#Really wanted to teach me how to spin yarn

[dexteritymisdirectionsuggestion]

The best part of being in crafty spaces is playing the "quirky lesbian or weird christian tradwife" game.

[trashpandacraft]

hey, fellow fibre nerds, if you've always wanted to take classes about fibre stuff but hate going places (or learning in front of people or whatever), here's your chance.

abby franquemont runs an online school called franquemont university. there are real-time classes (usually at 5pm gmt), but there's also a ton of recorded classes about spinning and andean backstrap weaving, and the real-time classes are recorded and posted so those of us who can't make that can watch them. there's also a discord with channels for every class where you can talk about it and get help.

we signed up the other day and y'all, it's so fucking great. i'm a pretty adequate spinner, but we started watching spinning one, which is... you know, spinning for beginners, and i'm incredibly annoyed but also pleased to report that i've already learned things that are making me a better spinner. i also started watching the spinning for socks class, which is four hours of discussion about spinning for socks!

they have a whole learn to spin series, several levels of andean weaving classes that teach you both how to do the weaving and also present it in the appropriate cultural context, a course about drafting styles, one on yarn design, on ply structures, on using bast fibres...

there's a *ton* of stuff, and i can already tell i'm gonna learn so much. it's $45 usd a month, which is a lot if you think of it as a streaming service, but is an incredible deal if you think if it as unlimited access to classes, which is really what it is. there are even office hours, where you can drop in and ask about specific stuff.

it's all on discord, zoom, and youtube, so it's pretty easy to use, and i'm really, really liking it.

i'm not affiliated with them or anything, i just think it's cool and thought some of you might be into it.

[odddrawingsandwhatnot]

I have fallen into a fiberart hyperfixation,

And it's spinning out of control!!!

It all started when in the midst of big anxiety moment I started crocheting this blanket (almost done, it's just a lil guy that is partially made from an abandoned sweater project).

Then I started watching more videos about crochet and knitting and began stumbling across a video of a woman growing her own flax on her patio deck and making her own linen out of it. In the video she used a spinning wheel, but it got me thinking of highschool social studies and the word "drop spindle" sprung to mind as a small portable spinning tool. My highschool had one and I held it in my hands, but the class was teaching us that it existed, not how to use it.

So then I started looking up videos about how to use a drop spindle and the history of hand held spindles.

I briefly looked them up online before realizing I live in a fairly densely populated city that is known to have a lot of hippies in it, so I found a fiber arts store locally that I could go to after work (no shipping wait/cost baybeeee). I bought a $26 CAD student drop spindle and a $5 CAD bag of 50g unspun wool fiber.

I started spinning while sitting on the bus ride home from the store, it really is as portable as they say.

The right bundle there on the pencil was on day 1 and the one on the left was done on day 3 (today). You can see it's looking much more consistent.

I wound the newest thread into this here ball and then made some sample swatches to choose what hook gauge I should use.

The smaller hook as you can see makes the inconsistencies far less obvious and for my purposes I like having the smaller gaps too.

My purposes are as follows:

When I was at the store I saw some wool that was dyed various green and I want to spin that, and then crochet this cloak.

Is that all? Is that all I'm planning on doing with this project? FOOL! I SHALL THEN FELT IT!!! THE WIND SHALL NOT DARE TO TOUCH ME!!!! Imma be the toastiest bitch in the land.

tldr: I am become old lady spinning my own yarn for crochet and giving myself a simple but big long-term project to make.

Thank you for your time.

[aylabex]

It was a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, three times my typical size. Three hundred and fifty is the number I gravitate to; it’s the size I can open, finish, and clean up in one afternoon. But it was vacation, and I wanted to go big... or something equally foolish.

It was the third day, and the puzzle was almost done. There were only fifty pieces left, and they were those difficult ones that all look the same (a cloudless patch of sky) where all you can do is try pieces until one clicks into place. This isn’t the most stimulating part of a puzzle, but I don’t do puzzles for that. I do them to relax. They organize my mind, so to speak. 

I have two cats named Yaki and Soba. Their names started out as a joke and a love for Japanese noodles, but they stuck like a cooked noodle thrown at the kitchen ceiling.

Soba wanted the cupboard perch above where I was working, but Yaki was already there. Soba did not know this, and she wasn’t one to share. No, she would get up there, hiss loudly for at least fifteen seconds, and jump onto the table. She was surprisingly loud and heavy-pawed for a seven-pound cat, and there was no question she would mess up my puzzle. 

I gently redirected Soba three times, but she would not be thwarted. So I let her learn the hard way (I was the only one learning anything here), and it happened just as I imagined. When Soba landed on the table and part of the completed puzzle, the cat and a section of the puzzle slid off the side. The cat landed on her feet and stalked off with an angry flick of her tail. The puzzle pieces broke apart and landed in a heap.

I stared at the pile, all that hard work, and felt the excitement of almost being done dry up like a drop of water on a sunbaked rock.

Whew. So relaxing.

I gathered the pieces off the floor and got back to work, reminding myself that Soba didn’t mean to be an asshole. After a while, the puzzle was done. Almost. There was one empty spot, one piece left… and I didn’t know where it was. I was on my hands and knees, looking under the couch, the mantra of my mind spinning yarn: “It’s not a big deal. It’s not a big deal. It’s not a big deal.” 

That’s when Yaki decided to descend from her perch. 

Yaki is the bigger cat, eleven and a half pounds, but she made no noise as she jumped down, weaving through the three-tiered cat tree to reach the floor (using it for its intended purpose). She stayed off the table altogether, which I appreciated.

Yaki sat down by the door. She’s my talker, my talky-Yaki, but she didn’t make a sound, just sat and blinked at me. 

“Do you want to go out?”

Stare. Blink. Stare.

Have you noticed how huge cat’s eyes are, like, really noticed?

I went to open the door… and there was the puzzle piece. Yaki was sitting beside it, her tail curled to fence it in.

How did it get way over here?

Did this cat find my missing piece? 

Impossible.

I picked up my piece, and Yaki sauntered away, tail in the air.

I feel like God was trying to teach me something here, or maybe one or both of my cats was (and really, are cats not little gods?)

But what cosmic lesson am I supposed to learn?

“Would this person/creature/diety help me fix a puzzle they broke?” 

Or better yet—

“Would this person/creature/diety help me fix a puzzle they did NOT break?”

Or maybe I’m just reading into it. Yaki couldn’t have known I was looking for the piece or where it was, right? And Soba is a dramatic, impatient, unobservant, heavy-footed cat, and those are a pawful of personality traits bound to create chaos and broken puzzles.

Besides, Soba doesn’t have thumbs; how was she supposed to help me fix the puzzle?

(But did she really have to be angrier about it than I was?)

Ah, the mystery that is living with cats.

[thekingofcrochet]

I did know you went to art school!

Please, bestie; tell me errythang! 🍿

I went to art school because I was gonna be an English major and get my degree to be a high school English Lit teacher and I absolutely did shit at my English 200 course (my first C when I had actually tried to work hard) and I failed my history class and i never wanted to take math again so I transferred to art school. (there's a separate essay I wanna write about gifted kids burning out and dropping out of college. Like were we really gifted/good at academics or did we just know the right facts to regurgitate when it came time for testing?)

My first year of art school had these intro art classes where we had to make some of the most insufferable pieces.

I remember that I had to make 1/2 of a piece of produce from balsa wood and I ended up getting banned from the wood working studio because of safety reasons (I almost lost my thumbs). i think to teach us about scale and proportion?

Another assignment involved making a book that was just pictures and I made mine about the life cycle of pomegranates in which because it was accordion folded you could connect the back and front together so it would be continuous.

I had to make an abstract painting (9"x12") based on 30 seconds of a classical music song.

I made a luxury gas mask as part of an artifact from an imagined world.

I failed most of my art history classes because I couldn't remember the exact date (month, day, year) that a piece was made.

I drew a lot of self portraits.

I barely passed ceramics because I think the teacher just wanted me to never return to the studio.

When we could focus on our concentrations I did fiber arts so I learned how to spin yarn, felt wool, weave fabric and weave baskets. I made 2 quilts that required me doing all nighters for weeks straight (watched a lot of Netflix).

I have a vivid memory of sewing a fabric basket while watching Game Grumps Sonic Boom play-through in my dorms communal kitchen because my sewing machine was too loud to work in the dorm suites.

I have another memory of weaving late into the night at the art studio watching the Game Grumps play Wind Waker. It's a piece made from selected colors from the Pinwheel Galaxy and I made the pattern by hand.

I ended up losing 99% of everything I ever made or owned in an apartment fire in my 5th year of college so I just barely have any photos of my stuff.

I made a semi recent post that that had some of my old art and most of that was during art school.

I feel like art school wasn't really about learning how to make good art but was partly about how to make art safely (see the paragraph where I almost lost my thumbs) and make something on a deadline. Which are both very important! But anything I learned was through self study + determination and that's really what college is for.

[handweavers]

can i ask about how you started to teach yourself weaving spinning and dyeing? i have really wanted to learn more crafts myself but the barriers of entry seem so high i feel like i dont even know what i dont know how do you feel about taking classes vs self taught or differences between the experiences i know this is a very large broad question that might be very hard to answer and you can just link old posts where you talk more in depth thank you so much!

i would say i'm about 85% self taught with the other 15% supplemented through classes and direct instruction, but that mainly comes down to preferred learning styles, how quickly you pick things up on your own, and self discipline. i pick most things up fairly easily and need limited instruction so reading books, watching videos, etc is enough for me in the majority of situations and when it comes to making/creating i'm typically very self motivated. i'm also fairly antisocial lol i strongly prefer to be on my own rather than in group settings so that's another factor.

others might not be all or any of those things and that's totally fine. if you're a social person or someone who needs/benefits a lot from direct instruction i would say that taking a group class in something would be fantastic, and depending where you live many places have local spinner's and weaver's guilds that meet up and talk about their projects and teach each other (some are in person, others are online). many guilds teach classes or workshops, or can point you in the direction of someone who does, as well as help you with accessing equipment and other resources.

another option is looking into pre-made kits that contain everything you need to get started with a specific project in weaving or spinning etc. I know many shops on etsy sell beginners spinning kits that come with a drop spindle and prepared wool for spinning, others sell weaving kits, others intro to dyeing kits, etc. places like maiwa and domestika have online classes that you can take, but they can be pricey. again, depending on where you live but if you're near an urban centre or craft museum/centre they might also have classes, exhibitions, artist talks, etc that can all be helpful in just immersing yourself in the "textile world"

personally, i learned a lot just by starting one thing (in my case, tapestry weaving) and reading about it, watching videos, making a cardboard loom and weaving with cheap yarn i'd been using for crochet, practicing, reading more, etc and eventually that lead me into "discovering" spinning yarn and weaving with rigid heddle and multi-shaft looms and inkle weaving and learning about wool and sheep and cotton and flax, getting a wheel and a floor loom, dyeing etc etc etc.

it's easiest if you pick one to start with and allow it to snowball and build from there, accumulating information and knowledge with time, rather than trying to absorb it all at once and become too overwhelmed to learn anything. i didn't start with a floor loom and dye studio, i started by cutting myself a "loom" out of cardboard and weaving with some acrylic yarn, and a few years later i got a floor loom, and a dye pot, and experimented with acid dyes, and then read about natural dyes, and so on.

money-wise, if you try to jump in all at once it's a major investment that most can't afford including myself, which is why the slow accumulation method is necessary and why i would recommend looking at secondhand equipment as much as possible. a brand new floor loom can cost minimum $2000, i got mine used from a lady in my weaver's guild who sold it to me for $400 cash with everything i needed to get it going. my first spinning wheel and drum carder and tapestry loom were donated to me by kind people at my local textile museum that i'd been volunteering with and knew that i was a student and textile artist in need of equipment. there are still barriers to entry of course, even $400 is too much for many people, but there are ways to make accessing these crafts easier and getting involved in your local textile/fibre/craft community is a major one.

sorry for the essay, i'm just trying to be as thorough as i can (and i can't ever seem to find my old answers to these qs, sigh)

[crystal-ball-of-ow-canon]

