#Creative budget weddings

[shubhvibez]

Budget-Friendly Wedding Planner in Ahmedabad

Shubh Vibez

1115, 11th Floor, A Block, Titanium Heights, Corporate Rd, Prahlad Nagar, Ahmedabad, Gujarat 380015

094267 36109

At Shubhvibez, we pride ourselves on being the best budget-friendly wedding event planner in Ahmedabad, as well as in Delhi, Surat, Noida, & Gurgaon. Our mission is to make your wedding day both beautiful and budget-conscious. We take a personalized approach to wedding planning, working collaboratively with you to understand your preferences and financial goals. Our team offers innovative ideas and cost-effective solutions, ensuring that every element of your celebration is executed flawlessly. As your budget-friendly wedding event planner, we handle everything from venue selection and decor to day-of coordination, allowing you to enjoy every moment of your special day without worry. Trust Shubhvibez to bring your vision to life while respecting your budget.

[miquella-dalzell-1988]

budget friendly rustic wedding backdrop ideas

[brick-wigmore-1975]

diy buckets wedding drink station for backyard weddings

[cepheustarot]

What awaits you in January?

Attention! This reading is for entertainment purposes only. This tarot reading does not give a 100% guarantee that all the described situations will occur or being ultimate truth. You build your own life and destiny and only you know yourself best.

Paid readings

Pick a pile. Choose one or more pictures. Trust your intuition.

Pile 1: The first half of the month will be wonderful for you, in general you will have a good mood and no sudden mood swings, this month you will have a good opportunity to start something new, change something in your life, change of scenery. It is also very likely that you will receive an expensive gift from someone, you can get a bonus at work or you will improve your academic performance and you will pass all important tests for good grades, in general success will be waiting for you. Further, in the middle of the month you will be invited to some event, it may be a wedding or someone’s birthday (maybe yours) or any other holiday. This event will be very good for you, you will get many positive emotions and pleasant memories, it will be a very fun event. At the end of the month you will feel a breakdown, maybe the whole month you will have a busy event and it will wear you out, you will get tired, so it will be very important at the end of the month to give yourself a rest and clear  your head. You may also have unforeseen circumstances that you were not prepared for, so be careful! 

Pile 2: At the beginning of the month you will be successful in career/studies, you can be promoted or transferred to a larger firm, in general there will be positive changes. As for study, you will learn a lot and try, because your work will pay off and you will have good grades. Also at the beginning of the month there will be the possibility to engage in self-development or something creative, maybe you will also teach and train someone, will be in the role of a mentor. At the beginning of the month you will also have good unexpected news! In the middle of the month you will continue to maintain your energy and productivity, there will be events that are not related to work or school: you may have many meetings with people, friends or you will receive invitations to the party, Take part in organizing activities and etc. You can also do dance or any other sport, any other active activity. The end of the month will be stable for you, but here it will be best to pay attention to your budget, you should start saving money to feel safe in unforeseen situations. 

Pile 3: The beginning of the month will be busy, you will feel like a real workaholic, the days will be productive for you. It is important to keep in mind that success depends on you and how much you put in to achieve it. In addition, for you here will be a topical painstaking activity, requiring increased attention to detail. In the middle of the month you will be successful, you will come much closer to achieving your goals and plans, you can also go on a trip in mid-January or start traveling. In general, everything will be related to movement, maybe you buy a new transport or get a driver’s license. So the end of the month will be energetic for you and you will be in good spirits, maybe you will often go to parties, dates, meet people and spend time with them, or maybe you will try yourself as a host or participate, try acting, maybe take acting classes. Here in any case you will be in the center of attention, you will develop your charisma. 

Thank you for reading! I will be glad of any feedback 🖤

[skogjeger]

Candles' Colours & Associations ❁ཻུ۪۪ ━ 

‧₊˚.  : · •.  * • ˚   . · * ✶   : · •  *   ˚ ✵

Candle magic, often referred to as "magick" (a common alternate spelling), offers an accessible and budget-friendly approach to spiritual practices. For centuries, people have incorporated candle rituals into their spiritual routines, making it an integral part of diverse traditions. Candles play a versatile role in various occasions like weddings, birthdays, spells, honouring deities and numerous other celebrations and rituals.

𖤣𖥧˚ Candle Colour Associations

Each candle colour is associated with distinct energies, intentions, and vibrations. Understanding these associations is essential for crafting meaningful candle rituals. Candles add rather than subtract to your spells, although candles aren't always necessary and you can use any candle and associate your own meanings for them, but here are some common candle colour associations:

White: Purity, spirituality, banishing, cleansing, unveiling, healing, truth, balance, innocence, clarity, peace, new beginnings, and illumination. It represents divine light and is often used for cleansing and invoking spiritual protection.

Red: Passion, love, courage, fire, lust, anger, revenge, sex, power, survival, change, action, assertiveness, and strength. Red candles are employed for matters of the heart, to enhance energy, and ignite motivation.

Orange: Success, enthusiasm, curiosity, change, opportunities, simulation, courage, and attraction. Orange candles are used to stimulate creativity and bring positive energy into endeavors.

Yellow: Creativity, joy, motivation, positivity, relieving negativity, energy, happiness, and clarity. Yellow candles can enhance mental clarity, increase focus, and bring a sense of joy and optimism.

Green: Growth, abundance, fertility, wealth, nature, naivety, healing, and prosperity. Green candles are used for attracting financial well-being and promoting healing and renewal.

Blue: Peace, healing, recollection, psychic growth, justice, study, mental blocks, guidance, calm, honesty, harmony, intuition, and communication. Blue candles aid in deepening meditation, enhancing psychic abilities, and fostering emotional balance.

Purple: Spirituality, wisdom, divination, and higher consciousness. Purple candles are associated with spiritual awakening and seeking inner wisdom.

Pink: Love (self-love), friendship, nurturing, and harmony. Pink candles are often used in rituals focused on self-love, compassion, and nurturing relationships.

Grey: Transmutation, patience, mediating, neutralizing, balance, stability, study, calm, balance, developing psychic abilities, and wisdom. Grey candles are useful when contemplating complex issues and can neutralize negative influences.

Brown: Wisdom, grounding, tenacity, perseverance, stability, rooted, security, woods, family, animals, pets, earth, material items, practicality, rediscovery, reconnection, and balance. Brown candles serve a dual purpose: safeguarding pets and family members, as well as facilitating reconnection with friends and loved ones.

