#there is some which is i see pretty yarn think oh i like that i'll use that for x then don't get around to it

[fezwearingjellybananas]

Ok so I know I said my New Year's resolution is to buy no new yarn unless I have the project planned or it's really really pretty but I really like the one I'm knitting with and I have a same brand but dark blue and it could make a really nice cardigan

Look at it

But also will I actually sit down and knit a cardigan when I'm already halfway through crocheting a blanket and I just started knitting the snood that comes on the label for that yarn and the actual plan was the green one is for my mum and I also think it would make a good one for cycling to work in so now I have to weigh up buy more yarn (I mean, it does fall into the pretty exception...) and maybe knit a big thing that will take ages or knit a quick thing I will immediately use. I am working on stash busting (that's what the blanket is, I crocheted over 350 squares last year and I'm only halfway through, I just feel like doing some knitting instead of crochet for a bit) so the quick makes more sense and I could always have a scarf with a matching cardigan if I get through my stash this year and decide actually no I do want to do that.

It's just I pick up yarn and have a million ideas and no time to make them all.

It's really nice yarn so far though. It's a centre pull skein so it doesn't roll around and it's really soft.

[fossilknits]

new sock!

i did this poll (more than a week ago whoops) about which yarn/pattern combo you all wanted to see! here's how it turned out:

the results were overwhelmingly in favor of the Ziprelaxagon pattern paired with the Helix Nebula yarn! this combo was in fact my original plan (like, i've been wanting to pair these for months) so it was funny to see that others had the same idea.

i spent some time earlier this week swatching with the other yarn and patterns, first, and then cast on Ziprelaxagon a couple nights ago, and OH MY GOD i CANNOT put them down, i'm having such a blast knitting these and the yarn is so pretty aaaaaaaa

(shown on hand because they're kinda wonky unblocked)

the pattern has you work them toe-up, but i like how they look "upside down" so i will probably flip these and call this the cuff side. that means i have to work out the heel shaping in reverse but i think i can do it! i'll post another update if i do

thanks for reading!

[lihikainanea]

I am picturing Bill having this specific hobby/thing he likes (a book, a game, an album, etc.) and Tiger knows about it. it's not really Her Thing but she can dabble into it (learn it, experience it). and then one day Bill talks about it and Tiger just simply agrees with him, says a few points of her own about how she's grown to like it, and Bill is just a bundle of emotions. because it's a lot of things at once. she took the time to see what it was about? and then as he listens to her talk about it more it's all OF COURSE she'd get it. OF COURSE she understands the joy he gets from it, why it means so much to him, and so on. it's just a simple moment, but Bill feels so seen and it hits him like a truck. he is so in love. they end up snuggling. :'D

oh god, what if it's something so completely out there and something so not-on-brand that he's actually a little bit shy about it? What if it's something so absurd like....like crochet, nani.

IT'S CROCHET ISN'T IT.

And I'll bet tiger thinks it's real sweet right? Because maybe Granny taught Bill how to crochet. Maybe they'd kind of spend hours together over tea and madeleines, Bill would be holding the ball of yarn while Granny's hands went a mile a minute, and eventually Bill just kind of...well, he picked it up too. And tiger thinks it's so sweet, this big dude with these huge clumsy hands, but the thing is...Bill is kind of really good at it. Like, really good. So tiger also appreciates having all kinds of warm socks and mittens and toques all custom made. And Bill is pretty damn talented, so he crochets all kinds of fancy patterns with all kinds of colours and every once in awhile when a mutual friend compliments tiger's new cute mittens, Bill just sort of smiles shyly and lets himself be a little proud.

