#Making

[futurebird]

I don't understand how lace is made, but looking at the bobbins and pins and patterns … listen buddy I know math when I see it. This is A Math Thing. Obviously.

Right away I want to know:

Can I encode information in lace?

How much of an expert must one be to make your own patterns?

What about the creation of surfaces?

Knitting is more accessible, and people have been exploring math with knitting forever.

But what possibilities does lace offer?

What is the theory of lace?

An excerpt from Mathematics Magazine Vol. 91, No. 4 (October 2018), pp. 307-309

Shows I'm hardly the first person to muse about this. Need to get my hands on the rest of this article, obviously.

[begemotthedog]

He's trying hard just to let us get some good tea from a cute teapot!!😭🤍

Commission for arelhyhahaha on Twitter!🍵

[leftinimaginationemily]

I made some tiny books 📚

[averixus]

on friday I decided I wanted to make better luggage bags for my wheelchair in time for my trip today (monday), so I spent the weekend in a frenzy and created these

lots more pics and info under the cut!

until now I've been using an off-the-rack under seat bag at the front (smaller than necessary, awkward to use) and random shopping bags bungeed to the axle at the back (impossible to add/remove items without taking them off and unpacking them entirely, not much volume for all that effort).

here's my old setup for comparison (although I can still add the backpack with the new setup too):

the old front bag attached by wrapping all the way over the seat, which made it difficult to remove. it was also unnecessarily small - there was a lot of wasted spare space behind and either side of it.

I measured up for a replacement to properly fill the available space. It's a simple but irregular cuboid - the top edge slopes slightly (because the seat slopes), and the top is narrower than the bottom (becase the frame is in the way at the top).

I designed mine to attach directly to the frame, rather than around the seat. at the back there are short straps with side-release buckles to wrap around a conveniently-placed bar on the frame. at the front are more side-release buckles, attached to make use of the buckles that were installed on the chair by the manufacturer (intended to attach a much smaller under seat bag).

the old bag just had one big compartment inside, so there was no easy way to keep small items accessible without them getting lost among everything else. so I added pockets to mine!

at the top, I made a panel the whole size of the top face, and attached it at a slight diagonal to make a shallow sloping pocket. I also added big flat patch pockets to both sides. and I added a piece of really thick cardboard as a base shaper so it wouldn't sag when full of stuff.

the rear bag was a lot more complicated. I didn't have an existing bag for this use at all, I'd been getting by with just bungeeing soft bags onto whatever bars I could reach on the frame.

I took a bunch of measurements and planned out my design. to make the best use of the space, it needed to wrap *around* the axle both above and below. so the end result is a slightly irregular cuboid but with a cutout at one side.

just above the axle cutout, there are short straps which clip around side bars on the frame to keep it in place. at the other end there are longer straps which buckle around the horizontal bar on the seat backrest, to hold it up.

I didn't add any pockets to this bag, because it's basically for luggage so I won't need to get at small things while it's still attached. more board in the bottom to keep the base in shape.

I would have used a double-ended zip for this one too but I couldn't get one in time (might replace it later). I'm also wondering about adding a shelf or something, to make it easier to squeeze things into the little above-axle space without falling back out.

on both bags I added a strip of old woven belt along the inside top of the opening, to help it keep its shape when the zip is undone.

I don't know enough sewing vocabulary to describe the kind of seam I used on them, but- I folded the edges in, right-sides together, and then topstitched over them. just one line of stitching per seam, but that line goes through each piece of fabric twice. raw edges still exposed on the inside.

I successfully took the new bags on a 4.5-hour train journey today, packed with a week's worth of luggage. and when I arrived, all I had to do was clip them off the chair and lay them on their backs, and then they can easily unzip like suitcases!

[very-ito]

Rika Timelapse

[lurking-latinist]

Hey, tell me something you like about your own writing/art/whatever you make! Something you're good at, something you enjoy doing, or even just "I'm proud that I work on it"!