Black: Protection, banishing, endings, absorbing, safety, binding, exorcism, release, death, healing, loss, and releasing negativity. Black candles are used for purification and breaking negative patterns. Some people will also use black candles for revenge spells (white too) or breaking hexes.

𖤣𖥧˚ Metallic Candle Colour Associations

Gold: Abundance, wealth, spiritual illumination, success, good fortune, happiness, ambition, luck, and the sun. Gold candles are used to invoke prosperity, celebrate achievements, and attract positive energies.

Silver: Intuition, self-reflection, perception, awareness, defend, send-back energy, protection, and emotional balance. Silver candles are employed for enhancing psychic abilities, connecting with lunar energies, and invoking the divine feminine.

Copper: Healing, vitality, emotions, autumn, new ideas, relaxation, combining, coming together, and energy balancing. Copper candles are utilized to promote physical healing, boost energy levels, and restore equilibrium.

Bronze: Grounding, strength, autumn, foundation, and courage. Bronze candles are associated with stability, courage, and protection during challenging times.

Final ❁ཻུ۪۪ ━

‧₊˚.  : · •.  * • ˚   . · * ✶   : · •  *   ˚ ✵

Feel free to reach out to me if you're interested in exploring different candle colours or their associations. You can send me a message directly, drop a note in my inbox, or share your thoughts in the comments, and I'll be happy to expand on the topic!

[cocogum]

I really wish Ankama could just change Amalia's one-piece suit already cuz it's been more than a season now and she's still wearing one outfit.

Give my girl some kind of flashy or pretty outfit now that she's queen, don't just recycle her old outfit and add a cape to it in the manga! You finally have a way to change her design without the budget being in the way SO DO IT.

I don't care if you give her something that we've never seen her wear before, in fact, it would actually be a great breath of fresh air seeing her wearing anything that doesn't stick to her skin like that.

I get that she's supposed to be a royal and all, but she's still a sadida, so seeing her wear LAYERS OF OUTFIT TO THE POINT WHERE WE CAN'T EVEN SEE HER KNEES is really weird to me.

Like, I wouldn't mind if we saw her wear that outfit in one season, but if she's wearing the same thing for over two seasons, we're gonna have a problem.

There's no way Amalia, a fashionista and a shopaholic, still keeps wearing the same shit that she was wearing before she was queen. AND ON HER FREAKING WEDDING TOO ‼️‼️‼️‼️ It still bothered me that she wore her one-piece at her wedding like girl what are you doing? You're the type who LOVES wearing extravagances, especially when it's YOUR TIME TO SHINE.

Now that the animation budget isn't in your way, make her wear a leafy dress in the manga or a more refined version of her mother's dress, at least! You can even give her an improved version of her season 1 outfit and make her wear it whenever she's taking a break from her queen responsibilities and you can also show us some cute sleep dresses she could wear while sle-

....

What.

Emancipation??? Freedom of her feminity???

Tf do u mean by that.

LITERALLY WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THAT ⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️

Are they implying we're never going to see Amalia show any more feminine traits????? Why!?!?!?!?

THERE ARE SO MANY REASONS WHY THIS EXPLANATION DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE.

For one, as I mentioned above, Amalia is the fashionista type and LOVES shopping. So much so, that she was even willing to fight off a shop owner in Bonta despite not having a single kama on her.

Two, she still loves to party, as said by Yugo in the Great Wave manga, so she would still have habits of shopping and trying out new outfits, which are, you know, FEMININE TRAITS ‼️‼️

Cathiane, what happened while you were drawing volume 1? Did Tot force you to keep her tomboyish bland outfit with Armand's cape? Who has you at gun point???

ANKAMA LET MY GIRL BE FEMININE AND SHOW HER SOME SKIN FOR CRYING OUT LOUD ‼️‼️

WHERE'S HER FASHION SENSE AT ⁉️⁉️⁉️

Taking out her feminity by claiming that it is "the emancipation of her feminity" doesn't make any sense because SHE'S NOT THE TYPE TO DO THAT.

I initially believed that the reason why she chose to wear this outfit in season 3 was because she wasn't in the right space of mind and did not feel like herself when her father was slowly dying and her brother was getting manipulated by a chicken.

But now that she's happier and feeling much better with Yugo, the only thing that she changed about her outfit was THE FUCKING LEAF'S COLOR IN THE FRONT.

This is criminal. It's literally illegal to be this bad towards her. Where's her creativity? Where's her feminity? She can still be feminine AND be a boss-ass bitch at the same time.

You can still show her maturity without feeling the need to make her wear pants.

Ankama, stop playing with my head. I need to see her wear anything else than that damned one-piece suit at least once. I don't care what the new outfit will look like, but seeing her semi-naked in volume 1 doesn't count.

[eyecan02]

Tim Burton and Warner Bros at the Potential BJ3 Meeting Probably

Warner Bros: -steeples hands together- The numbers for BJ2 have been insane so it's led us to the obvious conclusion that we need BJ3. We are prepared to offer you 1,000,000,000,000 for BJ3 for you to immediately start working on in early 2025. What do you say, Tim?

Tim: -staring disinterestedly at his fingernails- I don't know...there's one less zero in that paycheck than what I'm used to.

Warner Bros: We understand you want to work on Attack of the 50 Foot Woman so if you do BJ3 we'll give you whatever budget you ask and we can start preproduction for that film immediately after BJ3.

Tim: -cleans his glasses with the CEO's tie- I don't know, man...

Warner Bros CEO: We'll let you add in as many old collaborators as you want for the film. Johnny, Helena whoever you want. We'll do whatever you want.

Tim: Whatever I want? Your chair looks cozier than me. Up up.

Warner Bros CEO: -immediately gets up and offers Tim his chair. Scoots the chair in for Tim as soon as he sits down- Comfy?

Tim: -put his feet on the table and crosses them at the ankle and crosses his arms behind his head- Very.

Warner Bros CEO: So what can we do to convince you to make BJ3?

Tim: Two things. I need total creative control and a good script.

-Winona and Michael in the air vents above the meeting room-

Michael: I don't think this is the way to the lounge, Winona. I thought we were getting coffee.

Winona: Shush! I'm trying to hear better!

Warner Bros CEO: Now what does full creative rights entail exactly?

Tim: Beetlejuice is a character very dear to my heart so he needs a proper ending and Winona wants Lydia and Beetlejuice to have their wedding and for them to end up together and I think it's a good idea.

Warner Bros CEO: Well, it IS popular online. Especially with dark romance lovers on Booktok so maybe if someone can write a believable way for Lydia to fall for BJ then maybe.