And like, he's also super into it, you know? Once he lets go of the initial embarassment. Maybe once tiger points out that literally thousands--if not millions--of people have seen his ween (And literally the ween of nearly every male in his family) on a big screen so a little crafty habit is nothing to be ashamed of. He's part of groups. Facebook groups, online groups. One is for troubleshooting, which he turned to when he couldn't figure out why his current project was just getting wider and wider or when his chain was too tight or he was only crocheting in the front loop. One is for inspo, all kinds of things he wants to create. And one is a legit little support group in the area that meet up every so often, and Bill wishes so badly that he could go but he just doesn't want the visibility. He knows he's the only man in the group, and he's...well, he's him. it would cause a stir.

So my girl tiger--ever the one to indulge her Big Dude in all of his adorable weirdness--maybe there are like, CONS for these things. A Crochet-Con. And she gets wind of one happening about 2 hours away, way in the country side. There's only about 100 people or so who attend, it's so niche, and after some careful creeping tiger realizes that the average age of the participants is like, 80.

Nobody will know who he is there.

It's a whole 2-day event. There's discussion groups to troubleshoot common issues. There's a workshop on crocheting complex patterns. There's a small trade show area where you can sell some of your goods. So tiger gets two tickets, prints them out, and gets all giddy.

Maybe she wanted to keep it a surprise for longer, but when she bounced into the living room she saw her big dorky dude there on the couch, his thick rimmed glasses on, a foot propped up on the coffee table. His tongue was poking out the side of his mouth in concentration as his gaze was fixed on the small crochet hook, the ball of yarn, and this dainty, intricate pattern between his huge hands.

"I have a surprise for you," she smiles, plopping down on the couch. Without missing a beat Bill passes her the ball of yarn and she instinctively unravels some of it as his little crochet hook bobs and weaves at an impressive speed.

"Oh yeah?" he smirks but doesn't look away, "What's that?"

She puts her hand on the small pattern he's creating but he squawks.

"I'll drop a stitch!" he shrieks, then inspects the little piece of fabric thoroughly. Tiger just quirks a brow, and waits.

"Crisis averted?" she chuckles.

"Barely," he snarks, then he softens. "What's up kid?"

Tiger pulls the tickets out from behind her back and hands them to him, and he adjusts his glasses on the bridge of his nose.

"Hooker Con?" he asks skeptically.

"Keep reading."

He scans the rest of the writing, and then his eyes light up.

"It's a crochet con?" he asks excitedly. She nods, smiling.

"It's two days?" he continues reading, "Troubleshooting, discussions, workshop--oh my god, the Jasmine stitch?! that one's impossible to do!"

"It's in two weeks," she says, "I thought it might be fun."

But then suddenly, his face falls.

"Tiger, what about--"

"They won't," she answers his silent question, "I creeped a few past...Hookers. They're all in their 80s bud. I don't think it'll be an issue. And if you're worried, we can glue a beard on you. Slap a wig on."

He smiles at her, leaning over to kiss her.

"There's two tickets," he mumbles, "You're going to come?"

"Of course," she chuckles, "I'd love to."

"But it's crochet," he says shyly.

"It's you," she tells him with another kiss, "And I love this little hobby of yours. I think it's sweet."

"You do?"

"Of course. And I want to...FOTH and frog and HOTH all weekend with you."

Bill laughs boisterously.

"I love it when you talk dirty to me," he chuckles.

[dawnthread]

Hi!! I’m just getting into knitting things like garments (I’ve only really done little things like scarves or hats or toys) so I don’t really understand what blocking is? Or why to do it?

oh, yeah, okay!!

first of all, congratulations on getting into knitting, i hope you're having a ton of fun with it!

second of all, my local yarn shop has a whole article about blocking basics, which is super helpful, but i'll give you my spin on it too

so there's a couple different methods of blocking, but the one i use the most is called "wet blocking," which is where you soak your thing in lukewarm water (with a bit of no-rinse-needed wool wash like Eucalan or Soak, if you have any!) for a while, squeeze it out gently until it's still heavily damp but not dripping, and lay it on a mat to stretch it out and pin it in place to dry like that. this is the method that gives you the most dramatic change in both shape and fabric density, because soaking the knit relaxes the fibers in the yarn and lets you really haul away at it to open up the design, and that's important for lace knitting because basically all lace just looks like a sad yarn lump when it's fresh off the needles. when you block it, though...