I'll start: I'm good at sticking the landing. I have a lot of punchy ending lines that feel satisfying to reread.

(That's why I write so many oneshots: I get to write more endings that way...)

[kipplekipple]

Every skill you learn, everything you MAKE, is stairs. You learn one skill and then another and then a third and every larger skill - drawing or painting or sewing or crochet or 3D printing or writing - is made of those steps, like a stair.

Talent is being able to learn some of those steps more easily. And of course sometimes there are barriers - I'm a wheelchair user and there is no ramp to pole vaulting - but it's so important that you remember that's it STEPS.

Especially if you're neurodivergent, because a lot of us have executive dysfunction, which can really fuck up your ability to turn stairs into steps, mentally. And then when you say you can't draw, what you actually mean is you can't climb a flight of stairs in one step.

Sometimes the stairs are in the Goblin King's domain and the way you get from one step to another is a bit different - or sometimes it's just hard to make out what the next step is. But you're building! And similarly, some of your works are just steps, instead of finished stairs on their own. That's okay!!! That's when you tap their imaginary shoulders with your imaginary sword and declare them to be Just A Sketch After All. You're learning how to build the next step, even if you end up tearing it down and starting over.

And it's all like that! Every single project is a flight of stairs! When I started painting with watercolours I didn't know how to layer things or how to blend colours that were wet. But now I know I start a painting and the process of painting is ALSO steps.

It lets you be a little bit more patient with yourself. And it lets you realise that:

A) if you can't immediately skip a bunch of the steps because of talent, doesn't mean you can't build the steps one at a time, and

B) if you CAN skip a bunch of the steps, doesn't mean there's something wrong if you can't skip them all.

I have a huge number of skills. I'm not bragging - I'm autistic and ADHD and I'm like House except my puzzles are how to make stuff (and I work hard not to be an arsehole about it). People always tell me I'm talented. I'm not. Talent means very little or nothing to me, because it's not something you choose or make happen. It's like saying I have brown hair - completely neutral.

What I have instead is hyperfocus, and special interests, and the luxury of access to a community makerspace. I'm in an ideal situation to build stairs.

You can build one flight. It can be crooked, it can be a loop de loop, the stairs can be anything you need them to be. You're the only one who ever has to go up them.

But next time you look at a flight of stairs you've built, or even a stepladder (my daughter would say, "you never knew your real ladder")... And you think it's terrible... Remember that usually means you haven't finished building all the steps yet.

Be the M C Escher you need in your life.

[mysterious-headhunter]

(Let’s make a tree that I will draw.)

[beekeeperspicnic]

My kickstarter for The Beekeeper's picnic (cosy point and click game featuring a retired Sherlock Holmes) has the unusual reward of being able to buy the game's code, hand bound into a book!

But how?! Enjoy this little vlog of me making the interior of the book!

(This is definitely not supposed to teach you to bookbind, by the way. For that, try DAS bookbinding!)

[copperbadge]

[ID: Three images; top right, several quilted pieces are laid out, which in the top left image have been sewn together to make a bag lined with fabric covered in camping-themed images. Bottom image is a large front view showing the finished bag; the fabric patchwork contains dachshunds, California Flag bears, and on the sides, dinosaur skeletons, with more camping fabric for the strap. There is a heart stitched onto the front, a Chicago Ornithological Society patch on the flap, and two buttons that look like clock faces, which hold the flap shut with elastic loop closures.]

The sewing project I referenced recently is nearly complete! It's a toddler-sized messenger bag with loop closures friendly to little fingers for my baby niece U, daughter of my brother-from-another-mother R. U will be two years old this July, although the gift is for when I see her this April.

I was sad to learn in a recent conversation with R that he and his wife Q, who I liked very much, are divorcing. I can't say I was entirely surprised; I love R but both he and Q are strong personalities and they've been dealing with a lot, separately and as a couple. Baby U is young enough, and her parents both self-aware enough, that it's been as easy on her as it can possibly be, but it's still a big upheaval for a tiny child and I thought she might like to have a little bag made just for her, for treasures or a stuffed toy or similar.