Tim: -raises a judgey brow- You're on Booktok?

Warner Bros CEO: Not important. So yes to BJ3?

Tim: Send me the best scripts you got and I'll strongly consider it.

-they hear a voice shout "Yes!" From above them-

Tim: Winona, are you listening through the air vents again?!

Winona:..No.

[thatsonemorbidcorvid]

“Forced marriage — in which one or both parties do not give full, free consent — is recognized globally as a form of modern slavery. My story is far from unique: Around the world, 22 million people were in a forced marriage as of 2021.

Yet, even though the United States acknowledges that forced marriage is a human rights abuse, few laws and policies are in place to prevent or punish it, and the nation has paid such scant attention to this issue that we do not even know how often forced marriage happens here. 

What’s more, child marriage remains legal in most U.S. states, even though it is recognized as a form of forced marriage and a human rights abuse. Some 300,000 children were married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2018, mostly girls wed to adult men. At least 60,000 marriages occurred at an age or with a spousal age difference that should have been considered a sex crime.”

Note: The following essay contains descriptions of sexual assault and abuse.

They sent me off to be raped, with a party and a tube of K-Y Jelly.

The lubricant was to reduce the intense physical pain they explained I would endure while being penetrated by a stranger-turned-husband, without foreplay, without consent. Every month. Until death do us part.

The party — a low-budget wedding in 1995 at a Brooklyn venue aptly nicknamed Armpit Terrace — was to distract me from the horrific reality of my forced marriage to the stranger.

“Mazel tov!” they told me, beaming.

In the reclusive Orthodox Jewish community in New York City where I grew up, choices about whether, when and whom I would marry did not belong to me. At home and at the all-girls religious school I attended, where I learned to cook and sew and keep house, I was groomed from early childhood to expect a teen marriage to a stranger my family and a matchmaker would choose for me.

I was allowed to meet the stranger several times before my engagement, but I was not allowed to be alone with him nor to have any physical contact with him. I was a clueless 19-year-old who had never been allowed to “talk to a boy,” and suddenly I was given a matter of hours, over a period of a few weeks, to answer my family and his family and the matchmaker and everyone in the community standing there, tapping their feet, looking at their watches, waiting for me to tell them: You’ll marry this man we chose for you, right?

“No” was never really an option.

During my six-week engagement, I still was not allowed to be alone with the groom nor to have any physical contact with him, which left more time for me to begin experiencing the myriad other abuses that come with a forced marriage.

First, a virginity exam. The groom’s rabbi sent me to an Orthodox Jewish gynecologist, where I was instructed to disrobe, get on the examination table and put my feet in the stirrups. The doctor inserted her gloved fingers into my vagina and confirmed that my hymen was intact.

“Mazel tov!” she told me, beaming.

I attended one-on-one bridal classes, where the curriculum centered on the requirement that I have unprotected sex with my husband on my wedding night and on a monthly basis thereafter. A lifetime of rape.

Yes, the rapes probably would hurt, the bridal class teacher explained. Hence the K-Y Jelly.

“Mazel tov!” she told me, beaming.

My stranger-turned-husband turned out to be violent and abusive. I learned this exactly one week after our wedding, when he became enraged because he had woken up late, and he punched his fist through the wall — hard enough to leave a sizable hole. 

His first threat to kill me came only days later. Soon these threats became more frequent, specific and gruesome. He was brimming with creative ideas for how he would end my life, and he took the time to describe them to me in vivid detail. A lifetime of fear.

Yet I was trapped.

My forced marital sex was carefully timed each month for when I was ovulating. The reason for this was obvious: My first child was born 11 months after my wedding, and soon I had a second child.

I love my daughters, but I did not consent to having them. A lifetime of forced parenthood.

This denial of sexual and reproductive rights was not the only shackle preventing me from leaving my marriage. My husband did not allow me to have my own bank account or credit card, and I was taught that, under Orthodox Jewish law, if my husband allowed me to work, any money I earned belonged to him. A lifetime of domestic servitude and financial dependence.

I had limited legal rights too. Under Orthodox Jewish law, only a man can grant a divorce. I, as a woman, did not have the legal right to end my own marriage. A lifetime of being locked in unwanted wedlock.

One escape route for me would have been to move back in with my family as an agunah, a “chained woman” who is bound to a husband who refuses her a divorce. The life of an agunah is brutal; she is shamed for her powerlessness, blamed for her failed marriage and treated as an outcast. 

But even this dreadful escape route was closed to me, because my family refused to take me back in. A lifetime of betrayal.

So I remained trapped in my abusive forced marriage. In accordance with Orthodox Jewish law, I was considered “unclean” every time I menstruated. While I was “unclean,” I was prohibited from having physical contact with my husband, sleeping in the same bed as him, handing him anything or undressing or singing in front of him. A lifetime of shame.

Once my period ended, I needed to count seven “clean” days without any menstrual blood, during which time the rules against physical contact continued. To make sure I stayed “clean” for the full seven days, I was required to wear white panties and, twice a day, to insert a white cloth into my vagina, swish it around and inspect it in sunlight to make sure it did not have blood spots. If I found questionable marks on my panties and could not tell whether they were blood, the rabbi would inspect them and give his pronouncement.

And the rabbi would keep my panties. A lifetime of extreme patriarchy.

Each month, after the seven “clean” days, I was forced to strip naked in front of an attendant who watched me immerse in a mikvah, or a ritual bath of rainwater, which frequently left me with a yeast infection and always left me shaking uncontrollably. A lifetime of violation. 

All I wanted, every time I left the mikvah, was to take a hot shower and scrub the violation off me. That was prohibited. Instead I was required to go home and have nonconsensual sex with the man who had spent the day describing to me in graphic detail how he was going to murder me. The man who would not let me close the door when I used the bathroom, because “what was I hiding from him in there?”

No matter. I had to get on the bed and spread my legs and forget what had happened to me at the mikvah and ignore the pain while I waited for him to finish, and I had to remind myself how lucky I was that he usually was done after only three or four thrusts. A lifetime straight out of Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

Forced marriage — in which one or both parties do not give full, free consent — is recognized globally as a form of modern slavery. My story is far from unique: Around the world, 22 million people were in a forced marriage as of 2021.

Yet, even though the United States acknowledges that forced marriage is a human rights abuse, few laws and policies are in place to prevent or punish it, and the nation has paid such scant attention to this issue that we do not even know how often forced marriage happens here. 