Yarn lessons master list complete

Gabriel once tried to teach everyone how to knit or crochet in a giant team bonding exercise, it uh- it definitely went (at least he could finally put all of his abuela’s yarn and supplies to use)

[tags:  #have you ever tried to teach someone who to knit or crochet?#like herding cats it is#at least if you have spare supplied youre never going to use you finally have an excuse to get rid or it#nono it's okay I swear Im not going to use it#it's acrylic yarn from the 70s#please Im betting you just take it]

Jack, we all know how Jack was, he was bad at both but he’s impressively good at untangling yarn

[tags:  #do you know how patient you have to be to untangle yarn#it literally makes me cry#appreciate the people in your life who will u tangle your yarn for you]

Ana was more interested in knitting to say she knits than actually  wanting to knit. She does earnestly want to knit well but is also too  stubborn to let Gabriel help her get her yarn tension better so her  stitches are more even. Eventually he found her some chunky yarn so  being uneven was part of the style, everyone got scarves that year

[tags:  #I love people who knit out of spite#not to say they don't enjoy it#but have you ever met someone who's just like#no I will do this and I will do this well#very funny#I love people who want to knit just to say they knit#Ana would be a good person to just buy random yarn every year for christmas#because she doesn't have a further drive to work on big projects#Gabe gives her all his acrylic yarn]

Fareeha as it turned out was quite the little knitter, Gabriel was elated until he remembered she didn’t yet have the attention span to try to any type of big project yet, however everyone did get hats that year

[tags:  #teaching Fareeha to knit is one of Gabriel's proudest moments#peak dad Gabriel material right there#Ana stubbornly kitting beside them#Fareeha knitting away happily]

Cole and Genji ended up in a full on yarn fight and unraveled all of Gabriel’s yarn chucking it at each other, Jack ended up rolling it back up while Reinhardt restrained Gabriel from strangling the two idiots on the spot, the two were banned from his craft room after that

[tags:  #don't ever unravel someone's yarn#unless you want to die#it's an instant death wish#because it's not just it gets unraveled#but it also gets knotted up and then you have to untangle as you reroll#Jack's such a good boyfriend#Cole and Genji still have flashbacks]

Reinhardt was actually pretty decent at both but he particularly likes knitting, big needles and big yarn, there’s a quick accumulation of blankets around base, really good for movie nights

[tags:  #yeah it's funny to imagine Rein with regular needles and regular yarn#but also big needles and big yarn#he'd be so happy#he loves trying to teach as well#he gladly accepts all of Ana's jankass knitted gifts]

Torb had no interest in either but he did make Gabriel an industrial yarn roller after he heard about the yarn war fiasco (Gabriel won’t admit it but he almost cried), he proudly wears all knitted and crocheted gifts though

[tags:  #more appreciation for people who proudly wear knitted/crocheted gifts no matter the quality#Torb gets all of Ana’s first round gifts because she always makes them too small for Reinhardt#✨industrial yarn roller✨#I’m going to cry just thinking about it#a yarn roller that spins itself#jack is actually the most wxcited about it#he takes all of Gabriel’s loose yarn and rerolls it for him]

Angela cannot knit and somehow twisted everything into a Gordian knot the second Gabriel left her (which Jack spent hours untangling while Gabriel had a brain aneurysm over how she managed to do it in literally thirty seconds) but she is good a crocheting, several afghans were made for the medical wing waiting room over the years

[tags:  #Angela is totally one of those people who can do one thing really well#but absolutely cannot do the other thing in the slightest#Gabriel still won't let her have knitting needles#she doesn't know how she made the knot either#it just happened#even Jack was impressed#crocheting is one of the only things Angela does to relax#she also likes to make plushies#everything ends up in the medical wing waiting room]

Moira unsurprisingly was excellent at knitting (to the infuriation of everyone who was not Gabriel) and was working in rounds after she got basic stitches down, knitting; probably the only not evil thing Moira does (though she does passive-aggressively gift everyone intricately knitted sweaters just to underhandedly brag about her skills)

[tags:  #of course Moira manages to turn knitting into something obnoxious#she's so pretentious#she is the only person no one buys yarn for#at least if she's knitting she can't be evil]

Lena enjoyed and was decent at both but didn’t have the patience for anything big or complicated, soon everyone have drink coasters and koozies to spare

[ #Lena would be a good person to buy fluffy yarn for#Gabe gives her all his shorty acrylic yarn#because she can actually use it#sometimes she tries to knit a hat or something#she has a box of unfinished attempts of shame shoved in the back of her closet ]

After Ana “dies” she picks up knitting again as a distraction from her guilt, when Jack reconnects with her they spend the evenings talking, Ana knits and Jack feeds her her yarn

[tags: #Ana buys yarn from random market stalls wherever she goes#she still doesn't really make anything#knitting for the sake of knitting#Jack tries to fine uses for her creations#sometimes he gets sad because it reminds him of when he'd do the same for Gabriel in the evenings#Jack still keeps tabs on yarn he thinks Gabriel might like#he buys Ana a tote bag for her yarn and needles]

After he leaves Overwatch Cole picks up crocheting as a way of “looking inconspicuous” and finds he really likes it, he leaves little plushies on Gabriel’s grave during Día de Los Muertos

[tags: #he wishes he'd listened when Gabriel tried to teach him#he kinda wishes he'd been able to make everyone little plushies back in Overwatch#he would've made personalized ones for everyone#Jack would get an ear of corn#Torb would get a wrench#so he makes them now and saves them for if he ever sees them again#Jack has a whole family of vegetables now]

After the fall Angela will teach her patients how to crochet as a cognitive exercise, a lot of them continue after their stay and send in gifts anywhere from mug cozies to throws for the waiting room

[tags: #what Gabriel did for Overwatch Angela did for her patients#crocheting cult of hospital patients#Angela loves getting all the gifts#she tries not to be too sad about it]

After the fall Lena discovered that Emily also knits and they both make Winston festive socks for Christmas, Winston wants to learn how to knit too and it’s not that he can’t but he gets distracted by how yarn pattern grids kind of look like piano rolls and… it was a whole thing

[tags: #Lena doesn’t really help per day knit so much as she picks out the pattern and the yarn#Emily knits the socks#Winston loves them#he loves them so much#yeah that whole piano roller idea?#he tries to make a loom knitter thing that reads patterns#it uh does not work out#Lena thinks it’s hilarious#even Athena gets into it#she starts reverse engineering patterns#Gabriel would’ve loved her]

After he leaves Overwatch Genji picks up knitting as a means of practicing meditation, he gets really excited about it now and loves making Zenyatta sweaters; Zenyatta by the way, hilariously cannot knit or crochet and gets extremely frustrated by it, Genji likes to endlessly tease him about it

[tags: #Zenyatta cannot knit and I will die on this hill#and it’s the only thing he looses his cool over#it’s the funniest thing in the world#and part of the reason Genji likes knitting so much]

After he was forced to retire Reinhardt taught Brigitte how to knit, Brigitte can’t knit for anything and is constantly adding or dropping stitches but does enjoy it and tries to make her whole family something every year; Torb loves his lumpy turret koozies; Bastion can’t knit or crochet but he is like Torb’s yarn roller on steroids

[tags: #I love people who can’t knit but do it anyway#they’re always so endearing#torbjorn loves everything his daughter knits for him#no Brigitte never gets better at knitting]

Even thought Gabriel tried his best to get her more interested, Fareeha never got the attention span for knitting big projects, which is a shame because she probably has the neatest most consistent stitch in the world, her hats have now graduated to having a pompom on the top though

[tags: #inspired by the relationship between me and my best friend’s mom who taught me to knit#yeah no it took me a long ass time to be interested in anything complicated#she always shames me for not knitting#Gabriel was always so invested in whether Fareeha would ever really get into knitting#he blames Ana#which she does not appreciate#Fareeha just doesn’t want to knit big things#ruins the fun#her hats are very beautiful]

While in Talon Moira continues her hobby and everyone has knitted everything, sweaters, socks, hats, scarves, she even makes beaker koozies; Akande is impressed and also scared and wears every knitted gift Moira gives him, even if he didn’t like them (which he does) he’d wear them

[tags: #Moira's not even that old but she has that grandma vibe that you must wear everything you're gifted at least once#she splurges on the good wool yarn so everything is nice and soft#even Sombra wears her gifts#I love the HC that Akande lives in constant fear of Moira but for really banal things#in his defense he knows hos much work it takes to knit a sweater#and someone who can knit several multiyarn color coded sweaters in a year should be feared]

After Zurich and Gabriel becomes Reaper his mind is often too frazzled to concentrate on knitting or crocheting and can’t get much done anymore; Sombra notices it seems to distress him and tried to figure out what to do so she could do it for him, after he caught her snooping around in his room and she explained herself he agreed to teach her, they’ll curl up together after a mission and he’ll coach her through the project they’re working on, it’s a lot like code writing to her and she catches on quickly

[tags: #becoming reaper messed Gabriel up#he keeps losing count of his stitches and can’t knit anymore#even if he has counters#it upsets and overwhelms him more than anything#sombra just wants to help her favorite soul eater#she finds it curious he used to craft#reaper and sombra knitting together after a mission#they both look up YouTube videos together to figure out how to read patterns#sombra feels like she’s getting one over on Moira]

After Jack basically kidnaps Gabriel (and by proxy Sombra and Widowmaker) back from Talon, Gabriel is shocked to see everyone get together for knitting/crocheting parties in the lounge after missions, Angela works on undoing his reaper state so he can focus and get back to knitting again, Amelie takes up crocheting for therapy after she’s unbrainwashed and becomes very good at lace crocheting

[tags: #jack breaks into talon hauls Gabriel over his shoulder and walks out with him#Gabriel says he has to ovsombra and widowmaker too#so jack does#Angela is surprised to see them all#Winston is surprised it worked#Ana is not surprised at all#Gabriel is so touched learned to knit or crochet#Cole and Genji want to show off what they learned#sombra is not happy to have two brothers]

[insult-2-injury]

ok this is apparently a hot take that I wasn't aware of but is there anything sexier than a mellow summer day? like when ur body is running a lil too hot and a lil sticky and u drape ur hair over the pillow so it doesn't stick to the back of ur neck? u know? yeah u do now let me spin u a yarn: u and silco on a boat. not a gaudy yacht but like a chic sailboat yacht. luxurious but not ostentatious. ur wearing a light fabric, think linen or a very thin cotton and it's letting thru a nice breeze and ur drinking a chic beverage of ur choosing and sitting in front of Mr. Blorbo and he's got his hair pomade free and low key giving casual norman bates aesthetic and ur spending the entire time making tense sexually charged conversation and ur thighs are kind of sticking to the seat but u can't squirm cuz then he'll have won. he says he loves the heat and the sand (anakin is seething rn) and that gin is perfect for summer. you're torn. he's a stranger you've just met but you want to spend some more time with him. it's been hours though. the sun is falling and ur getting colder. really? he says, i feel feverish and looks u. dead. in. the. eyes. pregnant pause. he gets up and calls to the captain (sevika dressed as Popeye) to go back to shore and ur floundering. how will you see each other again? when u make it to the mainland he helps u up, cool hand clasping yours—bullshit he's feverish!—and you stumble into him, a little tipsy. he slides his fingertips gently around your arms and bids you goodnight. he says he'll be here tomorrow too, same time as today. are u going back? that's up to u. I'll put on the agent provocateur mazzy 2 piece swimsuit and I'll tell him to leave Sevika behind so he can teach me to sail <3. no other reason <3.

sorry I can’t help but picture him running in place like scooby doo trying to get off that boat because he’s terrified of the water

[rederiswrites]

Feel free to ignore this if you want but you post interested me. I don't disagree about what you said re: fiberartists in the apocalypse but there are some notable reasons why they're still somewhat useful? If you're stationary they become a lot less useful more quickly, they use up most faber materials unless you keep livestock but idk enough about livestock to think out how practical that is off the top of my head. However not all clothes, especially not most of the clothes worn by people in their physical prime (in the western world and some industrialized nations) is actually of that high a quality. Fast fashion is a big industry and people are going to need replacements faster than you think if they're clothes are suddenly enduring the physical labor of apocalypse survival. Not to mention that cleanliness is crucial to not dying so there will need to be at least a small amount of clothes to cycle for people who can't wash it everyday. If you're moving there's always the possibility of gathering fiber material, a higher chance of trading with others, but also a higher chance of chaffing of the cloth being a more immediate problem. Then there's the question of other vital cloth items, such as bags and blankets, and the ability to make something out of flag flexible material to meet other unexpected situations likely has a bit of value on its own. Now, people who can sew and sewing machines (if you can get one that doesn't require electricity, I'm not sure) are probably the most cost effective fiber artists and tools. You can find pocket sewing kits at every drug store so thread isn't an issue, and reported olf cloth from MASSIVE catches at clothing stores, rather than hitting up the much smaller yarn or raw fiber sections that you'll find less reliably in cities.