Besides, messenger bags are the one "fashion" thing I'm into, and as the Messenger Bag Uncle I have to make sure she learns early how fantastic they are.

[thepersonalquotes]

He who does nothing makes no mistakes; he who makes no mistakes learns nothing.

Luca Pacioli

[veriken]

ERIC AND SUNWOO | THE BOYZ | HONEY MV BEHIND

to access #225+ honey gifs, click the source link below !

[talenlee]

Goblin, Vandal, Sugg

Every word you’ve ever used comes from somewhere. The structures you use to discuss ideas is informed by ideas that came before it. I’m not getting all Sapir-Worf about this (and if you don’t know what that is, you don’t have to know because it’s probably not true), but rather wanting to draw your attention to the way the world you live in is in part defined by the words you use. If you’re an English speaker, there are ways you describe food that are a byproduct of French invasion centuries ago. Words like ‘technocrat’ and ‘hyperspecialised’ are constructions that borrow from how intellectuals used to use Latin. Your swear words are almost all from the poor working class, and used to describe sex, god, or excrement, and that’s not how all swear words work in all cultures!

Your world shapes your language.

In any given fantasy setting you work on, you don’t usually have the same linguistic history to justify why the people there talk like we talk now. In fact, to be completely fair, they probably don’t talk like us at all: you have fantasy languages, across fantasy constructions. Any given phrase a character in your world says is probably not using the exact same words as we are and we’re all working with a sort of fictionalised fantasy that makes the concepts reasonably translate across.

There’s a whole treatise then about how we handle Native American names and loanwords that we italicise like etouffee.

Point is that you have words, in your world, and you can attach stories to them. You’ve probably seen me talk about Orcs and how they relate to language and stereotypes, along in my long post on the word ‘Orc’. Here’s another set of examples I like for my world of Cobrin’Seil, as they pertain to the best little evolved raccoons, the Goblins.

The word ‘Goblin’

In Cobrin’Seil, most people speak two languages. Most people who speak only one language speak Common, and Common is full of loanwords from other languages. ‘Orc’ and ‘Beast’ are well known loanwords. There is a word that has risen in prominence throughout all the common-speaking countries in less than seventy years, and the word it displaced is still even in functional and legal use.

The word is both new and old; new to common, but an old word to the language it’s from. This word is Goblin.

Goblins are by no means new. They’re one of the three great old cultures of the world, a social symbiote culture that pretty much exists in any given settlement of any size. It’s usually seen as a sign of health that a community can sustain Goblins — in the same way that communities that lack pets are probably culturally alienated from all the cultures that do keep pets — and if you encounter an enclave that lacks goblins, it’s often because that enclave is specifically for a purpose and has done proactive things to drive out Goblin presence. Goblins are a culture that’s as old as Orcs, older than Ogres and even most of what you’d consider modern-day Elves.

But the word Goblin was not a word in common language and descriptors that was used in dictionaries and education and technical words, until what are known as the Peoples Reform. Not People’s Reforms – but the legal system of the Eresh Protectorate (which tends to set precedents most of the rest of the world follows) formalised the idea of Peoples. For most cultures, this didn’t make a lot of changes, but it did peel out of the laws one of the largest and long-standing carve-outs for Goblins that eroded the idea of their own cultural identity and heritage. The word Goblin is encoded as the term Goblins use to describe Goblins.

Linguistically, Goblin is a funny word. It’s an omniterm; without modification, it serves as noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb and preposition and it does so in entirely intelligible ways to those contextually familiar. The sentence ‘Goblin goblin goblin goblin goblin’ is a meaningful sentence describing a party taking care of a third party because they see the commonality they have with one another. Good luck making that make sense in a sent letter though.