What’s more, child marriage remains legal in most U.S. states, even though it is recognized as a form of forced marriage and a human rights abuse. Some 300,000 children were married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2018, mostly girls wed to adult men. At least 60,000 marriages occurred at an age or with a spousal age difference that should have been considered a sex crime.

My husband would regularly search through my personal belongings in front of me, including in the pockets of the clothing in my closet and in my bag of tampons under the bathroom sink. A lifetime of subjugation. When I finally realized at age 27 that I was the only person who would help me leave my abusive forced marriage alive and I decided I would secretly save up cash for my escape, I found the only safe hiding place in the house: a box of Whole Grain Total in the pantry.

I saved more than $40,000 in that cereal box over the next five years.

During those years I also defied my community and did something no one in my family had ever done: I became a college student. My husband forbade me from attending classes. I informed him, calmly, that nothing he did to me would stop me from getting my education.

And I did something no one I knew had ever done: I threw out the limp, ugly wig I was required to wear as a married woman to cover my own thick, healthy hair. I walked outside with my uncovered head held high — the equivalent, in that community, of walking outside naked.

My family retaliated immediately by shunning me. One of my sisters notified me that my family was planning to sit shiva — or observe the Jewish mourning ritual for me — as if I had literally died. I have had almost no contact with my family since that day. A lifetime of being dead.

But I graduated from Rutgers University (as commencement speaker, the equivalent of valedictorian) at age 32, and I escaped my abusive forced marriage on my own, with my daughters and my box of Total. I fled the Orthodox Jewish community too, and I rebuilt my life.

In 2011 I founded a nonprofit organization, Unchained At Last, to combat forced and child marriage in the U.S. through direct services and systems change.

The U.S. is one of 193 countries that agree forced and child marriage are harmful practices, particularly for women and girls, and have promised to eliminate these abuses by year 2030 to help achieve gender equality, under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Yet the U.S. is not on track to keep its promise. 

I refuse to accept this. Not after I escaped my lifetime of oppression.

We at Unchained are fighting back by providing crucial wraparound services to a long-ignored population: those who are fleeing an existing or impending forced marriage in the U.S. To date we have provided legal and social services, always for free, to nearly 1,000 individuals, to help give them a lifetime of dignity, safety and hope.

We also started a national movement to end child marriage. In the last few years, our groundbreaking research and relentless advocacy have allowed us to help change the law in 10 U.S. states to ban child marriage — a stunning victory for the 7.5 million girls who live in those 10 states — and we are working on the other 40.

A lifetime of preventing other lifetimes of rape.

“Mazel tov!” I now tell myself, beaming, with each triumphant step closer to ending forced and child marriage in the U.S.

Fraidy Reiss is a forced marriage survivor turned activist. She is the founder and executive director of Unchained At Last, a survivor-led nonprofit organization working to end forced and child marriage in the U.S. through direct services and systems change. Fraidy’s research and writing on forced and child marriage have been published extensively, making her one of the nation’s foremost experts on these abuses. She has been featured in books (including as one of the titular women in Hillary and Chelsea Clinton’s “The Book of Gutsy Women”), films and countless television, radio and print news stories.

Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website.

Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Hollywood is the single best example of mature labor power in America

This afternoon (May 6), I’ll be in Berkeley at the Bay Area Bookfest for a 3:30PM event with Glynn Washington for my book Red Team Blues; tomorrow (May 7), it’s an 11AM event with Wendy Liu for my book Chokepoint Capitalism.

Weds (May 10), I’m in Vancouver for a keynote at the Open Source Summit and a book event at Heritage Hall and Thu (May 11), I’m in Calgary for Wordfest.

The Writers Guild is on strike. Hollywood is closed for business. The union’s bargaining documents reveal a cartel of studios that refused to negotiate on a single position. This could go on for a long-ass time:

https://www.wga.org/uploadedfiles/members/member_info/contract-2023/WGA_proposals.pdf

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/06/people-are-not-disposable/#union-strong

The writers are up for it. A lot of people are saying this is the first writers’ strike since 2007/8, but that’s not quite right. That was the last time the writers went on strike against the studios, but in 2019, the writers struck against their own talent agents — within the space of a week, all 7,000 writers in Hollywood fired their agents. They struck against the agencies for 22 months.

https://deadline.com/2023/04/hollywood-strike-writers-guild-studios-talent-agencies-1235333516/

The agencies had consolidated down to four major firms, two backed by private equity who loaded them up with debt that could only be repaid if the agencies figured out how to vastly increase their profits. They did so, by unilaterally switching the way they did business with their clients. Instead of taking a 10% commission on the creative wages they bargained for, the agencies started to take “packaging fees” from the studios for putting together a writer, director, stars, etc. These fees came out of the same budget that the talent got paid from, so the higher the fee was, the less the talent made. Soon, some showrunners were discovering that they were getting 10% and their agents were getting 90%!

The agencies weren’t done, either: they were building their own studios, and planning to negotiate with themselves on behalf of their clients. The writers said fuck this shit. They issued a code of conduct ordering the agencies to knock all that shit off. The agencies swore they’d never do it. Why should they? Every job these writers had ever done came through an agency, and the agencies were staffed with the toughest, most obnoxious negotiators on the planet.

They were sure the writers would cave. After all, the top tier of writers had been handled with kid gloves by the agencies and not ripped off to the same extent as their jobbing, workaday peers. They’d break solidarity and the union would collapse, right?

Wrong. Twenty-two months later, every one of the agencies caved on every single point. Bam. Union strong.

(Want to learn more? Check out Chokepoint Capitalism, Rebecca Giblin’s and my book about creative labor markets:)

http://chokepointcapitalism.com

Now the writers are back on strike and it’s triggered a predictable torrent of anti-worker nonsense (“striking writers will lead to public indifference to torture!) (no, really) (ugh):

https://www.readtpa.com/p/on-the-tv-writers-strike-dont-fall

One common theme in these bad takes is that writers aren’t real workers, like, you know, coal miners or Starbucks baristas. They’re coddled intellectuals, and haven’t the intelligentsia been indifferent to proletarian struggle since, you know, time immemorial?