this was a past project i finished - see how much nicer that looks?

for lace (and cabling, to a different extent), the way your fabric tensions itself as you do all the texture work makes it scrunch up weirdly, and blocking it is how you get it to smooth itself out and look pretty. for lace, it means you can also get some dramatic shaping going on at the edges that you wouldn't have been able to see otherwise, like those pointy curves in the one up above, or the little bats in this other one!

it's also important for doing fitted garments like sweaters, because it gives you more control over how big the fabric you're making is actually, ultimately going to be.

it's a great safety check against a sweater getting awkwardly stretched out in the wash, because if you knit a test swatch and block it, you get a preview of how the fabric is going to behave later, and use that to inform your sizing choices now. it can also give you some wiggle room on a pattern gauge that you can't quite match with the yarn/needles you're using! if you're trying to do a sweater and your gauge is just a little bit smaller than what they say will give you your pattern size, try blocking a swatch and seeing what it looks like when you stretch it to match the pattern gauge.

if you're doing anything with seams, i would also strongly recommend blocking the pieces before you seam them together! it makes it a hell of a lot easier to get at the selvedge stitch when you start sewing, and it also lets you ensure that all your pieces are the exact size you want them to be before you put them all together. especially if you're knitting with wool (and i think other animal fibers like alpaca?) and you use steam blocking, like they said in the article - that will physically change the shape of the fibers and lock your piece in place at the exact size you want it to be.

i would also recommend getting some blocking mats to do it on? you can just pin it to a towel, it's what i used to do, but believe me, it's SO much easier with a set of blocking mats. you can see how they have those gridlines marked on them, right? that helps you keep track of how your work is lining up with itself, and whether one side is proportionally the same as the other side! it's not crucial, but it's definitely a quality-of-life upgrade.

i have three sets of the hephaestus crafts ones, they come with a box of pins, a tape measure, and nine interlocking foam squares with a 1" grid printed on them that you can set up however you want. they cost about $30, and i've been pretty happy with them, even if one of them did come with the gridlines printed on the wrong side ;P

anyway, i hope this answered your question!! tl;dr,

[trashpandacraft]

when we last saw our hero (me, in this instance), they had just run out of photos on their sheep and wool post because apparently the accursed tumblr app has a ten-photo limit. fear not, though, because now i'm on my actual computer!

so: bendigo sheep and wool pt ii: the fibre!!

i bought a couple silk hankies, because i've never spun one before and it sounded fun, and they were cheap. couldn't find any undyed, alas, but surely someone on the internet does that, right?

i also bought some dyed mulberry silk. i've got some tussah that i'm going to dye, but these were pretty and relatively inexpensive, and i'm a sucker.

aaaaaand then i bought some sari silk, which i've never used before! several of you have been doing some gorgeous stuff with sari silk recently, though, and i'm a copycat, so here we are.

i have no idea why my phone decided that all of these needed to have ~depth~ added to the shots, but i'm not hauling all of this out again, so here we are. you get the vibe.

i also got a little coil of bamboo fibre, because i've never spun bamboo on its own before. (i don't know if i'll actually spin this on its own or if i'll blend it, but now i have the option!)

i also got a thing of optim fibre (incredibly poorly formatted post from 2011, but explanatory), which i've never used before—it's merino that's been processed to stretch it out, making it even finer and softer. it's sort of weird to touch—it feels more like silk or created fibres than it does wool, but it seemed like it would be fun to try.

moving on to even more exciting stuff, we bought some castledale top. castledale isn't a breed yet, but is being developed as one, and i've heard that it's a delight to spin.

obviously it was important that we get both the plain and the kind with silk in it.

and, see, that was important because we hadn't yet done the most exciting thing we did all weekend, which was finding some gorgeous, affordable, locally made hand combs!