So in conclusion: not all fiber artists are equal in this situation, but their value is pretty far up there behind realiable food sources for people who dream of running a peaceful group, because of the advantages of being able transform some of the most abundant materials in urban environments into tradeable goods. As an individual sewer, with this sales pitch, you might even be able to join a more organized group because of these services, and the ability to teach the valuable skills to others.

Hope you find this as fun to talk about as I do!

Oh I am absolutely going to find this fun to talk about; thank you for a great, engaging ask.

First, I wanna establish that I have mad respect for fiber artists of all sorts. I've spent my life around them, from my mom to a lot of my friends to, I guess you'd call them professional associates? I can do basic garment construction and I'm pretty good at embroidery, but even though I'm used to picking up crafts easily, things like knitting and crochet really elude me. So, again, mad respect.

Second, I am not an expert here. I have approximate knowledge of many things. I know the things I'm about to talk about because I encountered them along the way, not because I've studied it. Any actual experts who wish to chime in would be extremely welcome. Also, since my interest has been in medieval Europe, that's what I know. I would love to know more about other cultures. I'm just assuming that the basic necessities of the subject are applicable across many cultures.

Let's back up. A lot.

Here's a great French manuscript image from the mid 1400's. It illustrates a lot of things relevant to the conversation. So what's going on here?

First, we've got high born ladies involved in these activities. Everyone was, regardless of social status. Before the advent of powered looms and spinning machines (ca. 1770-1790), the textile industry was an all-consuming activity that most women and many men spent part or all of their time on. We watch tv. They made textiles. The difference with the highborn ladies is they probably got nicer materials, like imported silks and expensive dyestuffs.

Second, there are many people involved in the many steps. We've got the lady in pink with the hackles/combs doing the initial aligning and cleaning of the fibers. Lady in white is carding the wool, which is the next and finer prep stage, using brushes that look a lot like a cat brush, but bigger. Lady in red is spinning the fiber thus processed with a drop spindle, which is a super slow way to do it and a real bottleneck in the textile process. Which is why in so many images of women in the fields/literally anywhere, they have their distaff and spindle. They just did it all the damn time. And the queen is obviously weaving. There are also steps both before (rearing and shearing or growing, harvesting, and retting) and after (dyeing and fulling) these.

Textiles, as far back as I know anything about, were an entire industry, involving many unrelated people and international trade. Not often, even in, say, Mesopotamia, were they a cottage industry performed beginning to end by one person or group. This is because that was wildly impractical, always. And would be wildly impractical in our theoretical post-industrial future, as well.

Okay, never can resist a history lesson but hopefully that'll tide me over for now.

Uhh...what's next? Mobility! So actually I'm gonna go totally opposite you on this one--in a theoretical situation where we're still all roaming around as refugees, very few fiber artists would be of much use at all. The sheer amount of material needed is...a lot. Knitters and crocheters can at least carry their tools around, but even a regular scarf might take as much as three skeins of yarn. At least two for socks. You can get a hat out of one, depending on the yarn, but a sweater? At least four, maybe six. You can see how that gets to be a really big Santa sack there. And that's assuming the pre-existence of the yarn. (Which is actually fair, every knitter ever has an out of control yarn stash.) Fortunately, I don't think we'd roam about as refugees for decades. That's just a pretty untenable situation long-term, as lots of refugees can confirm.

So. You CAN use old treadle sewing machines for garment construction. I even know people who bring them to events to finish commissions or do tailoring without power. But they are heavy and bulky, like, a lot. And some nomadic cultures have made fabric with portable backstrap looms, but they're slow and physically demanding. Most looms, as you can see above, are really big and not even remotely portable.

And creating the fiber, saving the sudden re-emergence of entire pastoral herding societies (in a world which no longer has large stretches of grazing land), absolutely demands long term stability. Flax produces one crop a year. Sheep get sheared once a year. And so on. Collecting fiber as you go has, so far as I know, never been the way a culture has obtained textile materials. Nature on its own mostly produces fiber that's good for like, cordage or netted bags, that sort of thing. Useful, but not about clothing.

Anyway omg I need to do things besides this ask this is so long. Final point: my husband and I, my anecdotal evidence for how long clothing lasts when you actually wear it out, actually DO perform dirty physical labor on the regular. Jacob is a blacksmith and is out in the shop nearly every night. He spent the weekend in the woods with a chainsaw. And I take care of chickens, ducks, and sheep daily, and during the warmer months, extensive gardening projects. We live on a 24 acre farm. Jacob has bought like six t-shirts in maybe the entire time we've been together (nearly 20 years), and all of those are in the special drawer for going out. At home, he wears pretty exclusively t-shirts from high school and freebies from groups and events. At work, he wears thrift store dress shirts and the annual nice shirts his mom gives him for Christmas. (She skipped that this year and I gotta tell her she can't be doing that or her son will go to meetings with stained collars lol.)

UGH TL;DR: People buy vastly more clothing than they need, hardly ever wear it out, and could manage with the surplus for decades. Meanwhile, creating textiles is an incredibly involved task, and before the industrial revolution it consumed vast amounts of everyone's time, and would do so again in a theoretical post-industrial world. Fiber artists are badasses and I love them but even the ones who focus specifically on creating wearable fabric (which is very few) consider the creation of a complete outfit to be a major project.

[trashpandacraft]

i mostly try not to do these calculations, because it kinda bums me out, but when i do, i feel that it's worth considering my relative skill level and what i might have learned in the process, as well.

do you feel that you're learning? are your skills developing? because if so, there's probably value that's being provided to you, and it sort of reduces the value of the hours worked. it's like having an apprentice or trainee do work for you—i used to get relatively inexpensive dental care for my kid at the local dental school. it was a fraction of the price of going to a professional dentist, but the trade off was that it took longer because they'd consult with their supervisors, discuss various potential ways to do things, etc.

similarly, many countries have employment laws that allow apprentices or trainees to work at less than minimum wage or the standard wage for that field. historically, apprentices often worked for free, and received food, lodging, clothing, and education for their trouble.

it sounds like—and from following you, i don't think that—you've done a ton of blending, for example. people who are very experienced with it would probably be a lot faster than you are, because you're still learning, and may or may not have all the tools and skills that you need to do it efficiently. i don't know that i'd value the blending time at nothing, but i also don't think that you can evaluate it as an hourly rate—if this is an estimate that you really want to make, you probably need to figure out how long it would take a professional (or a skilled layperson, or whatever) to do it, and then integrate that (or a percentage of that) as a flat rate into the cost calculations.

imo you should approach spinning, etc, the same way. not by finding, like, the fastest spinners in the world, but by researching how much a skilled spinner can reasonably produce in an hour.

if the dental school i went to had charged by the hour, it would've been a terrible deal—a cleaning that might take twenty minutes at the dentist could take an hour there. but it's clearly absurd to expect someone to pay several times as much because the person doing the work is new to the job. this is the kind of loss that businesses eat when they take on new employees, or the kind of loss (in productivity and materials) that people have always had to accept when teaching skills to younger people. you can't learn to do something, let alone get good at doing it, without actually doing it, you know? and you have to allow people, including yourself, the grace and patience and materials to learn.

which is, i guess, to say that i think you have a fundamental error in your math. for you (and for me, and for probably most people on tumblr), right now, there are two products: the coat, and the experience you gained from making the coat.

it's hard to disentangle the two, but if you want to get a realistic idea of what a reasonable sale price might be, i feel like you have to make some effort on that front, and be realistic about your own skill level. which is uncomfortable! i hate being reminded that literally every fourteen-year-old girl in the middle ages was a better spinner than i'm likely to ever be, but the fact remains that they were, and we can confirm that by looking at the quality that's still produced by children in traditional communities. look, for example, at this random youtube clip of children spinning in peru. (it was the first thing that came up when i googled.)

look how fast they are! look how even and strong that yarn looks! look how efficient they are! look how masterfully they double draft, pulling out slubs from fibre that's clearly been processed, but is nowhere near as processed as what you might buy from a fibre mill. those kids aren't even pubescent yet, and i'd bet that they're already more consistent spinners than most of us will ever be.

i'm not saying that the value of your labour should be nothing, but 400 hours of work by someone who's done something two or three times isn't the same as 400 hours of work done by someone who's spent twenty or thirty years doing this one thing.

we often say, advocating for reasonable prices for textile goods, that fibrecraft is a skilled work. and it is! but that means that we have to become skilled at it. it means that it's a process, and that it doesn't make sense to charge—even in your head, even just to yourself—the rates of a master crafter when you aren't a master of it yet.

anyhow, all that to say: alden amos has numbers on how long it takes an experienced worker to prep and spin fibre, and they'd be a decent place to start if you're thinking about flat-rate work-hours numbers to use as a baseline.

from raw wool, he reckons eight hours to produce a pound of rolags (including washing, picking, carding, etc.)

he mentions in a footnote that producing 125 yards of short-forward draw in an hour is "finger-wigglin' good"

he says that a spinner could spin "as much as four ounces of wool" (this is about 115g) in an hour, but that seems to be an optimistic, best-case assessment, and rather chunky yarn

Whenever I make something, I like to go through the mental gymnastics of deciding what the sale price would be for the finished product, regardless of if I intend on selling it or not.

This has historically been a simple process of material costs, fixed costs, and labour.

This has become decidedly more complex as I acquire more skills that add extra steps to the calculation process.

For instance:

I wanted to make this coat so I buy some fibre for spinning.

But they don't sell a roving I like so I decide to buy multiple solids and blend them into my own roving using some hand carders.

This step is taking ages.

There is no way I could account for the labour of manually blending into the cost of the yarn, so I guess I would just take the raw fibre cost as my material cost?

But that feels wrong given the effort so I'm stuck at how to get passed blending.

Next comes spinning, do I add the time it takes to actively spin/ply/finish the yarn or is it wiser to just take a percentage of the fibre cost and tack it onto the material costs?

That seems wisest so maybe that is how I account for the blending process too?

From that point on, it's just mat cost and time plus the skilled labour and fixed costs for tool maintainance.

By the end of it all, I have a coat that is stupidly priced for the average buyer or an item that is reasonably priced for the buyer but is undervaluing my labour.

I don't really have a point to this post >.<

I just hoped that maybe someone could point out something glaringly wrong with my logic that makes this all suddenly math out in a satisfying manner.

[wigs-and-wonder]

Week Seven May 15th-May 21st: Museum (Part 2/4—Crafts)

May 18th is National Museum Day! This could be a great chance for your dolls to show off their favorite museums, or it could be a great week to focus on all the things museums promote learning about: history, science, art, you name it, show your dolls learning about these things or let them take this chance to teach us all about something they’re passionate about!

Well, my roommate and I (and Kirsten) took a trip down the Valley to an old Mill-turned-Museum that is one of the only surviving pre-Civil War Mills in the Shenandoah Valley. I took a lot more pictures than I thought I did, so this week’s challenge will be addressed in 4 different posts (sorted by the sort of exhibit/item)!

 The crafter in me just couldn’t resist nabbing pictures of various handcraft work throughout the museum:

-Quilts and Hats! (Apparently one family wanted to buy the mill...but changed their mind and went into millinery instead!)

-A quilting square—it just reminded me so much of Kristen’s springtime story (the quote reads ‘nothing in this life is permanent’ and it’s dated 1886)

-2 different cross-stitch samplers

-A dress, one of the few surviving homespun dresses and very similar in construction to the dress I made for Kristen from her patterns!