This is wrong in every conceivable way. For starters, it’s ahistorical. Lord Byron and innumerable other toffs and poets and such were right there with the Luddites, demanding labor justice during the Industrial Revolution, as Brian Merchant writes in his outstanding, forthcoming history of the Luddites, Blood in the Machine:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/20/love-the-machine/#hate-the-factory

But you don’t have to look back to the stocking frame to find this kind of solidarity. As Hamilton Nolan writes in his newsletter, “Hollywood is the single best example of mature labor power in America”:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/the-coral-reef-of-humanity-encircling

The entire Hollywood workforce, from grips to carpenters, costumers to plumbers, teamsters to medics, is unionized. That includes writers and actors (I’m a member of IATSE Local 839, AKA The Animation Guild). I live in Burbank, the entertainment industry’s company town (fun fact! The “Hollywood” studios are largely over the city line, in Burbank). Walk down Burbank Boulevard, Magnolia Boulevard, or any of the other major roads, and you’ll pass many union halls.

Burbank is a prosperous place. That’s thanks, in part, to the studios, whose entertainment products are very profitable. But working in a profitable industry is not, in and of itself, a guarantee that you will get a share of those profits. Some of the most profitable industries in the world — e-commerce, fast food, logistics — have the lowest paid workforces.

Burbank is prosperous because the unions made sure that everyone — the grips, the costumers, the animators, the actors, the writers, the teamsters and the pipefitters — gets a decent wage, decent health care and a decent retirement. My pal the set-dresser who worked crazy hours shlepping furniture around sitcom sets for decades? All that work did bad stuff to his joints, which meant that he needed a hip replacement in his forties — which was 100% covered, including his sick leave while he recovered. He was able to take early retirement in his late fifties, with a solid pension, with his health in excellent shape and many years of happiness with his partner stretching before him.

That’s what unions get you: a good job that might be hard at times, and the costs of your work are borne by the employer who profits from your labor. As Nolan writes, the point of unions is to “make sure that people! Are! Not! Disposable!”

Unions deliver the American dream. As Pete Seeger sang in “Talking Union Blues”:

Now, if you want higher wages let me tell you what to do You got to talk to the workers in the shop with you You got to build you a union, got to make it strong But if you all stick together, boys, it won’t be long You get shorter hours, better working conditions Vacations with pay. Take your kids to the seashore

http://www.protestsonglyrics.net/Labor_Union_Songs/Talking-Union.phtml

We tend to focus on wages in union discussions, but unions aren’t merely about getting better pay, it’s about making better jobs. When LA teachers went out on strike in 2019, wages weren’t at the top of their list — they bargained for greenspace for every school, replacing rotting portables with permanent buildings, ending ICE entrapment of parents at the school gates, social workers and counselors for schools…and wages.

I really like how Nolan puts this. The way that the studios make money has changed: streaming is clobbering ad-supported TV and movie theater tickets. The studios are adapting. The workers want to adapt, too. The studios would rather “treat[] their work force as a disposable natural resource to be mined, used up, and then abandoned, as business dictates.”

A union gives workers “the same ability to adapt to changing industries that companies already have.” The studios want to leave workers behind. Unions give workers the collective power to say, “No. You’re taking us with you.”

Union workers are wealthier than their non-union counterparts, but that’s not just because of higher wages. As Nolan writes, “Unions make sure that the people get to adapt to changing industries, and not just the investors and the business owners.”

[Union workers] have a far greater ability to build coherent, long-term careers, as opposed to a constant treadmill of unstable short-term gigs. In non-union industries, businesses can just act like ships cutting through a desperate sea of workers, scooping up whoever they want and then tossing them overboard as soon as it’s convenient. In a union industry, though, the companies are forced to deal with the labor force as an equal. The workers have their own damn boat.

Advocates for market capitalism insist that market forces increase prosperity for everyone. They say that, in the end, having corporations serve their shareholders results in corporations serving everyone.

But a comparison of unionized and nonunionized industries reveals the hollowness of that prospect. Hollywood is wildly profitable and it pays every kind of worker well. That’s because workers have solidarity across sectors and trades. Striking writers like jonrog1 are calling on supporters to donate to the Entertainment Community Fund:

https://twitter.com/jonrog1/status/1654168529728307204

The Entertainment Community Fund supports everyone else who is affected by the work-stoppage, all the other creative and craft trades whose work has been halted by the writers’ struggle. If you want to support these workers, make sure you select “Film and TV” from the drop-down menu when you donate (we gave $100):

https://entertainmentcommunity.org/

Because all the workers are in this together. As Adam Conover explains in this amazing CNN clip, David Zazlav, the head of CNN parent-company Warner-Discovery, made a quarter of a billion dollars last year, enough to pay all the demands of all the writers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL-YwKO81go

And Carol Lombardini, spokesvillain for the studio cartel AMPTP, told the press that “”Writers are lucky to have term employment.” As John Rogers says, she “wiped out the doubt of every writer who wasn’t sure this negotiation really IS so important, that it actually IS about turning us into gig workers.”

https://twitter.com/jonrog1/status/1654506611086606336

The stakes in this strike are the same as the stakes in every strike: will workers get a fair share of the value their labor creates, or will that value be piled up in the vaults of $250,000,000/year CEOs? It’s not like the studios especially hate writers — like all corporations, they hate all their workers. The same tactics that they’re using to make it so writers can’t pay the rent today will be turned on every other kind of Hollywood worker tomorrow — and when the writers win this one, they’ll support those workers, too.

There’s a lot of concern about AI displacing creative labor, but the only entity that can take away a writer’s wage is a human being, an executive at a studio. As has been the case since the time of the Luddites, the issue isn’t what the machine does, it’s who it does it for and who it does it to.

After all, as Charlie Stross points out, a corporation is just a “Slow AI,” remorselessly paperclip-maximizing its way through the lives and joy of the flesh-and-blood people who constitute its inconvenient gut-flora:

https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9270-dude_you_broke_the_future#video&t=3478

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Berkeley, Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

[Image ID: Animators walk the picket-line during the Disney Animator's Strike in 1941.]

Image: LA Times https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Screen_Cartoonist%27s_Guild_strike_at_Disney.jpg

CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en

[bullet-prooflove]

headcanons 12. Grudges and vendettas (yes. yes this is just me giving you a reason to talk about how much natalie pisses him you off)

I feel like this could go on forever with Jimmy because he does not suffer fools, esp ones that fuck about with his wife.

Grudges:

Natalie – hates the fact she can’t do her job without getting overly emotionally involved often to the detriment of others. Is super pissed off when she tries to drag others into her drama, eg: Anita over Children’s Services queries, Will over the medical trial, Crockett over her feelings for Will, Jeff Clarke over her dead hubby.

