vet.  It was very traumatic for him.  And this was just 2 weeks after we’d had to have the black and white pit Tyrian put down for cancer, which was heartbreaking to say the least.  April was a bad month for pets at our house, and very sad for us.

[copperbadge]

Dear Sam, kindly ask Dearborn to show her pretty, sharp teeth so that February finally ends, please! I need the Mighty Vanquisher of February

Trying to make Dearborn do anything on command is asking to be disdained (see fig. 1) but take heart, we did survive February! It's over whether Dearborn shames me for my impertinence or not!

Fig. 1:

[ID: A photograph of Dearborn the tortie, sitting on the Most Coveted Blanket on the back of the sofa; she is facing away from me very pointedly, showing me her furry butt, utterly offended by my very existence. (This was actually taken last night while she was punishing me for going out to an evening event instead of our regularly schedule Evening Couch Cuddles.) ]

[copperbadge]

Today I came home at noon from a short trip, cold, wet and grumpy because it's snowing, but temperature just above freezing point. When I got in I stopped for a minute and looked around the hallway and into the kitchen. There is a change! Hallway looks much better than one month ago and the kitchen, too! There's lots of free floor! So no matter what I'll manage today or tomorrow, NaClYoHo has been a great help in leveling down the mess in these two areas

Oh yay, I'm so glad! Yeah, sometimes you don't notice just what a difference it makes until you're out of the house for a bit, and for some people that isn't happening very often these days. The first time I scrubbed down my bathroom sink in my old apartment, it went basically from yellow-grey to white, and every time I walked into the bathroom for a week I was shocked by it.

My condo, I must say, looks cleaner in parts, but overall still doesn't look "tidy", and that's okay. I know the changes I've made, and some of the tidiness will come in time, but also just...whether or not it looks better, if it feels good, that matters too.

It's tough for people with ADHD to envision the future (also tough for people with aphantasia, it turns out) but for me, I've done this enough to know that while I can't necessarily see HOW what I've done will help me months from now, there will be moments in 2024 where I stop and think, "Hey, thanks, Past Sam, that really helped." The hardest thing is to do something you don't want to do when you also can't imagine how it will benefit you, so it's important to really mark those moments where you do see benefit, remember them and try to keep them with you. The work we do matters even when we can't measure exactly how.

[copperbadge]

flowersnteacups replied to your photo “@hellenhighwater remarked the other day that once her new adopted baby...”

How do you squoosh a cat?

Well, in my case, Polk comes and stands with her front paws on my thigh, and I put my hand on her shoulders and pat her so hard that her legs fold under her and she settles down to lie on my lap. Usually it takes 2-3 strong pets for her to stay there, but then she settles right down and stops yelling at me to pay her more attention. :D 

drivemetogeek replied to your post “Still at work on the Ozyverse; I’m carving out time daily to either...”

Lovely scene! Are you open to (amateur!) glassblower nitpicks or would you prefer not?

I am, though bearing in mind I know some of what’s there is either unlikely or impossible -- a lot of it is to give an air of wonder and magic. But sure, lay it on me. (I’m pretty sure the Prince Rupert’s Drops are usually done from like, a few inches above the water rather than 30 feet, but the height adds drama :D ) 

[unexpectedyarns]

flowersnteacups

replied to your photoset

“How am I doing on my replace-the-lost $3grand goal?  [See story here]...”

I would really like to see the socks or anything else knitted with the yarn from picture 4 and 5!

ok, I knitted a very small swatch, but counted the number of stitches of each color through 2 repeats to be sure I had the counts correct.  Then I went to the Planned/Intentional pooling calculator.  Somehow I ended up without the 68 stitch count for Babelfish.  

The actual pooling a knitter gets will depend on the needle size and tension used, also the number of stitches. Also keep in mind that the calculator is very rigid, it doesn’t have the fluidity of knitted stitches or the subtle variations of hand dyed yarns.  I knitted the swatches on  Clover/Takumi 2.25mm bamboo needles.

Babel Fish in 64 stitches in the round and 72 stitches in the round:

Trillian in the round at 64 stitches, 68 stitches, and 72 stitches.  It will have tiny random flecks of black (not shown in the pooling calculator)

These and other gorgeous hand dyed yarns available in my Etsy shop, now at 10% off,