-A wool (spinning) wheel and a weaving loom

-Examples of several kinds of handspun yarn and linen, provided by a local craftswoman!

 Also, this was my first time taking any of my dolls out into a really public place like this (before it had just been local/national parks). It wasn’t super crowded and the only person to say anything at all was the lady working the front desk (I asked first to be sure it was alright to take pictures/bring Kristen in), and her only comment was how much she liked Kristen’s hair and dress, so that makes me feel better/braver!  

(Part 1—Toys; Part 3—Miscellaneous; Part 4—Humor and Ducks)

[woodelf68]

Lessons Learned And Praise Well Earned

@lokijiro prompted: "Frigga regularly reads books to her tiny sons. One day, she realises that Loki can read, even though she hasn’t really started teaching him yet." Loki is around the equivalent of 3 years old here, and let's say Thor is somewhere between 5 and 6. Word count: 5918

----------

Odin eyed his eldest son. Thor was not usually one to dawdle over meals, but he was quite clearly dawdling now. Since he wasn't putting any more food on his plate, Odin assumed Thor was done with his breakfast, but instead of saying anything he was just sitting there quietly, fiddling with his spoon, as if he didn't want to call attention to himself.

"If you're finished eating, Thor," Odin said, not ungently, but very much aware of the time, "I will walk you down to your tutor." It was not far; they had set up an unused room at the opposite end of the family wing as Thor's new classroom, but Odin wished to personally introduce Thor to Master Egilson and see his son settled in before descending to the lower levels of the palace and beginning his own day's work.

Thor sighed and put his spoon down with a clank and pushed his chair back. He wasn't sure how he felt about starting formal lessons with a tutor. On the one hand, it meant he was growing up and was one step closer to being able to train as a warrior, on the other hand, he wanted to go outside and play as he usually did every morning instead of going to sit in a stuffy old room learning...well, whatever it was that he was going to be learning. He had been trying to take a cautious wait and see attitude towards it all, except every time he looked at his little brother, Loki looked so forlorn at being forced to stay behind in the nursery that Thor felt horribly like he was deserting his brother.

"I'm ready," he said resignedly, standing up without any enthusiasm whatsoever.

Odin got to his feet as well and clasped a reassuring hand on Thor's shoulder. "It's all right to be nervous on your first day," he said. "But I'm sure you'll do well."

"It's not that," said Thor. "It's just that Loki -- "

As if one cue, Loki jumped up from his place at the table, his own breakfast nearly untouched in his unhappiness. "Are you sure I can't come too?" he pleaded, looking at his father. "I'll be good; I wouldn't cause any trouble."

"Oh no, sweetheart." Frigga rose and stepped up behind him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. "You're too young. But we'll have fun while Thor's gone, I promise, and it's only for a half day. He'll be back for lunchtime and then you can have the rest of the afternoon to play before dinner."

"But it's not only a half day," protested Loki. "It's a half day every day." He could feel the tears starting to gather on his eyes and his lower lip trembled. "For... forever ."

Odin's lip twitched. "Not quite." He didn't mention that Thor's half days would at some point become full days of lessons, because he could see that Loki was quite distressed enough already. "Yes, your schooling will go on until you grow up, for there are a great many things that you will need to learn as princes of this realm. But you will be able to join Thor in his studies long before that, and then it won't seem so bad, eh? But for now you have your own very important job to do, right here."

"I do?"

"Mm-hm." A few steps took him from Thor's side to Loki, and he bent and reached down, Loki immediately lifting his arms in response. Odin picked him up and settled him on his hip, looking Loki in the eyes. "I know you're going to miss Thor, but your mother was telling me just this morning how glad she was that she would still have you to keep her company while Thor went off to his lessons. And I was glad too, for I don't like to think of your mother being sad and lonely any more than I want you to be."

"Oh." Loki twisted around and looked back at his mother.

"It's true," Frigga confirmed. "I've been looking forward to the chance to spend some time alone with just you, the way I did with Thor before you were born."

"Oh," said Loki again, his brow furrowing. He hadn't thought that his mother might miss Thor, too. "So my job is to keep Mama company? So she's not lonely?"

"It is. Can I rely on you to do that?"

Loki nodded. He didn't want to think of his mother being sad, either. "Yes, Papa."

"That's my good boy," Odin said approvingly, and kissed him before handing him off into Frigga's waiting arms. "Now, Thor." He held out his hand, and Thor slipped his own smaller one into it without hesitation. "Let's not keep your tutor waiting."

Thor took a deep breath, but he did feel a little better about leaving Loki now. He squared his shoulders. "All right. I’ll see you later, Loki.”

"’Bye." Loki gave a tiny wave.

"Have a good day, my son."  Frigga went over and pressed a kiss to the top of Thor's head. "Loki and I will come and get you at lunchtime; stay with your tutor until then."

“I can walk back to the nursery on my own.”

“But we might not be in the nursery. And besides, I wish to speak to your tutor this first day and I think Loki might enjoy seeing your classroom.”

“Oh. Very well.”

Frigga waited until Thor had followed his father out of the room before turning and surveying the remains of Loki's breakfast with a frown. "Hey." She jiggled him gently. "Do you think you can eat a little more of your breakfast now? And then when you're finished, we can go down to the garden."

And Loki, his throat feeling less tight than it had earlier, found that he could.

----------

Outside, without Thor to pull him away into whatever game he wanted to play, Loki stayed close by Frigga's side, following her around as she tended to the plants, a subdued and quiet little shadow. She didn't bother trying to draw him out, figuring that would come naturally after Thor returned from his lessons in the afternoon; instead she filled the silence by telling him the names of all the herbs and flowers, and what they were good for -- cooking and medicines and scenting things, teas and potions and dyes. When he roused enough to express interest in the last, she gathered enough material to make up a small dye pot, bundling it with a length of twine and placing it in her basket, figuring she would let him help dye some raw wool and then spin it into yarn for him to play with, a special project just for the two of them while Thor was at his lessons. After that, her clever little son proved he had been paying attention to what she was doing when he began pointing out spent blossoms for her to snip off with her pruning shears, his lower vantage point making it easy for him to spot all those that were closer to the ground.

“Thank you, my darling,” Frigga praised as she bent to snip another dead flower head off, tracing back its stem to where a new bud was forming and making the cut above that. Loki beamed and circled around the shrub, easily navigating the tight space that would have caught at her skirts.

“Here!”

There were three crumbly brown flower heads grouped closely together, half-hidden at the back of the shrub. As soon as Frigga had snipped them off, Loki moved to the next bush, his sharp eyes seeking out browned or drooping flowers, and Frigga had to hasten on, what was usually a leisurely stroll for her turning into an attempt to keep up with Loki’s pointing finger and expectant face as he embraced the hunt like a new game.

“Where next, Mama?” Loki asked as they reached the end of the next row, ready to scamper on ahead.

“Hold, wait a minute,” Frigga said, straightening up and stretching, her back beginning to ache from repeatedly bending over. She thought how much simpler it would be to simply let him snip the dead heads off himself. He was a careful child, far more so than Thor had been at his age, and she thought he might be able to handle a pair of pruning shears safely without hurting himself, at least on the easier to trim plants -- nothing thorny, or that had thicker, woody branches. “Loki, if I could find or have made a smaller pair of shears that would fit your hand, would you like your own pair so you can trim off the flower heads yourself?”

Loki’s face lit up. “Yes!”

“I’ll see if I can find some, then. You’ve been a very good helper to me this morning. What say we do that area under the trees and then go back inside and you can pick out some books for me to read to you?”

Loki turned and skipped backwards in front of her. “When will I get my shears?”

Frigga laughed and dropped her own into the pocket of the apron she wore to protect her clothes. “I’m not sure; I’ll ask the head gardener if they can know where I could get any small enough for you, but I really think the smith might need to make them special. Perhaps in two or three days; it depends on how busy they are. Here, turn around and watch where you’re going; I don’t want you to trip.”

It was cool and pleasant in the shade of the trees after being in the warm, bright sun, but by the time they got back to the nursery, Frigga was ready to pour herself and Loki glasses of the cold lemonade that she had sent for,  and then settle herself in the comfortably cushioned window seat, a light breeze blowing in fresh around them. Loki scrambled up to sit beside her with the selection of books he had chosen and leaned into her side, looking at the pages of the picture books as she began to read. When she noticed it was time to go pick up Thor, Loki jumped down and made for the beautifully carved wooden door leading into the corridor, bouncing impatiently on his heels as she put away the books.

“Come on, Mama,” he said impatiently, and Frigga smiled as she pushed the door open and took his hand in her own.

“There, it was not so bad spending the morning with just me, was it?” She swung their arms together as they walked towards Thor’s classroom.

“No,” Loki admitted. “It was nice. Did I keep you from being sad?”

“You did indeed, my darling. Thank you.” She saw the door at the end of the hall had been propped open and released Loki’s hand, pointing. “Go on.”

Loki ran ahead and into the room, his eyes quickly finding his brother already standing next to a small desk and talking to a pleasant-looking young man. “Thor!” He threw himself at his brother.

A wide grin split Thor’s face as he caught his brother up and lifted him briefly from his feet in an exuberant hug. “Loki! I missed you!” Lowering him back down, Thor put his hands on Loki’s shoulders and turned him towards his teacher, beaming with delight. “Master Egilson, this is my brother Loki.”

“Hello, Prince Loki,” the tutor said with a smile. “Your brother has been telling me a lot about you.”

“Really?”

“Mm-hm. According to Thor, you’re the best little brother in the entire kingdom.”

Loki flushed with pleasure.

“What about me?” asked Frigga from the doorway, smiling. “Did I rate a mention?”

Master Egilson turned and bowed respectfully to her. “You did indeed, your Majesty.” He picked up a paper covered in Thor’s blocky writing from his own, larger desk and read from it. “ My mother is the queen and she is very beautiful and very kind. Everybody loves her .”

Frigga felt her own cheeks pinken. “Oh. Well, what else have you been doing all morning besides saying flattering things about your family, Thor?”

“We did reading and writing and numbers and Master Egilson told me the story about how Asgard was created.”

“I can write,” Loki informed the tutor.

“Can you?” Master Egilson smiled and fetched a clean slate, laying it on Thor’s desk along with a piece of chalk. “Do you want to show me?”

“You don’t have to -- “ Frigga began.

The tutor shook his head. “Nonsense, I would be pleased to see the skills of a future student.”

Loki climbed up onto the chair, kneeling on the seat, and picked up the chalk. The tutor wasn’t surprised to see him begin to write his name -- it was the first thing most children learned -- but instead of scrawling “Loki” in large runes over the whole of the slate, they were unexpectedly small, and neat. He saw why as Loki started a second tidy row underneath them, hesitating briefly over the cross stroke of the nauthiz rune before angling it in the correct direction and finishing up. Loki Odinson , the slate read. The youngest prince glanced up at the tutor expectantly.

“Very good,” Master Egilson said warmly, and meant it. “Your parents must be proud of you.”

“We are,” Frigga assured him, and held out her hand towards Loki. He scrambled down from the chair, looking pleased with himself, and took her hand.

“Can we go now?” asked Thor. “I’m hungry.”

“We may, and lunch should be waiting for us as soon as you wash up. Master Egilson, may I have Thor’s paper to keep?”

“Of course.” The tutor handed her Thor’s writing practice sheet, smiling and tousling Thor’s hair as he took his place at his mother’s other side. “You have good boys; Norns willing, I look forward to many years of teaching them.”

“They say mothers are prejudiced, but I quite agree with you. I couldn't wish for any better.” Frigga smiled down at her sons. “Good day, Master Egilson. Come on, boys.”