Will – previous grudge – close friends now. – Absolutely hated his maverick attitude, felt like Will’s sole purpose was to make his life harder in the ED until… Those news rules got imposed preventing them from treating people who needed it, it really pissed Jimmy off that they couldn’t help people because of a financial factor. He really enjoyed Will’s creative application to the problem, also the way he handled the Matt scandal. It made him realise Will actually had the good of the patients at heart and it was more about doing what’s best for them than ego.

Anita’s mentor Danny,- if that man comes into the ED, he absolutely refuses to be the one treating him.

Social services in general for the way they treated his wife, basically using her up and spitting her out. For him it’s very much an example of how the system is completely broken.

The coffee guy from the café down the street who put his phone number on Anita’s coffee cup despite seeing the wedding ring. Jimmy will not leave a tip for this joker and will give him the most complicated order imaginable just to see him stress.

CFO of Chicago Med – He hates this guy, esp after the scrubs thing. He likes things run efficiently and that guy really fucked a lot of things up for them in terms of the supply chain and treating patients, to Jimmy that’s unacceptable. If they ever end up on the same elevator, Jimmy’s reminding him of the importance of patient care.

Connor Rhodes – mutual respect now – but at first he was pissed because Connor kept using the hybrid OR for shit it wasn’t meant to be used for and it was running up costs in the ED that Jimmy had to explain or make deficits for in the budget. When he very forcefully explained this to Connor who hadn’t realised this the two came to an agreement.

Jack Dayton – he hated 2.0 with a passion because it kept telling him what to do during surgery and despite knowing better he would argue with it. When he tried to explain the probs with this to Jack and Grace Song he was brushed off about his concerns because he know docs like Sam and Dean would go out of their way to avoid it’s backseat surgery.

Stevie Hammer – he will never forgive her for breaking Will’s heart a little. He was just starting to get back on his feet after Hannah, put himself out there a little and then she went back to a husband who didn’t love her, because he offered her a better medical position. For Jimmy it really showed her true self.

Maggie – initially because he found her nosy, but he understands now she cares deeply for the people around her and it’s done out of love. He was very sorry to hear about her and Ben and it put the shits up him a little, because to him they were the perfect couple and he never saw the divorce coming. He’s extra attentive to his own marriage after that.

Doris – He dislikes the fact she’s really gossipy. Him and Anita once had a very heated discussion she overheard and before lunch time, multiple people had made comments about the state of his marriage, offering him advice.

[rainba]

hello again, what are the boys' dream weddings? is it something small like a backyard type wedding, or are they going extravagant for their darling? is it themed? how much of it is up to the darling?

not to be mean to him, but i feel like kairos might get wrapped up in his own head about executing the 'perfect wedding' to impress his darling, so much so that they physically can't listen to their darling with how much his brain is clouded up with ideas (and anxiety. lots of that)

when darling tries to waft that metaphorical cloud away with their hand i imagine he is profusely apologising and probably in tears, poor kairos jdhshshff

Kairos trying his hardest to execute his 'dream wedding’ only for, like, nobody to show up. 😭 ((Unless his darling invites a ton of people– that’d be the only way to have guests at the wedding. (´ ∀ ` *) ))

Also, you're so right about him getting all wrapped up in his own head,, so extremely nervous and overwhelmed by all the little things ^^;;;. The closer the wedding is, the more sleep he loses every night to the point where he's basically just a walking zombie....

He also doesn’t have much of a budget, so– he'll try his best to make everything work! Sets up his own cameras for photos, buys little fake purple roses for the tables, decorates and designs tons of things by himself! He might not have a lot of resources, but he still wants the wedding to be gothic and beautiful!

Ideally, he’d love to get married somewhere under the stars– or just anywhere that might seem gothic in nature (o˘◡˘o). He'd also love it if both he and his darling wear all-black to the wedding... But he wouldn't mind seeing you in all white!! Or whatever color you want, honestly. No matter what, he knows you'll take his breath away.~

((Ultimately, his dream wedding is just one where you're super excited about everything and madly in love with him.. So.... (b ᵔ▽ᵔ)b ))

As for Luka– he doesn’t really have any ideas for a “dream wedding.” 

The ceremonies and stuff aren’t things he’s really worried about– all that matters is that the wedding actually happens and the two of you are tied together forever. (=`ω´=) 

With the money he has, he’ll just let his darling make all the big decisions.~ ((He will answer you if you ask him about certain things, though! He just won’t have very creative answers to things. ^^;;;;;;;;;;))

However, Luka would prefer a small wedding, to be honest. The idea of being in front of so many people and having to cater to them all just sounds.... Annoying. ^^;;;;;;;;;; So!! He'd just invite his childhood friend as well as a couple of other people.

You can also invite a few people too--! Just make sure it's not too many. ٩(｡•́‿•̀｡)۶

[livelovecaliforniadreams]

Jenna Well, it was Greg's idea to have Steve come back. He had wanted that for a very long time, and he asked him pretty early in season nine. But Steve was reluctant. He felt like Michael's story had really ended. He didn't want to open it back up again. And he especially did not wanna come back after two years and have this Finale episode be about him. Steve really felt like my character had his ending. This is everybody else's ending. And he didn't wanna overshadow that. But then Greg had the idea of the final episode being Dwight and Angela's wedding, and Steve agreed Michael would be there. It was a creative reason that was supported by history, you know. So I remember being up in the writer's room with John when we found out that Steve was gonna come back and we were sworn to secrecy. This was like really epic to pull off. I've told this story before Rainn Wilson turned to me and he said, not even Angela, Jenna. I was like, okay. I mean, he knows I tell you everything I know. It was really hard not to tell you because Ang you did not find out until he showed up on set that day. 

Angela Oh, I know. The exact moment. I had driven through the two canyons. I had taken the dirt road. I was at our base camp in the middle of nowhere. It was cold and foggy. And right as I was getting to hair and makeup, the set PA turned to me and said, oh, Steve is here. And I said, what are you talking about? And I, at first I thought she meant Steve Burgess. And she was like, Steve Carrell is here. I said, what? And I opened the door and there he was. He was sitting in hair and makeup. And I just was like, Steve. I was like, oh my gosh. And I just hugged him and we were laughing. I couldn't believe it. I was like so confused. And then we just got to chat in hair and makeup, and it was absolutely wonderful...

Jenna Well, this was really crazy because Greg did not tell NBC that Steve was coming back. 

Angela Well, this is what I remember at the table read, when all the NBC suits were there, all the executives in the script, it was Creed, right? 