if you're in australia and want fibre tools, you should absolutely check out their website, and honestly, even if you're not, the shipping might be worth it. they were so, so nice, and the tools we got there are just gorgeous. (they're less yellow than this, in person, but my phone doesn't play nicely with the purple light in my bedroom at eleven p.m.)

we ended up getting mini combs, because as we were talking, the guy who makes them noticed my heavily kt-taped wrist and pointed out that the mini combs are less wear on your wrists, which sold me.

they also had some wonderfully designed lazy kates, which will hopefully let me avoid ever having to do this again.

the cleverest part is that it flat packs—the bobbin holders just lift out, and the orifice (it has an orifice!!) is held in place by the little screw up front. the tension is controlled by turning the knob, just like on a spinning wheel.

can't say enough about what lovely people they were, and i'm so excited to have enough fine motor control that it feels safe to assemble the cards. this weekend, hopefully.

and you might be thinking 'ok but are you just like...using those for blending?' and the answer would be no!! because we also bought these!

i went in thinking 'oh, i'm going to get something that's not an incredibly fine wool,' but like...what was i thinking? we're in australia. the only thing anyone produces here is fine wools! which isn't at all a complaint, because this looks gorgeous. so we got 1.5 kilos of corrie, and 1.7 of a bond/merino cross. the cross in particular looks absolutely stunning, and i cannot wait to start playing with them.

the rather elderly (80-ish?) woman working at the north east yarns booth gave us a lengthy talk about spinning in the grease, which i might try. one of the really interesting things to me here was that i've only ever looked at raw fleeces in the northeastern us before now, where the weather concerns are...uh, somewhat different? these fleeces don't have the dirt that i've seen on raw fleece before, just dusty bits—they're almost more like what i would associate with alpaca with regards to actual dirt/vm, but with bonus lanolin. so that's a nice bonus, and makes the idea of spinning in the grease was less offputting. (yes, i know that you can buy cleaner fleeces in the united states, too, and you can coat your sheep or have dry weather or whatever, but that's not an experience that i personally have had.)

this concludes (mostly) the list of things i bought at sheep and wool (also i bought slippers), and illustrates both why i cannot be trusted and also incredible restraint on my part.

[icy-watch]

Good lord, Icy. What have you been drinking and where can I get some?? I mean, when you start analyzing the wood?? Hello??? And you mention the Underworld??? 😭 Okay those meanings are kind of insane, maybe hold onto them. Interpretive freedom and all. Is it too late to convince you this has nothing to do with Wukong (as if all of LMK hasn't already had to do with him) and is just a reference to the opening theme lyrics Familiar Tales, New Adventures? XD I referenced it before because I knew it was sneaky enough heh. Last episode, Mac dragged in the Not-Mayor like your street cat bringing dead things into the house, this episode he is the house cat caught 10 seconds before disaster tied up in a ball of yarn. Kidding kidding, but true as well. Remember the "tied up in his own shadows and chains?" Yeah, weird. So apparently (and keep in mind, sometimes flashbacks can be biased!) that bit really did happen and Wukong was there to see it. It's not just everyone they've fought against, it seems to be...a memory almost, wouldn't you say, Icy? Macaque tied up like that, the tear/blood drop I promised you? The especially evident "Monkey, no violence!" you hear after? Tripitaka and the fillet??? Also Wukong's face when seeing his friend <3 <3 <3 and his instinctive yell when hearing Tripitaka OOOH 👀 omg. I'm all over that. Does it still bother him? I mean with how often the headband dug into his head, how much it hurt, oh he's got lasting issues. Rip </3 your turn to get trauma triggered. Oh yeah, also the translation. Mac here says, "You're nothing!" Like, I think I said it reflected what he told MK in The Winning Side. As a theory for what he told Wukong. "Your staff's gone, your power and freedom's gone. You're not the Monkey King, you're nothing!" if he found him with the pilgrims. But his line and Nezha's are taken from previous episodes, so are they meant to be parallels of the further/not recent past or, just chosen from there? We're pretty split on how Mac reacted tbh, and the Chinese dub has him say "You abandoned me!" which changes the meaning entirely. And falls in line with Shadow Play. The new characters' lines are pretty solidly from the past so eh. Maybe both. I talk a lot about the monkeys (and I'll probably refer to them as shadowpeach for convenience's sake when speaking of their scenes together despite it being a ship name, their duo name is eclipse/sundial duo but we're all just too used to the former.) anyways, this is meant to say that this season, for the sake of a certain someone in your note's favorite antagonist, I will be rewatching s4 to sort them out :P I think its worth the effort, what with fandom repeatedly being extra weird with your fav, I get it, so may as well explain what the heck might be going on.