Thor chattered animatedly all through lunch, telling them all about his lessons and what he had learned of his tutor. Master Egilson had an older sister, and a young nephew and a niece on the way. His parents were bakers. He, Thor, liked him very much. After they were done eating, Frigga took up a basket of needlework and led her sons outside to the wide lawn, where Thor immediately took off running, calling to Loki to chase him. Loki shot off after him, and Frigga simply sat watching them for a while as they ran about yelling, Loki’s screams of delight just as loud as his brother’s every time that Thor turned and chased after him, Thor deliberately keeping just behind his brother for a while before speeding up and swooping Loki up in a hug that tumbled them both to the ground. When Thor had burnt off the worst of his pent-up energy from the morning, he began practicing his latest accomplishment, setting his hands to the ground and kicking his legs up into the air in a handstand, managing a few wobbly steps forwards before toppling back to the ground. Loki, of course, tried to imitate him, and Thor ceased his own efforts to help, holding Loki’s legs straight up while Loki walked forwards on his hands. Frigga heard him cheer Loki on and felt as if her heart would burst with love for both boys.

“I see the princes are in high spirits today,” a voice said from behind her.

Frigga turned and saw the Lady Gná, and smiled, gesturing to the place on the bench beside her. Lady Gná sat down gracefully.

“They are; they were kept apart from each other for the entirety of three hours this morning while Thor had his first lessons with a tutor and are still rejoicing in their reunion.”

Lady Gná laughed. “How did the lessons go?”

“Quite well, I think. Both the tutor and Thor seemed cheerful enough when I collected Thor. And I think Loki will benefit from having some time where my attention isn’t split between the two of them every day.”

“Mm.” Gná took out her own needlework from a bag hanging at her waist. “I dare say you might enjoy the break, too, or am I wrong? Meaning no disrespect, but your Thor is a boisterous one.”

Frigga laughed and finally took out her own project, although her eyes rarely left the boys for long. “You’re not wrong. Loki was such a blessing in more ways than one; I can’t imagine the handful Thor would be if he didn’t have a brother to play with. It at least gives me a chance to sit down occasionally and just keep an eye on them.” She took a few stitches in her embroidery and smiled in reminiscence. “No one was happier than Thor when Loki started walking -- and I’m sure Loki learned as early as he did because he wanted to keep up with his big brother.” She glanced up again and grinned. “And now look at them.” Both boys were, briefly, upside down at the same time, legs waving in the air.

Lady Gná laughed. “Truly we have a pair of ambitious and talented princes. Who amongst us can say we sought to learn to walk on our hands once we had mastered doing so on our feet?”

Frigga chuckled, and then gave a small exclamation as Loki overbalanced and thumped down hard onto his butt, knocking Thor over as he did so. Nonplussed, the boys righted themselves and looked towards her.

Loki ran over. “Mama, Mama, did you see me? I was standing upside down on my own!”

“I did indeed; we were both very impressed.” She ruffled his black hair. “You remember Lady Gná, don’t you? Sif’s mother?”

Thor made his best bow. “My lady.”

Loki looked around, as if to make sure the aforementioned girl wasn’t here. “Sif bit me,” he said accusingly.

Lady Gná sighed. The last time she had brought her little hellion over to play with the princes had not ended well. “I haven’t forgotten, Loki, and I am sorry. We are trying to teach her better manners, I promise you.”

“See that you do,” he said sternly, and it was so obviously a phrase that he had picked up from his father that both adults had to smother a laugh. Loki leaned against his mother’s legs, suddenly tired now that he had stopped moving.

Frigga smoothed a hand over his curls. “Ready for your nap, sweetheart?” With the disruption in their usual schedule, she’d been waiting to see when and if he looked like he needed one.

Loki frowned. He usually had a nap after lunch, but he also had usually had the whole morning to play with Thor.

“Here,” said Lady Gná briskly, rising and putting her needlework away. “Why don’t you just lie down on the bench and lay your head in your mother’s lap? Close your eyes for a few minutes and if you don’t feel sleepy, then you can get up and start playing again. I shall take a bit more of a walk while Sif is down for her own nap.”

Frigga looked up at her friend gratefully. “Thank you, Gná, and tell Sif hello from me. Come on, Loki, that sounds like a fair suggestion, doesn’t it?” She patted the space beside her, and after a moment, he climbed up and settled himself as suggested.

“Just for a few minutes,” he said.

“I’ll be here when you wake up,” Thor promised, and went in search of a stick with which to practise sword moves. Frigga began to sing softly, and her youngest was asleep in her lap before she’d finished the last verse of the song.

The days fell into a routine. In the mornings, Frigga enjoyed her time spent alone with Loki, working in the gardens or reading to him or pursuing any other paths his interests went down. He had his own specially-made gardening shears now, sized to fit his small hands, and was careful never to put them away dirty. And she’d shown him how to dye wool, and how to make a simple braid from the yarn she’d spun from it, and he had yet to grow tired of wearing the yellowy-green bracelet he’d made from it. In the afternoons the boys played together, and Loki would take a short nap, and then after dinner, they would usually spend some time at the child-sized table in the nursery where the drawing paper and other art supplies were kept, although Thor was now also using it to do small assignments for his tutor on occasion. Frigga often saw their fair and dark heads bent close together, but one night when she came over to see what they were doing, Loki quickly pulled a blank piece of paper over whatever it was he had been working on, and Thor straightened back up in his chair, a list of vocabulary words in front of him.

“Are you making a surprise picture for me?” she guessed.

“Yes,” said Loki, and looked at her expectantly until she took the hint and left them to it. She did get a picture later that night, but she couldn't see why he would have been hiding it; it was fairly similar to his usual offerings, though no less cherished and saved for that. But since whatever was absorbing her boys' interest was giving her an hour or so of peace and quiet every evening, she was perfectly willing to leave them to it.

----------

"Always be polite to a bilgesnipe, there’s really no call to be rude; Always be polite to a bilgesnipe, and he might not decide that you’re food!"

Frigga gave a little "rawr!" in Loki's ear as she read to him from one of his favourite picture books -- the words and pictures silly enough to delight a small child while still conveying the importance of good manners -- and he giggled from his position in her lap, where he was curled up quite happily. A few weeks into Thor’s new schedule of morning lessons, Loki now sent him off quite cheerfully in the mornings, seeming to enjoy the time alone with Frigga as much as she did, seeing her little boy open up about all the things he was interested in now that he didn’t have to wait for a chance to be heard amidst Thor’s chatter. And he obviously relished being able to choose more than one book everyday for storytime, more than content to sit still and listen long after Thor would have gotten restless and begun interrupting with commentary or jumping up to enact out exciting portions of the stories that he’d chosen.

Frigga turned the page and kept reading until she got to her favourite set of pages in the entire book, the illustrations showing a larger boy boosting a smaller one up so that he could reach the plums hanging from a low tree branch. What made the pictures especially endearing to her was the fact that Thor, years ago, had very carefully coloured in the smaller boy's hair -- originally fair like his own -- so that it matched the black of his new little brother's.

"Always be nice to your brother, remember to say 'thank you' and 'please', and if you are nice to your brother, he'll help you pluck fruit from the trees!"

"'Might help'" corrected Loki, pointing at the page. "You left out a word."

Frigga looked at him in surprise. His finger had hovered directly above the word "might".

"You're right," she said. "So I did." Thoughtfully, she turned the page. "Can you read this one?" she asked.

He could, not perfectly, hesitating on some of the bigger words, but he was undoubtedly reading. Frigga hugged him tightly when he had finished reading the rest of the book, Frigga helping out whenever he stumbled on a word. "I am so proud of you! When did you -- "  Yes, he had been pointing at and asking about some of the words in the books lately, but -- “Oh! You and Thor, in the evenings! Has he been helping you with reading?”

Loki nodded. “The more I learn now, the less I’ll have to catch up on when I start lessons. So Thor and I can study together.” His chin jutted out with determination, and Frigga’s heart melted as she hugged him again, already planning to do the same to Thor as soon as she saw him next. It was the walking all over again, Loki not wanting to be left behind, and Thor doing everything that he could to make sure that didn’t happen.

“Well, you have made a very good start of it, and now that I know you’re ready to learn to read, I’ll help you with it every day, too.” Her eyes sparkled. "Shall we practice a bit, and surprise your father tonight?"

Loki's face lit up with pleasure at the thought. "Yes, please."

----------

“Papa!”

“Papa!”

Two small bodies ran at Odin as he entered the family quarters and collided with his legs. He leaned down to hug his sons, the cares of the day slipping from his shoulders in the face of the boys’ happiness in seeing him. It was always one of the best parts of his day.

“Hello, boys. Did you have a good day?” He straightened up and ran a smoothing hand over each boy’s hair.

“Yes, Papa,” they chorused.

Odin looked at them closely, Their smiles seemed even brighter than usual, a certain simmering of excitement under the surface suggesting that they had something to tell him. “Well, let me freshen up and you can tell me all about it at dinner.”

However, once they were all gathered around the table in their private dining room and tucking into a delicious meal, Odin began to wonder if he’d been mistaken when nothing unusual was mentioned when they shared what they’d been doing during the day. That is, until the boys finished eating ahead of everyone else and didn’t ask to be excused, merely sitting and waiting and watching him. Odin took his time enjoying his dessert, once more sure that something was going on as Loki began to fidget in his chair. But it wasn’t until he leaned back in his chair with a contented sigh that Loki looked at his mother hopefully.

“Now, Mama?”

Frigga smiled. "Yes, now."

Loki jumped down from his chair. "Would you like me to read you a story, Papa?" he asked, nearly bouncing with excitement.

"Don't you mean you want me to read you one?" Odin asked.

“No, I’m going to read it to you,” Loki said firmly.

“Ah, very well, then,” Odin said indulgently, thinking that Loki was simply going to recite it as best as he could from memory; Norns knew he was pretty sure he had the entirety of some of the boys’ most favoured books stuck in his own head. “Shall we adjourn to the nursery, then?” He got up and Thor immediately jumped up as well, Frigga rising more gracefully with one of her cryptic smiles on her face and taking his arm when he offered it.

“Papa, does “adjourn” simply mean “to go”?” Thor asked. He knew its general meaning from what Master Egilson called the context of a sentence, but he was learning to pay more attention to the specific meanings of words.

“It means, in this case, that we are moving from one place to another. It can also be used to indicate the stopping of a meeting to be resumed later, for instance “the meeting is adjourned until after lunch”.”

“That’s how Master Egilson used it the other day,” said Thor thoughtfully. “He said classes were adjourned till the morrow.” He liked the sound of the word; it sounded grown-up and important.

Odin nodded, Loki ducking under his arm as he pushed open the heavy door into the hallway and dashing ahead to wait impatiently by the nursery door. “That is a correct usage. Go see if you can help your brother.” He watched as Thor and Loki both put their hands to the nursery door and leaned in, managing to push it open between the two of them. Loki ran to get his book and Odin went to sit down in his usual chair facing the hearth, Frigga taking the other. Thor plopped down on the rug in between them and picked up one of the three dimensional puzzles from the basket on the hearth, fiddling with it.

Loki came back with his book and Odin took it, setting it down next to him before leaning over to help lift Loki up onto his lap. Loki squirmed around for a moment until he was tucked comfortably in the crook of Odin’s arm and held out his hands.

“Ready.”

Odin gave the book to him and Loki opened it and began to read. And Odin’s eye widened as he realised that Loki was indeed reading it, no doubt helped by the familiarity of the verses, but not missing a single word on any of the pages. Occasionally he paused, but never for long, and Odin looked from the book to the expression of concentration on Loki’s face to Frigga, whose cryptic smile had given way to one beaming with pride. Even Thor, sitting at his feet and listening, grinned up at Odin when Loki finished the book in triumph.

"Loki can read!" Thor announced needlessly. "Did he surprise you?"

"He did indeed." He looked back down at Loki, who was gazing up at him expectantly. "That was very well done, Loki; I am most impressed. I didn't even know that your mother had started teaching you to read yet."

"I hadn't," said Frigga dryly. "He partly picked it up all by himself, just following along when I read and asking the occasional question -- and partly because Thor has been helping him ever since he started his own lessons, because Loki doesn’t want to waste any time catching up once he’s allowed to join him.”

Odin looked from one son to another in amazement. Mine, he thought with a fierce surge of pride. My boys. He spared a second to think scornfully of Laufey, and what a fool he had been to so casually throw away the great gift he had been given in Loki. His now, though, and he would make sure that Loki’s intellect and talents were nurtured instead of wasted.