Jenna Yes. So that's the thing, when you turn in a script, they used those script pages, those locations, those scenes to set a budget for your episode. And so they had a scene at our table read between Dwight and Jim, but it wasn't the scene that ended up in the show, but there was a scene, it was a placeholder of Jim helping Dwight right before its time to go to the wedding. Same number of lines, same page count as the real scene with Steve. 

[tomatosoupcat]

Seasons of Life (base game)

🍅 A Sims 4 Legacy Challenge 🍅

General Rules:

You can start with any season you like, depending on your mood. After that, simply follow the natural progression of the seasons in order.

Play on any lifespan you feel comfortable with.

Goals with an asterisk * are optional.

Each generation will have a color theme (2-3 colors) that you can either spin for or select using their corresponding color wheel.

Start with the sims starter budget of 20k.

Skills are more like hobbies, you don't need to max them out unless you want to. Instead, incorporate them naturally into your gameplay for a more enjoyable experience.

Autumn/Fall

You've always felt a deep connection to the past, especially the untold stories of lives once lived. As a Freelance Writer, you find solace in weaving words that explore the unknown, diving into life's and death's mysteries. Your fascination with the afterlife fuels your passion for spiritual communication and storytelling.

Colors: https://spinthewheel.app/BUX2XpbCyZ Aspiration: Bestselling Author Career: Freelance Writer Traits: Bookworm, Loner, Gloomy Skills: Painting, Writing, Cooking

Goals: 

Spin or choose 2-3 colors from the respective color wheel.

Build a secret room in your house dedicated to spiritual communication, filled with creepy stuff, books, and others.

Fill your yard with every urn or grave you can collect.

Have a baby with the Grim Reaper.

Make a painting collection featuring all the graves you've gathered.

Write at least one book inspired by a ghostly encounter.

Just before adulthood, mysteriously die and continue your life as a ghost.

Winter

From a young age, you've always been captivated by the allure of the shiny objects that hold untold stories within them. This fascination led you down the path of both a career in espionage and a passion for collecting rare gems. As a Secret Agent, you live a life of intrigue, uncovering secrets while quietly building an impressive gem collection on the side.

Colors: https://spinthewheel.app/snqHArXyqB Aspiration: The Curator Career: Secret Agent (Diamond Agent Branch) Traits: Outgoing, Ambitious, Loves Outdoors Skills: Logic, Handiness, Charisma

Goals: 

Spin or choose 2-3 colors from the respective color wheel.

Collect every gem in the game to complete the Gem Collection.

Host at least one major party or social event each week.

Make friends with five base game townies to expand your social circle.

Donate one gem from your collection to a museum to leave a legacy behind.

Reach the top of the Diamond Agent branch of the Secret Agent career.

Spring

You’re deeply connected to nature, with a knack for growing plants and cultivating your garden. Your garden is your peaceful escape, where you spend time nurturing plants, finding joy in the simple things like creating homemade meals, and expressing your creativity through painting. Full of romantic energy, your dream is to find lasting love while staying close to the freshness and colors of spring.

Colors: https://spinthewheel.app/BNiCeRWGo4 Aspiration: Soulmate Career: Unemployed Traits: Romantic, Cheerful, Creative Skills: Gardening, Painting, Cooking

Goals: 

Spin or choose 2-3 colors from the respective color wheel.

Grow and maintain a beautiful (flower) garden.

Try to cook every meal using only ingredients from your garden.

Be in a polyamorous relationship.

Host an outdoor dinner party in your garden to celebrate your relationships and accomplishments.

Hold a spring wedding in a garden or outdoor space.

Summer

Summer is your favorite season, a time to thrive outdoors with family. You cherish fishing trips, backyard cookouts, and campfire guitar sessions. Family means everything to you, and your dream is to create a warm home where you can pass down these traditions. With your part-time job in Culinary, you enjoy downtime filled with laughter and unforgettable memories.

Colors: https://spinthewheel.app/UexIB1BIcT Aspiration: Big Happy Family Career: Culinary Traits: Family-Oriented, Loves Outdoors, Goofball Skills: Fishing, Guitar, Cooking, Comedy

Goals: 

Spin or choose 2-3 colors from the respective color wheel.

*Live off the grid.

Have at least 3 children.

Host regular family barbecues.

Teach your children fishing and guitar, passing on your love for both.

Create at least three different dishes at barbecues using freshly caught fish.

Max out relationships with your spouse and children, maintaining a close-knit family.

[gen-is-gone]

Gah see the one thing I can't do with the EDAs, and it drives me up the wall nuts, no matter how much I do agree that they are meant to be books and that's the point of them, that they only metatextually and even thematically work as books, and obscure forgotten books at that - the one thing is, I can't make vids. Gifsets either. God, you have no idea how much I wish I could vid this series.

So many things, so many astonishing visuals and cinematic parallels, so much I want to string together in a coherent form and I can't, I just can't. Like, the actual factual thing that caused me to fucking Mandela-effect myself into misremembering the series as a 90s tv show in the first place was imagining a fanvid about Fitz's fashion sense set to Macklemore's Thriftshop, of all fucking things, BUT. While yes, obviously that would be a work of unrivaled genius, it's not just that. Over the years it's become this endless want, this constantly seeing gifsets and screencaps and vids, vids, above all else, vids, of all the different moments there are.

There is (of-fucking-course) a blog (at least one, but maybe many more) dedicated exclusively to making gifsets of every time destiel touch each other in all contexts. Of fucking course there is. I scream with envy over this because like. That could be us, if only the EDAs had any footage at all, but it's a goddamn (brilliant, daft, exceedingly stupid) BOOK SERIES instead. Every time Eight/Fitz touch? Fitz is in fifty books and they are both extremely touchy; you could absolutely dedicate an entire fucking tumblr blog to making a gifset of each of those moments; you'd be making gifs for fucking years.

I want to bestow upon them the highest honor I could give: a fanvid about their insane nutso relationship set to Vienna Teng's Never Look Away. I want a Sam vid set to Marina's Oh No! I want an Eight vid to the Indigo Girls' Galileo. I can see all these so so clearly and I want to share them with the world. I want a gifset of thematic uses of the color red in Sam's early books episodes books. I want to hear Sail on Sailor and know how the fuck the diagetically composed Dr Who theme would actually sound on violin or acoustic guitar, with its unspeakably tender lyrics. I want someone's painstakingly color-corrected, digitally restored, hi-res slo-mo shot of Fitz in his princess fairy tale wedding dress flying around on a jetpack.