Goblin is possessive; in a lot of ways it can be translated to the common term ‘us,’ with some wiggle room. It’s also a comical non-answer; guards asking a Goblin ‘what are you doing?’ will often get the answer ‘goblin,’ which in this case means something like ‘being myself and doing what I should be doing,’ which is an answer but it is also unhelpful, and you have to understand how goblins communicate to get a handle on what that might mean. Goblin language is simple but contextual and it tends to highlight that goblins are extremely prosocial. Goblin language makes very little sense without the context of who is talking and about what.

There’s a real truth to the fact that many Goblins who have taken to theatre or art will write dialogue in Goblin but stage directions in Common.

But the word is new, legally, but the people aren’t. What was the change? Well, prior to the Peoples Reforms, the term the human kingdoms used for the people known as Goblins was the term Vandal.

The Word ‘Vandal’

You can’t kidnap a Goblin.

Legally, I mean.

This isn’t because Goblins were protected under the law, no no, the laws were way too racist for that. The crime was that, wherever you transported the Goblins to, the people didn’t want Goblins there, so you were committing a crime by inflicting Goblins on them. Basically, it was considered a crime to take a Goblin from one place to another, because the place the Goblin arrived didn’t necessarily consent to the presence of a Goblin.

The term for transporting a Goblin was based on an archaic term for Goblins that operated on the assumptions that Goblins were just a problem and a pest brought into any space. They were known as Vandals, a term hypothetically meaning all nonhuman troublesome cultures including Gnolls and Bugbears, because if those people arrived in a place, they’d wreck things. Funnily enough, Gnolls and Bugbears got removed from this term over time because they would usually, if it rose to legal levels, be committing much more dire crimes, and also, guards didn’t like just bullying them at random, since they were very big and tough people by comparison to the much smaller Goblin. Over time, ‘Vandal’ came to mean ‘Goblins, and behaving like a Goblin,’ and that association meant the legal term got ensnared around it. Ultimately, dropping Goblins off in a space that did not want them was the act of Vandalism. Vandal then, was a term used to not to refer to the Goblins themselves; much funnier, instead, it was the legal term for a person who committed the crime of nonconsensual transporting of Goblins.

During the Peoples Reforms, since this law already existed, the crime of Transporting A Goblin Nonconsensually remained on the books, but Kidnapping, as defined under laws, had its historical Goblin Carve-Out. Nowadays, kidnapping a Goblin is typically treated as Vandalism (Kidnapping), because tidying up old and technically incorrect laws is a lot of a pain in the butt. This even applies when the Goblins are lawyers, who as it turns out, delight in getting non-Goblins in trouble for ‘Vandalism,’ which is a catch-all term under Eresh law for ‘general goblin-like behaviour.’ And we’ll talk more about what makes something Goblin-like in the context of Cobrin’Seil another time.

The word ‘Sugg’

But there is a word, ambiguous in meaning and origin that exists in common, that most people know and that word is ‘sugg.’ It seems to indicate a sort of laziness, a restful state. If you see a Goblin curled up on a pile of playing cards, ears out, eyes closed, you might say ‘can’t use those cards, there’s a goblin sugging on it.’ Or ‘sorry man, I’m pretty sugg.’ The word is extremely ambiguous but it has a thread throughout it of being:

Indulgently lazy

Very relaxed

Overwhelming and absolute

The thing is, nobody’s too sure what it means, and when you ask people who would know, they tell you to ask a Goblin. Goblins, after all, are where the word comes from. In fact, if you ask the right goblins in the right trail you’ll find that while Goblins use the word ‘sugg’ in the same way, they think it comes from Common. Why?

Because Goblins got the word from this thing they found in established human communities. There’d be a nice small dark box, full of paper that you could just curl up in and nest in, and on the outside of the box, there’d be a notice: SUGGEST IN BOX. So they assume the Goblin who enjoys that box the most must surely be their sugg-est Goblin. Which meant paying attention to how they all sugg, and from there, the neologism was born.

Now, non-Goblins and Goblins alike use ‘sugg’, each convinced they got it from the other.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!