craftknife

[craftknife]

Love my Master and Commander, but make it dragons!

One thing I love about the Temeraire series is that by the time I found it, it was COMPLETED. Today in the year of our lord, 2025. Finished. ✅

There’s no baiting and social media frenzies to amp up or ‘find’ the ending. No side books before finishing the series. No profiteering, not really. It’s just a classic banger, done up in a bow, sitting on the shelf waiting to be read and reread.

No ambiguity, no waiting. There are nine perfectly complete books just sitting on the table. They are filled with love, companionship, friendship, and liberty. It is an abolitionist, anti-colonial alternative history of Dragons in the Gunpowder Wars.

*Chef’s kiss*

The Mobius Strip is complete. We are whole and we are content.

[craftknife]

hadestown orpheus and eurydice are so. she loves her cringefail husband. he looks like a 16 year old boy at his first prom. he plays wonderwall for her so good it solves climate change. she's a runaway from everywhere she's ever been and just wants him to take her home. he unionizes amazon. they are everything.

[craftknife]

Parenting lesson #17 from the Whyborne and Griffin series: if you're racist or homophobic about your future son in law you can fuck right off and out of the story, but if you merely attempt to sacrifice him to an eldritch god you can definitely come back from that one ❤️

[craftknife]

Sewing Machines & Planned Obsolescence

I've got these two sewing machines, made about 100 years apart. An old treadle machine from around 1920-1930, that I pulled out of the trash on a rainy day, and a new Brother sewing machine from around 2020.

I've always known planned obsolescence was a thing, but I never knew just how insidious it was till I started looking at these two side by side.

I wasn't feeling hopeful at first that I'd actually be able to fix the old one, I found it in the trash at 2 am in a thunderstorm. It was rusty, dusty, soggy, squeaky, missing parts, and 100 years old.

How do you even find specialized parts 100 years later? Well, easily, it turns out. The manufacturers at the time didn't just make parts backwards compatible to be consistent across the years, but also interchangeable across brands! Imagine that today, being able to grab a part from an old iPhone to fix your Android.

Anyway, 6 months into having them both, I can confidently say that my busted up trash machine is far better than my new one, or any consumer-grade sewing machine on the market.

Old Machine Guts

The old machine? Can sew through a pile of leather thicker than my fingers like it's nothing. (it's actually terrifying and I treat it like a power tool - I'll never sew drunk on that thing because I'm genuinely afraid it'd sew through a finger!) At high speeds, it's well balanced and doesn't shake. The parts are all metal, attached by standard flathead screws, designed to be simple and strong, and easily reachable behind large access doors. The tools I need to work on it? A screwdriver and oil. Lost my screwdriver? That's OK, a knife works too.

New Machine Guts

The new machine's skipping stitches now that the plastic parts are starting to wear out. It's always throwing software errors, and it damn near shakes itself apart at top speed. Look at it's innards - I could barely fit a boriscope camera that's about as thick as spaghetti in there let alone my fingers. Very little is attached with standard screws.

And it's infuriating. I'm an engineer - there's no damn reason to make high-wear parts out of plastic. Or put them in places they can't be reached to replace. There's no reason to make your mechanism so unbalanced it's reaching the point of failure before reaching it's own design speed. (Oh yeah there is, it's corporate greed)

100 years, and your standard home sewing machine has gone from a beast of a machine that can be pulled out of the literal waterlogged trash and repaired - to a machine that eats itself if you sew anything but delicate fast-fashion fabrics that are also designed to fall apart in a few years.

Looking for something modern built to the standard that was set 100 years ago? I'd be looking at industrial machines that are going for thousands of dollars... Used on craigslist. I don't even want to know what they'd cost new.

We have the technology and knowledge to manufacture "old" sewing machines still. Hell, even better, sewing machines with the mechanical design quality of the old ones, but with more modern features. It would be so easy - at a technical level to start building things well again. Hell, it's easier to fabricate something sturdy than engineer something to fail at just the right time. (I have half a mind to see if any of my meche friends with machine shops want to help me fabricate an actually good modern machine lol)

We need to push for right-to-repair laws, and legislation against planned obsolescence. Because it's honestly shocking how corporate greed has downright sabotaged good design. They're selling us utter shit, and expecting us to come back for more every financial quarter? I'm over it.

[craftknife]

Ancient coins depicting the labyrinth from Knossos, Crete. Greek myths said that the rulers of Knossos built a labyrinth, at the center of which was a formidable minotaur. The stories tell of an Athenian hero, Theseus, who braved the maze and took on the monster.

{WHF} {Ko-Fi} {Medium}

[craftknife]

Percy petting that tiny forest animal tho...

Annabeth’s got a plan. Percy’s on it. When it’s time, he’s gonna be ready. I know it.

[craftknife]

Annabeth: I, a child, had to earn Thalia’s love, that’s how the world works! I have to earn my moms love. Love is transactional, you gotta be worthy of it first silly :)

Percy, listening to this on the train

[craftknife]

how are they gonna adequately prepare whatever child they cast for nico di angelo. it has got to be impossible for someone that young to give informed consent about playing the saddest wettest loser in all of human history. like hey kid i know youre sprightly and all of ten, but we need you to be in all five stages of grief at all times. remember, your mother was killed in fascist italy, youre eighty years old, and now youre in love with the guy who killed your sister. say this next line like you know what it's like to be an ear of corn.

[craftknife]

god the mad scientist trope is so trans. the lone figure- partaking in the act of creation, the innovation of body and flesh, seen as monstrous and unnatural by wider society. rejecting societal rules and embracing radical science- the creation becoming the creator. transforming what once was to something so other, and it is magnificent. it is so horrible, it is so beautiful, it is me.

[craftknife]

A collection of omens from the prairies 🤞🌾🌾

[craftknife]

Now I know what movie to watch on Thanksgiving night!

Addams Family Values

[craftknife]

FINALLY a ballet that I would watch the snot out of!

The Australian Ballet is doing Alice in Wonderland again and on one hand I’ve seen it before, and on the other, their Queen of Hearts has my favourite costume in anything every

[craftknife]

Just... like... WHAT?!?

[craftknife]

One of my favorite things about Miss Marple is that, since her books are standalone, Monster of the Week-type adventures, Miss Marple fanfic is... pretty much just writing another Miss Marple mystery.

Miss Marple

Art by...

1) Brent

2) Eenara

3) Rebecca Sampson

4) Al Hirschfeld

5) Andre Paploo

6) Fan Tom

7) Peter Oedekoven

8) Robert Schulz

9) Robert Schulz

10) St. Mary Mead

[craftknife]

William Shakespeare and Arthur Conan Doyle are captains of unnecessarily contrived shenanigans.

whoops

[craftknife]

I feel very called out by this

A trope i am absolutely here for

[craftknife]

Venom is terrible and I love him.