Like they are books and they're supposed to be books and it's significant to what the silly things are trying to say, and also quite frankly there is no way in hell any doctor who ever, even now, could pull off even half the shit they got away with via the infinite budget of the page, and they certainly could not have made say, YIT in the 90s and have it look anything but silly and cheap when it needed to look real, BUT. I wish I could see it. I wish I could make the vids I see playing in my head when I reread these silly, edgy, annoyingly smug, painfully earnest, wildly creative and visually stunning FUCKING books.

[agentnico]

Speak No Evil (2024) review

Right, so I did not realise I needed James McAvoy singing ‘Eternal Flame’ in an unsettling voice whilst starring intently into my eyes in my life yet here we are. Mr Tumnus for the win!

Plot: A dream holiday turns into a living nightmare when an American couple and their daughter spend the weekend at a British family's idyllic country estate.

Based on a Danish horror film of the same name, which I have not watched to avoid a sense of bias, or the more truthful reason being that I simply couldn’t make the deserved effort, the Hollywood remake machine is back at it again with Speak No Evil, a psychological thriller courtesy of the folks from Blumhouse, a production company who’s model is to produce films on a small budget, and give directors creative freedom whilst still release films widely through the studio system. Essentially a studio that pioneers for artistic freedom, so always good to support these types of films. That being said, Blumhouse has lost a bit of its reliably unique flair with it being a while since they’ve had their last solid hit, but I’m always happy to give them a go.

In cometh Speak No Evil, a film which Universal marketed so hard I’ve seen the trailer for it maybe 352 times? Look, whatever sells the tickets I guess, but last time a trailer has been shoved in the audience’s faces so much was Argylle, and we all know how well that movie performed. NOT! Anyway, does Speak No Evil deliver the scares? Well… kind of. It’s borderline a comedy. For there is a lot of funny moments throughout (not sorely caused by McAvoy belting out Eternal Flame, but again - huge win!), but more so in how the movie challenges the ideologies of good manners. I myself got married a few days ago, and in my wedding speech I spoke about how us Eastern Europeans lack a sense of good manners, for we act how we feel, so hardly ever smile and can often come off as straight up rude. Well not myself personally, I feel like I am truly a delightful human being (and humble too!), but folks from culture. However marrying a British woman, Brits are always the high level of well mannered etiquette, and truly in the UK everyone always smiles, says “please” and “thank you”, even if on their mind they may secretly be calling you the C-bomb. So in Speak No Evil this aspect plays a huge part, with the main couple being too well mannered and polite to say anything, and as such allowing the other crazy couple to get away with some mad stuff. As such, this movie is more of a comedy of manners, with only the last 30 minutes embracing its true thriller roots, and even then, it’s not scary at all.

I’m not going to lie, I found this film to be very goofy. The humour of the cultural differences was amusing, but when the final act co es where it’s supposed fully take on the horror element, I never felt remotely concerned or worried about any of the characters. There was such a lack of tension due to the poor directing and a script that seemingly has a message but does not know how to bring it home. After watching the film, I read up about the original Danish version and it’s more messed up darker ending, and immediately realised what the issue with the new 2024 remake was - it’s been given the classic Hollywood ending. You know, the typical no matter how terrible the scenario gets, all characters will find a way out eventually no matter what. As such, Speak No Evil has no gravitas or sense of terror to it. It’s a thriller that had a fun concept which goes nowhere,

The one aspect of Speak No Evil that does work is James McAvoy. Following on from showcasing his psychopathic talents in Shyamalan’s Split and Glass, McAvoy fully embraces the crazy unhinged nature of his character, which results in a fully mad performance, but one that truly carries the film, and is consistently entertaining. From bloodshot red rolling eyes, to his impressive henchman physique, to ‘Eternal Flame’, McAvoy throws himself into this role and is endlessly watchable. In fact his acting almost makes this movie worth watching. Almost. But no, this is a typical throwaway Hollywood remake that is just so silly and uninspired.

Overall score: 4/10

[yarnandink]

2023 crafting & creativity round-up

2023 was a very low output year for me in terms of number of finished projects, but that's partly because of the sheer size of the projects I worked on.

I finished a cotton top for myself that I have yet to photograph or wear, the Ballson tee (in silver grey mercerised Egyptian cotton with turquoise green lace trim). Perhaps that can be a treat for myself in the new year.

Then I kept working on a blanket for myself, an octagon and mitred square patchwork modular knit that's about halfway through.

I'm using the 'Tree of Life' octagon from the Contexta blanket expansion pack, along with a simple mitred square.

But it got parked because next was a baby blanket for a colleague... except that I have a terrible tendency to get a bit oversized when it comes to blankets, and the baby blanket turned into a double-sized bedspread 😅 Thankfully the colleague loves it! And hopefully bub will get years of use out of it.

I used the Cartesian Blanket pattern, with a modified Thompson blanket applied border.

Then I tried to knit a shawl for myself, which has now been frogged multiple times. First I nearly completed the Fortune Cookie shawl... but had chosen a lovely nude pink, and the cookies looked, well, decidedly anatomical. Oops 😅

(It’s a gorgeous and really well-written pattern that I definitely want to make at some point... in a yarn that isn't flesh-toned...)

Then I frogged and began using the same yarn in an adapted top-down triangle version of the Orange Tulip shawl, but had bought yarn from two separate colourways and the difference is obvious enough that I needed to frog back a third of the shawl and by that time I was just too grumpy with the whole thing, so I parked it in the naughty corner.

And now I'm about one-quarter to one-third of the way through another modular patchwork blanket, this time the Penrose blanket for my sister, as a couch throw. I'm aiming to finish that for her birthday at the start of March!

But while my knitting accomplishments might feel a bit underwhelming, I have also:

Written over 1,300 pages in daily long-form journalling

Helped care for my father (now in a care home with rapidly deteriorating dementia)

Unofficially officiated my sister's third, final and largest wedding ceremony (she and her husband had one unofficial in Ireland with his family, the official one here at the marriage registry, then a final unofficial one) and helped her celebrate a magical day with her husband

Managed my ageing cat's increasing kidney and digestive problems and brought her back to a happy and stable state of health

Kept up my job, balanced budgets, paid my bills and generally managed the various tedious parts of adulthood when living alone

Managed my own health scares and issues and even took some steps towards general improvement of fitness and physical activity

So all in all, I think I've achieved a lot this year!

And I'm looking forward to the crafting and creativity of my year to come!