#before i go to the hardware store

[javiersprincess]

finished a quiz that with my last attempt i got a 7/15

[a-lil-strawberry]

Should I go run errands?

[cleromancy]

lrt and you know Bruce isnt tims dad to me but bruce and jack were 100% divorced and locked in a passive aggressive custody battle despite neither of them actually being prepared to be the guardian of a Tim, much in the way most people are not prepared to be the owner of a poorly socialized border collie

[bibleofficial]

wallpaper is insane like u find a product w an ugly print ? wallpaper it. just multiple uncoordinated things put together ? wallpaper it. ugly door ? wallpaper it. ugly wall ? landlord won’t let me wallpaper it

[reaja]

Oh!! I forgot something on my happy list earlier that makes me super duper happy that totally should have been on there.

BUYING HALLOWEEN CANDY!!

[princesable]

just remembered the weirdly elaborate yume 2kki hardware store amv i had planned back when i got really into 2kki again. that would be funny i should actually do that

[cloneboywonder]

im so CWCcoded

[theres-whump-in-that-nebula]

Something tells me it’s not normal to want to use the top of your hand and your fingers as a chew toy

[madigoround]

💜

[rosesradio]

never letting my laptop die while i’m on tumblr again 👁👄👁

[taibhsearachd]

In case anyone was wondering how this turned out... I got the X-ray. They didn't notice anything wrong with my bone, and my doctor offered no further interest or support despite me telling her I sometimes can't make it up and down the stairs in my own house to go pee. So I'm out the cost of the X-ray, and I would probably be better served by buying a cheap $200 folding wheelchair than trying to actually force some medical professional to identify what's wrong.

Very cool that in the US I have a problem with my ankle that's been ongoing for a year... on real bad days I can feel something in my foot grinding or clicking over something... and I gotta clear this with my insurance before I can get a test that will diagnose this problem I've been having for a year. Extra cool that I have to wait for the time of year when you're allowed to switch insurance providers, bc I want to negotiate with the new insurance providers vs the old ones about whether they should X-Ray my ankle that doesn't work.

[krawdad]

Wait those camera steadycam rigs are like sideways heavy capacity luxo lamps

I can hook springs up to parallelograms

I might be on the verge of some kind of performance enhancing contraption

[andwhentheangelscome]

heheh. cheese.

[vinceaddams]

Any tips on learning to make buttonholes? I've been putting it off for.... *checks notes* like three years.... but better late than never and all that. I don't have any fancy machines so I gotta do it by hand but that seems right up your alley.

Thanks!

It IS up my alley, yes, I do most of my buttonholes by hand!

I'm actually part way through filming an 18th century buttonhole tutorial, but I expect it'll be a few more weeks before I finish that and put it on the youtubes, so in the meantime here's the very very short version. (The long version is looking like it'll probably be about 40 minutes maybe, judging by how much script I've written compared to my last video?)

Mark your line, a bit longer than your button is wide. I usually use a graphite mechanical pencil on light fabrics, and a light coloured pencil crayon on dark ones. (I have fabric pencils too, but they're much softer and leave a thicker line.) You may want to baste the layers together around all the marked buttonholes if you're working on something big and the layers are shifty and slippery. I'm not basting here because this is just a pants placket.

Do a little running stitch (or perhaps a running backstitch) in fine thread around the line at the width you want the finished buttonhole to be. This holds the layers of fabric together and acts as a nice little guide for when you do the buttonhole stitches.

Cut along the marked line using a buttonhole cutter, or a woodworking chisel. Glossy magazines are the best surface to put underneath your work as you push down, and you can give it a little tap with a rubber mallet if it's not going through all the way.

I'm aware that there are some people who cut their buttonholes open using seam rippers, and if any of them are reading this please know that that is abhorrent behaviour and I need you to stop it immediately. Stop it.

Go get a buttonhole cutter for 10 bucks and your life will be better for it. Or go to the nearest hardware store and get a little woodworking chisel. This includes machine buttonholes, use the buttonhole cutter on them too. If you continue to cut open buttonholes with a seam ripper after reading this you are personally responsible for at least 3 of the grey hairs on my head.

Do a whipstitch around the cut edges, to help prevent fraying while you work and to keep all those threads out of the way. (For my everyday shirts I usually do a machine buttonhole instead of this step, and then just hand stitch over it, because it's a bit faster and a lot sturdier on the thin fabrics.)

I like to mark out my button locations at this point, because I can mark them through the holes without the buttonhole stitches getting in the way.

For the actual buttonhole stitches it's really nice if you have silk buttonhole twist, but I usually use those little balls of DMC cotton pearl/perle because it's cheap and a good weight. NOT stranded embroidery floss, no separate strands! It's got to be one smooth twisted thing!