“I am so proud of both of you,” he said warmly. “You, Thor, for helping your brother, and you, Loki, for learning to read so early!  My clever, clever boy." Giving him an extra tight squeeze, Odin kissed the top of Loki's head and saw the tips of Loki’s ears redden in shy pleasure at the praise, but he was grinning as he gave a little wriggle of delight in Odin’s lap. Odin decided to tease him a little. "Does this mean that you won't need me to read you any more stories now, though?"

"No! I like it when you read them to me too," Loki hastily assured him.

Odin’s eye twinkled. "Very well then. Why don't you pick out another one and I'll read it to you and Thor this time."

"I'll get one!" Thor jumped up and raced over to the low bookshelves that held their books. "Is this one all right, Brother?" He pulled one out and held it up for Loki to see.

Loki nodded, too content with his position in his father's lap to get down and pick out another. He drew his legs up and turned so he could lay his head against his father’s chest, Odin’s arm tightening around him and holding him secure. Thor came back and offered the book he’d chosen to his father and leaned comfortably against the side of his chair, folding his arms atop the chair’s leather-padded arm and resting his chin atop them.

“I Want To Be A Warrior,” Odin read. The book’s cover showed a young boy looking up at a man clad in the armour of the Einherjar. The book spoke of what it meant to be a warrior, to swear oneself to the defense of the kingdom, and went on to describe all the things a boy training to be a warrior would learn as they grew to manhood. Thor had already memorised what all the different pieces of armour and the different types of weapons were called with all of the single-minded focus that a young child could turn on something that they were deeply interested in.

“I want to be a warrior,” Odin read. “I want to serve my realm, and my king. I will fight to protect my home, and my people.”

“I must be strong ,” recited Thor. “I must be brave."  His eyes were bright with fervour.

Glancing at him, Odin had no trouble imagining his son grown tall, clad in bright armour and with a sword sheathed at his side. Thor listened with rapt attention and an occasional interjection, and Odin had reached the unlabeled illustrations near the end of the book which allowed a boy to test his memory before he wondered if he should have been involving Loki more in the reading of this book. He glanced down at his son, but Loki looked contented enough snuggled against him, his head resting right over Odin’s heart and a sleepy half smile on his face. A soft smile touched Odin’s face in return as he remembered learning that trick, that an unhappy baby could be soothed by the sound of their parent’s heart, recalling all the times he had half-dozed off himself in the nursery with a sleeping babe sprawled atop his chest, afraid to move lest he wake them before he could return them to their cradle or cot. Loki especially had seemed to crave that close contact even more than Thor had, and Odin had often wondered darkly in those early days how long Loki had lain there alone in that temple before he had found him, before Loki had learned the sound of his father's heartbeat and that it meant comfort and safety and no longer being alone, even before he had learned the sound of his mother's. It still filled Odin with satisfaction that even now, with Loki happy and flush with accomplishment and the success of his surprise, that his son obviously found comfort in the sound, in his presence. He rubbed Loki’s back gently; he would miss it when his boys were no longer small enough to hold entirely within the safety of his own arms.

“Papa, turn,” Thor prompted, when he realised his father had become distracted.

“Hm? Oh, sorry.” Odin turned the page and Thor touched the illustration of a sword, moving his finger along it as he named the parts of it.

“Pommel, hilt, crossguard, tang, blade,” Thor rattled off, no doubt dreaming of the day when he would have a real sword of his own.

“Very good,” said Odin, and briefly ran his hand over Thor's silky hair as Thor moved on to enthusiastically list all the various types of polearms shown on the facing page. Glancing up, he saw Frigga watching them with the same deep contentment in her eyes that he could feel in his heart. No doubt one day both their sons would be fine, strong warriors. But for now, he liked them exactly the way they were.

[another-tmnt-writer]

The Quarantine Chronicles

Turtles x Reader

Author: Admin Mo

Prompt: There were a few of you that asked for being quarantined with the turtles, so here you go <3

Note: There’s one part for each turtle <3 Thanks so much for 3.5k!! I love you guys!!!

Warnings: Mentions of quarantine/the virus, but other than that, none??

Word Count: 1.5k

Intro

“Well, it’s confirmed.” Donnie pulled his goggles up onto the top of his head, his brothers looking at him, anticipation in their eyes. “We can’t contract or carry the virus.”

“We’re immune?” Leo checked.

Donnie nodded, typing rapidly into his computer. “Not only that, but we don’t have the ability to infect anybody either. Which means…”

“Yep, I’ll call her.” Raph dialed your number to deliver the good news.

“Hell yeah!!!” Mikey cheered skipping out of the lair.

***

It took about an hour for you to gather all of the things you’d need during quarantine and head down to the lair. The boys were waiting anxiously for your arrival, all of them sad about the circumstances but glad that it meant you got to spend some quality time with them. If there was anything they knew how to do, it was pass the time. After all, they’d basically been quarantined for the better part of fifteen years before they were finally allowed on the surface.

The boys set up a nice little bed for you. It was an air mattress, but Raph had knitted you a big red blanket during some of his time in the hashi, and it was warm and cozy, and Donnie had gathered a bunch of pillows, so pushed up against the wall, it was a perfect little cozy corner for you.

Sure, it wasn’t perfect, but you knew that in the lair, you’d be safe.

Leo x Reader ~ Stress Baking

“Ooh, that smells good. What are you making?” Leo had followed his nose to the kitchen, only to find you sitting on the counter wearing an apron.

“Oreo cheesecake cupcakes.” You replied, looking up at him and smiling, your legs kicking from your spot on the counter. “One of my favorite recipes.”

“You’ve been doing a lot of baking since you got down here. Are you…alright?”

“Oh, I’m fine.” You replied, nodding. “I call this: controlling what you can when things feel out of control.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “Stress baking.”

“Yes. Stress baking. Instead of writing my essay for Human Origins.” You shrugged. “I’ll do it when these are done.”

“I keep forgetting you’re still doing school stuff with all this going on.” Leo walked into the kitchen and leaned against the counter opposite you, crossing his arms. “That’s rough.”

“It really is. I’m making it work, though. I’m fine. I’m…I’m making it work.”

The oven dinged, so you hopped down from the counter and slipped on your oven mitts, pulling the tray of cupcakes out of the oven. They looked perfect. Now, they just needed to chill in the fridge for a few hours.

“Hang in there, okay?” Leo tilted his head, a concerned look in his blue eyes. “You’ve got us if you need any help with anything. I’m no expert on evolution or anything, but I’m sure Donnie is.”

“I’ll make sure to let you know if I need any help.” You nodded. After you turned the oven off, you turned to Leo and gave him a hug, which he gladly reciprocated, holding you tight in his arms. “Thank you.”

Leo rested his head against yours, pressing a soft kiss to your hairline. “Any time.”

Raph x Reader ~ New Hobbies

“Okay, so stick the needle in. Yep just like that. And then loop the yarn around. Yep, good job. And then…uh…here, let me see what you did…” Raph held up your knitting project, spinning it around to look at it. “I don’t know why it looks like that…”

You’d never seen him so patient before, but when you’d asked him to teach you how to knit, he’d been more than willing. Excited, even.

“Sorry I’m so bad at this…”

“No, yer not bad, believe me, it took me a long time to learn. It just takes practice is all.” Raph reassured you. “Why don’t…Hmm…”

“What?” You chuckled at the focused look on his face as he fixed the mistake you’d made.

Raph handed you the knitting needles and then sat crisscrossed on the floor. He patted his legs, motioning you over. “Come here, shorty, I think I know how to teach you.”

You crawled into his lap and he picked you up and repositioned you so that your back was against his plastron. He positioned your hands correctly, taking your little human hands in his giant green three-fingered ones. He walked you through the motions slowly, sticking the needle into the loop, wrapping the yarn around the needle, making the new loop, and then dropping the old one.

“Ohhhhhhhh that makes sense.” You nodded, everything finally clicking into place. “Could you do that one more time for me?”

“Yep. Like this. In, around, through, and off. In, around, through, off.” He did it a few more times so you could get used to the motion. “Alright, now you try.” He took his hands away, leaving you to do it on your own.

“In…around? Through…” you moved the needles, manipulating the yarn carefully. “Off. Like that?”

“You did it! Good job!”

“Thank you for teaching me!”

Raph hugged you, his arms wrapping around your waist. He leaned forward and kissed your cheek. “Anything for my favorite student.”

Donnie x Reader ~ Bleach and Dye

“Okay, so the box says you shouldn’t leave it on for any longer.” Donnie read the label on the box of bleach for the thirteenth time. “Ready?”

“Yep.” You leaned back in the chair you had pushed against the sink, and Donnie helped rinse the bleach out. Next, he helped you blow-dry it. You looked at your reflection, tilting your head. “I think it’s cute.”

“It’s a good look for you.” Donnie agreed, still uncertain how you’d roped him into this crazy scheme of yours. “Are you sure you want to go further?”

“Yep. I want to be purple.” You slid the little container of dye to him and his eyes widened.

“Well, alright…” Donnie exhaled, shaking his head. He read the instructions on the dye container and then started brushing it onto your hair from the tips to the roots. “Have you ever done this before?”

“Nope. But everyone on TikTok is doing it, so it was about time.” You shrugged, grinning as Donnie very carefully brushed the dye onto your bleached hair.

“I mean, if it makes you feel better with all this going on, then I guess it’s worth a try.”

“That’s my logic exactly.” You grinned and took a sip of your chai latte. You held it up to him so he could take a sip, and he did.

At first, Donnie had been a little squeamish of sharing straws, but since you had been around so much offering him sips of every frozen coffee or iced tea recipe you came up with, it didn’t bother him anymore.

“That’s good. Soymilk?”

“Vanilla soymilk.”

“Mmm, interesting.” He grinned.

The two of you sat around talking for a while before his timer went off and it was time to wash the dye out. He helped you rinse it out once again, drying it off with a blow dryer until finally, you straightened up to look at in the mirror. You squealed, beaming.

“It looks so good!!! Thank you Donnie!!!” You jumped up and latched onto him, your legs wrapped around his hips.

He grinned and grabbed onto your thighs, securing you in place better. “Of course, princess. Glad I could help.”

Mikey x Reader ~ When All Else Fails…Art

“So you take the Ziploc bag and you color on it with the markers you want like this.” You showed him, scribbling a random shape onto the clear plastic with an orange marker. “And then you pick another color, so pink.” You colored some more surrounding the orange blob, but not touching it. “And then I’m adding some yellow.”

“Okay…” Mikey watched intensely, very interested in the art technique you’d found on the internet. He was using some blue and green on his bag, and once you were done with the yellow, he used some of that too. “Now what?”

“And then you dip your fingers into the water and flick it where the marker is.”

“Alright.” Mikey nodded, dipping one giant finger into the water and copying you, flicking water onto the places where the color was.

“And then you mix it around like this.” You smudged the color with your fingertip, smearing it and blending the spots between different colors.

“Okay…” Mikey still wasn’t sure what this was supposed to accomplish, but he did it anyway.

“And then…and this is the cool part. You flip it onto the paper and press down.”

“WOAHHHHHH THAT’S SO COOL!” He exclaimed, spreading the color out on his paper. “Where did you learn how to do this, dudette?”

“On the internet.” You smiled, peeling the bag off of your paper and admiring your pseudo-water color masterpiece. It looked like a sunset. You handed it to Mikey. “For you, sir.”

He held a hand over his heart, gasping. “For ME?”

“Mmhmm.”

“I’m gonna frame this and put it on my bunk.” Mikey tackled you in a bear hug, pressing a dozen kisses to your cheek. “Thank you, angelcakes. I love it.”

[e-milieeee]

tongue-tied (hearts entwined)—Marichat

Summary: Chat Noir has the annoying habit of sticking his tongue out whenever he's concentrating. Marinette hates that she finds it (and him) ridiculously cute.

Now all she has to do is get through the denial.

Notes: For @emsylcatac! Happy birthday, even if I’m a bit late. I know you’re a Ladynoir stan but... it’s Marichat May+Chat blepping :D 

(The last scene is also inspired by this gorgeous piece of art by @australet789! I couldn’t resist sneaking it in lol) 

Or click here to read on AO3! 

tongue-tied (hearts entwined) 

The first time Marinette notices the habit, she brushes it off.