Here's a comparison pic between silk buttonhole twist (left) and cotton pearl (right). Both can make nice looking buttonholes, but the silk is a bit nicer to work with and the knots line up more smoothly.

I've actually only used the silk for one garment ever, but am going to try to do it more often on my nicer things. I find the cotton holds up well enough to daily wear though, despite being not ideal. The buttonholes are never the first part of my garments to wear out.

I cut a piece of about one arm's length more or less, depending on the size of buttonhole. For any hole longer than about 4cm I use 2 threads, one to do each side, because the end gets very frayed and scruffy by the time you've put it through the fabric that many times.

I wax about 2cm of the tip (Not the entire thread. I wax the outlining/overcasting thread but not the buttonhole thread itself.) to make it stick in the fabric better when I start off the thread. I don't tend to tie it, I just do a couple of stabstitches or backstitches and it holds well. (I'm generally very thorough with tying off my threads when it comes to hand sewing, but a buttonhole is basically a long row of knots, so it's pretty sturdy.)

Put the needle through underneath, with the tip coming up right along that little outline you sewed earlier. And I personally like to take the ends that are already in my hand and wrap them around the tip of the needle like so, but a lot of people loop the other end up around the other way, so here's a link to a buttonhole video with that method. Try both and see which one you prefer, the resulting knot is the same either way.

Sometimes I can pull the thread from the end near the needle and have the stitch look nice, but often I grab it closer to the base and give it a little wiggle to nestle it into place. This is more necessary with the cotton than it is with the silk.

The knot should be on top of the cut edge of the fabric, not in front of it.

You can put your stitches further apart than I do if you want, they'll still work if they've got little gaps in between them.

Keep going up that edge and when you get to the end you can either flip immediately to the other side and start back down again, or you can do a bar tack. (You can also fan out the stitches around the end if you want, but I don't like to anymore because I think the rectangular ends look nicer.)

Here's a bar tack vs. no bar tack sample. They just make it look more sharp, and they reinforce the ends.

For a bar tack do a few long stitches across the entire end.

And then do buttonhole stitches on top of those long stitches. I also like to snag a tiny bit of the fabric underneath.

Then stick the needle down into the fabric right where you ended that last stitch on the corner of the bar tack, so you don't pull that corner out of shape, and then just go back to making buttonhole stitches down the other side.

Then do the second bar tack once you get back to the end.

To finish off my thread I make it sticky with a bit more beeswax, waxing it as close to the fabric as I can get, and then bring it through to the back and pull it underneath the stitches down one side and trim it off.

In my experience it stays put perfectly well this way without tying it off.

Voila! An beautiful buttonholes!

If you want keyhole ones you can clip or punch a little rounded bit at one end of the cut and fan your stitches out around that and only do the bar tack at one end, like I did on my 1830's dressing gown.

(I won't do that style in my video though, because they're not 18th century.)

Do samples before doing them on a garment! Do as many practice ones as you need to, it takes a while for them to get good! Mine did not look this nice 10 years ago.

Your first one will probably look pretty bad, but your hundredth will be much better!

Edit: Video finished!

And here's the blog post, which is mostly a slightly longer version of this post.

[readwritealldayallnight]

Promises

Captain John Price x Reader

wc: 1.2k words

warnings/tags: fluff fluff fluff

“You’ll check the doors? Windows as well, aye?”

“Yes, John. I’ll make sure they’re locked before bed.” You reassure the man, holding the phone between your cheek and shoulder as you do exactly that, tugging on the window latches to ensure they’re shut properly, walking past each door to spy the locks are in fact in place. “No one will be coming in and touching your cigars, I can assure you of that.”

“Hm. Got precious cargo I’m more concerned about these days, than cigars.” He quips back, playing into your attempt to lighten the situation. John hasn’t been gone on deployment for a full 24 hours yet and already he’s finding himself missing you more than he thought possible. He knew being apart from you was going to be difficult, especially considering that this mission was likely to take a few months rather than a few weeks, but he hadn’t anticipated struggling so early on.

“Don’t worry, I won’t let anyone touch your scotch either.” You say and he can just picture you adding a mischievous wink at the end. He finds himself suddenly wondering if he has any photos of you where you’re winking at him, and he feels regret creeping into his stomach at the realization that no, he probably doesn’t. Now he’s got nothing but his memory to rely on when he wants to imagine your playful expression.

It’s not as if John hadn’t made a point of taking more candid shots of you once he’d learned about how long this upcoming mission was to take. He wanted to have something tangible, something real he could wrap his fingers around, lay his weary gaze upon and be gifted with the sight of his beloved smiling back at him. And if a thick stack of Polaroids each adorned with varying expressions of your visage find themselves stuffed into the pocket of his tactical vest right above where his heart beats only for you, well then his men had best mind their business about it.

His last ditch effort to capture your beauty, to bring along with him a small fragment of the joy you bring to his life every day he spends by your side, had melted your heart thoroughly. It was sometimes hard to imagine your soft, loving teddy bear of a man, having to turn on his Captain persona and intimidate enemies on a battlefield. But then you’d hear him shouting at the television, going on about how some wanker was making a mockery of ‘The Price is Right’ (a show the two of you watched too often, if only so that John had more of an excuse to slip ‘well ya know, they do say Price is right, after all’ into arguments), or you’d catch him glaring at anyone he felt was looking at you the wrong way in public, and you couldn’t deny he was to be in a position of command.

“Don’t go answerin’ the door for anyone either, love. And make sure that the-”

“John, I’ll be okay. I promise, I’ll be careful.” You attempt to convince him before he spirals further. A man of action, John had been keeping busy in the time leading up to his departure. Trips to the hardware store to buy additional locks for the front door, jammers for the window panes, researching various brands of security systems, even going as far as speaking a little louder in the hallways outside your flat door, letting anyone who lived near enough know that a man lived here as well, not wanting anyone to know you’d be alone and vulnerable.

“I know, m’sorry to keep pestering you love.” The Captain sighs into the phone, running a hand down his phone before glancing back over his shoulder at the room. He knows he doesn’t have much more time to keep talking with you. Really, he shouldn’t have called at all, but John just couldn’t help himself. This is how he gets when it comes to you. Nothing else matters as much when it comes to you. And so yes, he admits he is being selfish by holding everyone else up in the briefing room as they wait for his return, but he doesn’t know when he’ll get to hear your voice again, and what’s the point of being Captain if you can’t pull strings when they matter? “Just wanna know you’ll be safe.”

“Now why do I feel as though I should be the one asking you that question, hm?” Your question brings a soft smile to his face. God, he misses you so much already. “You made it to- wherever you are- alright?”

“I did.” He confirms, casting another glance across the room. He can see them loading up trucks with supplies as you speak. He hates that he can’t ever tell you where he is. Can’t tell you that this base is just one of countless destinations where he’ll sleep in a bed that feels too empty without you by his side. Can’t tell you that each meal portion he eats tastes blander without you sitting across from him. “Though we’re not stayin’ here long. Flyin’ out early again in the mornin’.”

“Hm.” You hum along in response, knowing he can’t give you details, satisfied with any bit of information he can offer you in its place. “You promise me, you’ll be safe John Price. I don’t like those stories of Gaz falling out of helicopters.”

“Well then, it’s a good thing that’s the only story I’m ever lettin’ him tell you.” John can’t help but to laugh along with you, before falling more serious again, knowing he’ll have to hang up soon and leave you. “Trust me love. You don’t need to be worrying your pretty little head over me. There isn’t anythin’ that could keep me from comin’ home to you. Nothin’.”

His declaration has tears threatening to sting the corners of your eyes, treasuring this moment with him, even an unknown distance apart, knowing it’ll be some time until you can speak again. You can hear the background noise of wherever he is increasing in volume. You overhear someone shout his name, no doubt looking for him. You know your time is up for now, and that you’ll have to be the one to bite the bullet. He’s never the first one to hang up the phone with you, and this time is no different.

“I love you John. So much. I’ll see you soon.” You whisper into the receiver, hoping he can feel the love you speak into each word meant only for him.

“I love you, angel. So much. Be back before you know it.” He says, waiting to hear the ‘click’ on the other side of the line before stuffing his phone back into his slacks.

It’s true, what he said to you. There truly isn’t anything, so long as he can help it, that will keep him from coming back home to you. Not when he’s made a promise to do exactly that. Not when he’s got a small box stuffed into three pairs of socks hiding in his underwear drawer in your flat, hiding a shiny little ring he’s been holding on to since your second date. Not when he intends to make his biggest promise to you yet as soon as he’s home and holding you in his arms again, where you belong.

[is-this-yuri]

OKAY SO

an update on my van plan:

My legal issue was solved but I was planning a trip to Texas for the winter since I wasn't sure my friend would help me out in the way I need, but it seems she's willing to hold the title for me until I get my license and she'll let me borrow her car for the test. So I can stay in Pennsylvania for now.

Which means I'm currently shopping for a van!

As stated before, as soon as I have the van I'll be putting insulated walls in. I'll park it somewhere (probably next to a hardware store) for the winter and likely won't be driving it around too much. I'll be using my car at least until the van's title is in my name and I officially own it.

I still need your support! There's still $7k on my fundraiser goal to meet, which I'll use to build the van out. I currently have enough to purchase a van and put walls in it, but I'll need at least $2k for the solar panels and electricity when the time comes. The first stage is beginning, but the fundraiser is still going! Thank you everyone for helping me get to this point ❤️

GFM