Chat Noir sits on the balcony with her as he attempts to disentangle a ball of yarn from his body. He had claimed that no, he hadn’t in fact been chasing it and it was most definitely not his fault (meaning that it most likely was).

Now, he is wrapped like a Christmas present in neon yellow string. Marinette refuses to help him, so Chat yanks and pulls and stretches the yarn with utmost focus—all with his tongue poking out of his mouth.

Marinette watches him. He doesn’t even seem to notice her presence and only continues in his concentration. His tongue does not return to its rightful place (out of sight, out of mind)—it continues to stick out in the most obnoxiously adorable way ever and Marinette is almost tempted to tell him to shove it back in so she can stop finding him cute.

Before she can do so, Chat Noir lets out a groan. His tongue swipes over his lips and disappears, to Marinette’s relief (and disappointment). “Cataclysm,” he grumbles under his breath.

With that, he cataclysms the yarn to free himself. It falls to black dust all around him like ashes.

“What?” Chat asks when he sees her staring. “It was efficient. Don’t look at me like that.”

Marinette blinks and shakes her head. Had she found him cute just a moment ago? No, she decides. Obnoxious, maybe, but definitely not cute.

(No way.)

***

It happens a couple more times before Marinette realizes that it’s become a problem.

They’re playing video games in her room, an odd little routine they’ve developed. Chat Noir is surprisingly enthusiastic about beating her in Ultimate Mecha Strike III, which, so far, he has not been able to do.

Marinette makes the mistake of sneaking a glance at him in the middle of a match. He’s holding the controller, staring at the screen with the same intensity he often directs at akumas, and, best—no, worst of all, his tongue is sticking out of his mouth again.

She stares at him for a little too long. A little too long turns to really, really too long, because Marinette is only snapped out of her thoughts when Chat Noir throws his hands up with a triumphant whoop. “I won!” he crows at her, and Marinette turns to look at the screen in dismay.

Sure enough, he had finally bested her. The stats flash across the screen—he’d only won by a margin, but he had won nonetheless, breaking her streak of eighteen wins and zero defeats. Now, a red 1 flashes across the screen under her losses, and Marinette groans.

“No fair,” she complains. “I was distracted for a second. You wouldn’t have won if I weren’t.”

“Distracted?” Chat frowns at her. “Distracted by what?”

Your tongue does not suffice as an answer. Not unless she wants to die of embarrassment and shame. As Marinette fumbles for an acceptable reply, Chat sets down his controller and leans forward. “Admit it,” he grins, infuriously smug. “I won fair and square.”

Marinette pushes his nose away from her. Her face is burning. “I’m going to kick your ass harder next time, and you’re going to regret this.”

His grin widens. “I’d like to see you try.”

(He’s not cute. Just annoying.)

***

Chat comes by to bake when Marinette’s parents are out of town one day. He asks her to teach him how to make macarons, but it’s a far too advanced skill for his limited scope. So instead, they come to an agreement to make Chinese pineapple buns. Now, standing shoulder to shoulder, Marinette teaches him to knead dough.

He’s all wide eyes and concentration, tongue peeking out from the corner of his mouth as he follows her movements. Marinette forgets about rolling her own dough in favor of watching him. His ears are sticking up straight on top of his head.

He’s so annoyingly cute.

“Okay!” Chat suddenly announces. “Is this good enough—Marinette? Is there something on my face?”

“Huh?” she looks at him, looks at the dough, looks at her own unfinished one, and promptly feels her face flush. Then, against all better judgement, Marinette blurts, “Why do you always stick your tongue out like that?”

“Like what?” Chat tilts his head slightly then sticks his tongue straight out. “Likthe thith?”

“No!” Marinette practically yelps, then throws her hands up. “Your dough isn’t ready! Stop slacking!”

He purposefully keeps his tongue out the whole time until Marinette is shaking from laughter.

(Maybe he’s cute. Slightly.)

***

“It’s called blepping,” Chat Noir tells her.

“What?” Marinette looks up from her project. “What’s called what?”

“Apparently cats do it too,” he continues. “Stick their tongue out, that is.”

“Well,” Marinette tells him, nearly tripping over her words. “You’re not actually a cat.”

“I don’t appreciate you telling me what I can be and what I can’t be,” Chat sniffs back. “Besides, it’s not a problem for anyone, so I don’t see why I can’t embrace my cat instincts.”

“Cat instincts,” she parrots under her breath. “Yeah, right.”

“Wait. You’re not bothered by it, right, Mari?”

Marinette snorts. “Who, me? Why would I be bothered?”

Chat shrugs. “See? Then it’s whatever.”

It’s not whatever, but Marinette isn’t going to let him know that. A moment later, when he’s focusing again, she catches another glimpse of the pink tip of his tongue.

Why does he have to be so cute?

(She is in deep, deep trouble.)

***

Chat’s terrible at tying his laces.

It would’ve been funny—from the way his eyebrows are scrunched, ears twitching as he fumbles uselessly with the string—if it weren’t for the fact that all of that was accompanied by the tongue poking out over his top lip. Marinette knows she should stop staring, because then she can stop finding him cute. But she keeps staring, like a whole idiot.

To her mortification, Chat looks up at her and grins when she catches her turning away hurriedly. “Is my face that great to stare at?” he asks.

“What?” Marinette shrieks. “No! I’m looking at you tie your laces. Do you seriously not know how to do them up?”

Chat pouts. “It’s hard to do with claws,” he grumbles, wiggling his fingers. Then he sticks his leg out. “You can do it for me.”

Marinette does it, only to have an excuse to duck her face so he can’t see how red her cheeks are.

It’s one of their monthly outings that Chat Noir claims essential to their friendship. He had launched into an indignant tirade when Marinette suggested they could skate at a rink, insisting that they skate in nature.

Now, at the small pond with hints of snow beginning to fall, Marinette has to admit that he made the right call. The wind nips at her nose with the slightest hints of cold, but not too cold that it’s uncomfortably so. Bundled in her own handcrafted scarf, mittens and toque, the worst of the chill is kept out. Even Chat is wearing an overcoat over his suit.

They’re far from the city; in fact, they’re far from Paris itself. The horse Miraculous is tucked safely away in one of Chat’s pockets (which, ironically, he had borrowed from Ladybug). Here, away from the buzzing and business of the city, her thoughts feel clearer than they have been in a long, long time. The snow, fresh and still falling, offers a muted sort of quiet that leaves her room to think and ponder without interruptions.

(Too bad all her thoughts just linger on Chat.)

((Or maybe that’s a good thing.))

Marinette double knots Chat’s laces. “There,” she announces, then adds, “you big baby.”

“It’s the claws’ fault!” he exclaims again. “Race you to the pond?”

Before Marinette can react, Chat grabs the hem of her toque and pulls it down over her eyes. Then, with a boyish laugh, she hears him run off, crunch, crunch, crunching over fresh snow.

Marinette scrambles to her feet, cursing him under her breath as she snatches her mittens and brushes the wool out of her face. Chat is already halfway to the pond, and with one last desperate attempt to win, she chucks her mittens at him.

They miss by a margin, landing in the snow and inciting more laughter.

“You’re a cheat!” she shrieks when Chat reaches the ice. “I hope you know that!”

“Sore loser!” he yells from the ice, already twirling easily on his skates. “You don’t see me complaining every time you win in Ultimate Mecha Strike!”

Marinette retrieves her mittens from the ground and brushes the snow from them. “You complain every single time,” she grinds out, joining him on the ice. The moment her skates touch the pond, Chat’s already darting away from her with easy grace. He glides, spins, then starts skating backwards so the smug grin is fully displayed.

“Come get me!” Chat Noir calls, sticking his tongue out. His hands are tucked behind his back, and he loops each glide, one foot behind the other with ridiculous ease. Show off.

“If you’re going to keep sticking your tongue out, then I dare you to lick that,” Marinette yells at him, pointing at the lamp pole that stands a couple of paces from them. “Bet you won’t.”

Never one to back down from a challenge, he raises an eyebrow. “What do I get if I do?”

“I’ll bake you a batch of whatever you want.”

“Oh, you’re on. Also, if a batch of cookies is usually twelve cookies, do you think I could get a batch of twelve cakes—”

“I’m taking back the bet,” Marinette mock-threatens.

“Okay, okay! I want those mooncakes we had two weeks ago! Three of them.”

She skates up to Chat as he makes his way to the pole. He tromps off the ice, skates sinking into the fresh snow and leaving deep imprints, before sidling up to the pole.

Frost spirals in small flowery patterns over the metal. Marinette grins when she sees Chat hesitate.

“Well?” she asks. “Chickening out now?”

“Never,” he grins. Then, with one swift movement, he licks the metal pole and pulls back.

Or tries to.

Chat lets out a muffled cry of distress and pain when the tip of his tongue sticks to the metal. Immediately, his hands go to wrap around the pole, pulling himself close enough until the hurt smooths off his face, soon replaced by panic. “Marinethe!” he yelps.

Marinette stares at him, her body frozen in a mixture of shock and amusement. Then the shock gives way to pure delight, and she bursts out laughing.

Chat takes it in stride. “Ha, ha,” he grumbles as she doubles over. He looks so stupid, with his tongue sticking out, gloved hands gripping the pole as his eyebrows scrunch. “Vthery thunny, Marinethe. Can you helpth?”

“You should see yourself,” Marinette manages throughout her giggles. “Oh my God, Chat, you really deserve this for not having better judgement.”

He lets out a long suffering groan. “Geth thith offth!”

“This is what people sounded like in Shakespearan times,” she continues.

Chat side-eyes her, unable to move his head any more than a bare centimeter. “Justh helpth!”

“Ooh, I got a good one. Cat got your tongue?”

He groans. “Is thith whath ith thakes for you tho maketh a joke?”

Marinette snaps a quick picture before taking pity on him. “Wait here,” she tells him. “I packed us hot tea. A little bit will be enough to unstick your tongue, probably.”

She skates back to where their bags lay on the bench and retrieves the thermos. Half a minute late, Marinette is pouring the steaming liquid into the cap, cooling it just enough, before raising it over Chat’s tongue. “Okay,” she tells him. “Get ready.”

For all his superhero experience and near-death scrapes, he actually looks scared of the tea. “Ith won’th burn me?”

“No,” Marinette reassures and raises the cup to her lips to take a sip. “See? Warm, not hot.”

Chat closes his eyes. Very carefully, Marinette pours a small stream steadily onto where Chat’s tongue has stuck to the metal pull. “Try to move away?” she suggests.

He wiggles his shoulders.

“I mean your face,” Marinette tells him drily. “Don’t be a scaredy cat.”

He scrunches his nose, then very slowly, moves his head back.

The tea does its job, because Chat unsticks himself from the metal easily. His eyes widen as if he can’t believe his luck, then lifts a cautious hand to his mouth and touches the tip of his tongue. “Ow,” he hisses. “It feels like I’ve burned my taste buds off.”

“You froze your taste buds off, but yes.” Marinette screws the lid back onto the thermos. “Lesson learned?”

“You dared me. You wanted this to happen, huh?”

She shrugs. “Can’t say I wasn’t expecting it.”

A look of playful betrayal sweeps over Chat’s face, and he lunges for her. Marinette, expecting it, scrambles out of the way just in time for him to go barrelling into a pile of snow.

By the time Chat Noir has sat up, snow tucked between his ears and all over his hair like cotton, she is already darting across the ice far, far away from him. Chat shakes the flakes from his head and slips onto the ice in one fluent movement as well.

Marinette grins as he comes skating after her. She’s not quite as confident on her skates without her transformation, but lessons and practice have done it’s good because she’s nearly as good as Chat is on the ice. For a good fifteen seconds she evades his messy attempts to catch her, but her disadvantage without her suit comes creeping up little by little until Chat finally manages to wrap a hand around her wrist.

“Gotcha,” he grins.

Then, with a little shove, Marinette crashes into the bank.

It doesn’t hurt, per say, because it’s a snowdrift he’s sent her into, but the cold is still a shock. For a moment, she stares at Chat, who’s laughing like it’s the funniest thing in the world, before Marinette comes back to her senses and kicks a her leg at the blade of his skates.

Even his enhanced senses don’t help him from tumbling right into the pile of snow next to her.

One look at each other later, they’re both laughing.

(It’s nice; the time together, the easiness and lack of…everything else. It’s nice, his smile. His eyes.)

((And it’s then that Marinette realizes that she’s in deep, deep waters with no sight of the shore.))

***

They sit together on the bench, steaming tea between them, as Marinette shakes the last of the snow from her scarf and toque.

The sun is beginning to set, and the coldness has begun to creep into her bones, leaking through her overcoat. Every exhale sends little ghosts into the air, and even with the warm tea, Marinette is beginning to shiver.

Still, they’d arranged to watch the sunset, which means that she’s going to stay even if it means freezing to death.

“Let’s skate more,” Chat says. “You’ll be less cold if you’re moving.”

“I’d be less cold if you didn’t throw me into a pile of snow,” Marinette says between chattering teeth.

He gives her a sheepish look. “You got payback, at least? Come on.”

She looks at the hand extended to her. For a moment, Marinette hesitates, even if the butterflies in her stomach are doing a whole gymnastics routine and her heart’s thump thump thump must’ve quickened to at least twice as fast.

Then she takes Chat’s hand and lets him pull her to her feet.

This time, when she steps onto the ice, he doesn’t let go. Chat Noir’s hands are comfortably warm, tight around hers, and Marinette lets him lead her around the lake in a simple but graceful glide.

They skate until the sky turns from blue to gold, until the clouds dye orange and the world changes color altogether. It’s only then that Chat stops, lifting his head to the sunset. Marinette follows his gaze.

“It’s still cold,” she tells him pointedly, after a minute.

Before she knows it, Marinette is standing against his back, Chat’s arms draped lazily over her shoulders and his chin resting on top of her head. She can’t see him from where she’s standing, but she wonders if he can see her; if he can hear how her heart has jumped right to her throat and notice how the redness in her cheeks can’t be fully credited to the cold.

“Better?” he asks.

Marinette turns back to the sky, where now a brushstroke of red smears across the horizon. “Only slightly,” she replies as nonchalantly as possible.

His body shakes in a silent laugh. And so they stand on the ice, against the cold, until it all melts away to warmth.

(And Marinette thinks that even if she’s in deep waters, this sort of drowning is the best way to go.)

Notes: Fics masterlist here!

[dropkickspindle]

[Image ID 1: A round cardboard tube covered in yellow Bulgarian postal office tape, resting on a bundled up blanket that’s red on one side and tan on the other. /End ID]

[Image ID 2: A dressed distaff: that is, a round length of wood about three feet long, with dark teal wool wrapped around it and tied on with string. The distaff is leaning against a dark colored bookshelf containing comics and stuffed animals. /End ID]

[Image ID 3: The same distaff, naked this time, propped up against the same bookshelf. This time you can see the top of it, since it’s not covered in wool. It’s topped by an acorn-shaped bump that tapers down into an almost bell-like shape about a third of the way down, after which the wood rounds into a long, blunt cone. /End ID]

[Image ID 4: A close up of the top end of the distaff against a background of the bookshelf, showing off the curves and rounds of wood that make it up. /End ID]

So I taught myself to hand spin on a drop spindle about three years ago now, but I only this past year started using distaffs. While the spindle, made of a whorl and a shaft, twists easily-snapped fibers into a stronger thread or yarn, and so is pretty necessary for making long sections of string (you can spin yarn just using your palm, twisting it on your thigh, but that can turn into a tangled mess pretty quickly if you don’t wrap the extra length around a stick), the distaff is more optional. A distaff, at it simplest, is a stick of your choice of size. You bind your fiber to the distaff, and the distaff functions as a third hand, keeping the fiber out of the way and from snarling up, while your actual hands do the spinning itself.

The thing about distaffs is that they were more or less ubiquitous in hand spinning for millennia. If you’re responsible for turning every possible scrap of fiber into something that keeps you clothed and warm, then anything making your job easier was quickly adapted. Women were so associated with spinning, and spinning so associated with the use of a distaff, that you’ll still sometimes hear people describe the maternal side of a family as the “distaff” side. With the invention of the spinning jenny and the decline of hand spinning as a practiced craft, the distaff began to slowly disappear. A lot of modern hand spinners don’t bother using a distaff at all, which is probably why it was so hard for me to find one. Not a ton of new ones are being made, and those that are tend to be on the smaller side. I have a small one, about eight inches long, that I’ve been using for awhile, but I really, really wanted to try out one of the big boys.

A hip distaff or belt distaff was a couple feet in length, which allows you to tie on more fiber (useful when you were spending a lot of your time spinning). Then you would either rest the distaff on your hip or slip it through your belt to hold it. I really, really wanted one, but had little luck locating one, because again, the demand is not really there.

And then, gloriously, after checking etsy for roughly the millionth time, I found a store based in Bulgaria that was selling antique distaffs, along with a lot of other old stuff. Honestly I suspect the stock comes from going around to farms and asking people if they’ve got any old junk in their barns to sell, because they have some fantastic farming implements, fiber arts stuff, antiques of all sorts. I will reblog this post with the name of the store after I’ve been able to clean them out of handwoven wool cloth. And textile tools. And maybe a sickle or two for the garden. Oooh, and that amazing tiny butter churn with the little tiny dasher. Anyway...

So I finally got my distaff. I’m not sure how old she is, but she was definitely in use for a long, long time, and then disused for perhaps even longer. I love her. I honestly still haven’t quite figured out how best to use her, teaching yourself to spin is an adventure like that, but this is the purchase that made me happiest in a long, long time. I had to oil up the wood before actually using her to spin and I swear the wood was happy to be taken care of again, to be prepared to be used. Probably just wistful thinking, but then again, if Japanese lore about tsukumogami is right, and objects do grow a soul through long enough use... well, it feels less impossible than maybe it should.

[athenadione]

Christmas prompt: Ice Skating

Pairing: RobRae

Synopsis: In which Raven never learned how to Ice skate, and Robin teaches her. Drabble.

————————————————

Raven blinked as heavy snowflakes stuck to her lashes, a scowl tugging at the corners of her mouth.

In the distance, she heard Starfire’s squeal of delight at the burst of fake snow once they passed the entrance. She felt the flakes begin to gather in her hair and she brushed a hand through it before lifting her hood. The bustle of the crowd had her closing off her empathy as the mixture of anxious and cheerful energies began to feel overwhelming.

“Oh is it not glorious friends? I cannot wait to skate the ice and drink the hot cocoa with tiny marshmallows!” She said, clasping her hands together at the sight of the ice skating rink. Bright lights twinkled above them, in tune to various Christmas songs. Nearby, a Christmas tree stood proudly, wearing ornaments of red and white and gold. Garland surrounded the rink with fairy lights and holly.

“I just wanna go pet the baby goats.” Beast Boy responded, gaze set on the petting zoo nearby where most of the children had gathered. There was a line where others stood, waiting to buy bags of feed. Raven rolled her eyes.

“Please step to your left for ice skates and to your right for other amenities!” A young employee called out to the line that was rapidly forming. Raven sighed when Starfire grabbed her arm and pulled eagerly towards the rink. Beast Boy and Cyborg veered off to the left. That left Robin, who trailed behind them.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve last skated.” He admitted to which Raven rose her brow.

The thought of their leader casually out on the rink before their time as Titans nearly brought a grin to her lips. Of course the young acrobatic prodigy knew how to ice skate, though that thought never occurred to her before now. He was probably really good at it, like most things.

Her curiosity must have gotten the better of her, because she was suddenly blurting out her next words without thinking of them.

“I didn’t realize you knew how to ice skate.”

But she had said them and Robin met her eyes, giving her a knowing grin. He could read the interest in her voice. She looked away quickly.

“There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me.” He said.

“You’ve never offered the information before.” She responded, irritation flaring.

His grin grew. “You never asked.”

It was true, she hadn’t, and there was something about that fact that felt wrong. A frown replaced her usual expressionless features, but she didn’t know he had seen it underneath her hood.

“Come on, the skate rentals are this way.” Robin pushed ahead, leaving the two women to catch up.

They got their sizes and Raven looked at the skates in her hands with trepidation creeping up her spine, a stark contrast to Starfire’s happy babbling beside her. The blades glared at her and the smell of leather hit her nose when she brought them closer for inspection. They had been worn in well, it seemed, so she shouldn’t have to be concerned with getting any blisters- though it wouldn’t take much concentration to heal them anyway.

She grasped the laces in her hands, feeling the soft yarn for a moment. She frowned slightly at the chill that hit her face with a particularly gusty wind and her hood flew down as strands of hair flew into her line of vision. Distracted, she tucked them back behind her ear, unaware of Robin who had been watching her since she took possession of the skates.

It didn’t take long to lace them on her feet with delicate fingers, but she froze when she tried to lift a foot, unused to the heaviness.

“Raven, let us go out onto the rink.” Starfire turned to her, grinning from ear to ear. Raven was startled, forgetting for a moment that Starfire was still beside her, but there was no outward show of her surprise.

“You go ahead Starfire, I’ll catch up.”

She didn’t need to be told twice, Raven thought, when the Tamaranean jumped up from the bench and strode onto the rink. A group of young children noticed and flocked to her. Raven smiled slightly at the image of them all spinning in circles around each other, tugging on each other’s hands. The pure joy that radiated from them was intoxicating.

“Ready Raven?” Robin called out to her, distracting her from her musings. She turned to see her leader gliding towards her with ease, stopping short a few feet of her on the ice. His spiky black hair peeked out from the red toboggan he wore along with a matching scarf and gloves.

Glancing back down at her skates, she took a deep breath, watching it come out in a long, swirly white puff of air.

There was a moment of silence between them.

“You never learned how to skate, did you?” He asked.

Raven didn’t look up to see his face and she couldn’t contain the warm flush of her cheeks that were undoubtedly red.

“I suppose Ice skating was low on the list of priorities for someone who was meant to destroy the world.”

Her words laced with sarcasm, to try and cover what she truly felt, embarrassed. She had been deprived of such things as a young child, and now that she was older Titans duties often got in the way of pursuing old interests- not that she would have chosen to learn how to ice skate- but she would have liked to have been able to entertain the idea of learning.

But Robin didn’t chuckle at her sarcasm. He saw through her half-attempts to cover her embarrassment at him being more adept than her at something so trivial. Instead, he smiled.

“Well, there’s only one way to learn.” Robin said, and Raven looked up to see him standing only a foot away from her with an outstretched hand.

The flashback of him holding out his hand to her when she was just a shell of her former child-like self filled her vision, and she couldn’t help but think for a moment that he seemed to always be there, ready to encourage her and help her through any challenge- even if it was to save a world that was already doomed and broken.

And that thought alone had her placing her hand tentatively in his, and he gave her a pleased grin as he pulled her up to stand.

“Here, hold onto my arms like this.” He instructed and in a rare moment of vulnerability she allowed him to place her arms where he wanted them. He rested them on top of his own and he grasped her elbows, encouraging her to do the same to his.

“Now step out onto the ice, and use my arms as leverage.”

With another deep breath she took a clumsy step from the weight of her skate but managed to stand, if not a bit wobbly. Then she took another step with him and she was on the ice completely.

She began to panic when he moved them further out onto the rink. She gripped his arms tighter.

“If you let me fall Boy Blunder I will hunt you down.”

Robin laughed openly, tipping his head back for a moment. “Don’t worry Raven, I’ll catch you.” His voice spoke of promise, so self-assured that he would do anything within his power to keep it.

And she believed him, she realized, because it was true. He always caught her, and in each of her weakest moments he was always there, with open arms.

So she allowed him to skate them further out onto the rink, and listened closely as he took her through the basic steps of skating as he patiently held her steady when she slipped once or twice; and when he released her, she skated without hesitation, if still a bit like a newborn baby deer learning to walk for the first time, because she knew he was close behind her.

Because he’d always catch her.