Little teenage Icy went thru a witch phase to try and curse people. I learned about different woods and stuff. My tarot knowledge came out of this time in my life too.

Miiiiiiight be a little too late lol.

Oh, that's interesting. Memories. Hmmmm...

[pollstuck]

-- grimAuxiliatrix [GA] began trolling tentacleTherapist [TT] --

GA: That Ogre-Turned-Raft Will Probably Drown Pretty Soon GA: I Recommend Returning To Shore GA: Unless You Have Some Sort Of Cunning Plan Of Which I Am Unawares TT: What, not going to go on a tirade about how this is the seventh time you've spoken to me but only the second time I've spoken to you? GA: I Would But Our Editor Needs To Cut Down On Extraneous Dialogue TT: Shame. TT: I'm going to talk to my dead cat.

FLIGHTY: What are you doing there? JASPERSPRITE: Im fishing! FLIGHTY: Oh. You can talk. JASPERSPRITE: But sadly there are no fish i think. JASPERSPRITE: They were all eaten by the Denizen! FLIGHTY: Who? JASPERSPRITE: It ate everything in the ocean and got so full that it took a long nap. JASPERSPRITE: No there is surely not a single living thing left! JASPERSPRITE: Which is too bad because im pretty hungry. FLIGHTY: I think there might be some tuna in the cabinets. JASPERSPRITE: Oh good idea i will look there! JASPERSPRITE: Purr purr. FLIGHTY: Jaspers, I am under the impression that you're supposed to be some sort of ghostly spirit guide. Wise, if frustratingly cryptic. FLIGHTY: Would you be able to explain what exactly is going on? JASPERSPRITE: You will understand when you wake up! FLIGHTY: Am I asleep? JASPERSPRITE: Yes! JASPERSPRITE: Flighty im just a cat and i dont know much but i know that youre important and also you are what some people around here call the Seer of Light. JASPERSPRITE: And you dont know what that means but you will see its all tied together! JASPERSPRITE: All the life in the ocean and all the shiny rain and the songs in your head and the letters they make. JASPERSPRITE: A beam of light i think is like a drop of rain or a long piece of yarn that dances around when you play with it and make it look enticing! JASPERSPRITE: And the way that it shakes is the same as what makes notes in a song! JASPERSPRITE: And a song i think can be written down as letters. JASPERSPRITE: So if you play the right song and it makes all the right letters then those letters could be all the letters that make life possible. JASPERSPRITE: So all you have to do is wake up and learn to play the rain! JASPERSPRITE: Does that make sense flighty sorry i disappeared for so long. FLIGHTY: Sort of. FLIGHTY: It sounds like you aren't exactly in complete command of this information yourself, so I won't press you on it for now. FLIGHTY: You're a pretty good cat, Jaspers. I missed you. JASPERSPRITE: Purr purr purrrrrrrr.

TT: I spoke with Jaspers. TT: I didn't understand what he told me. TT: He said I'll understand once I "wake up". TT: For some reason this made me think of you.

-- gardenGnostic [GG] is Offline! --

TT: Drat.

TT: Prick. TT: I need you to do me a favor. TT: Can you flail around in a distracting manor? TT: I need to get Farmstink's attention. TT:..... TT: Prick?

[ehh-is-the-name]

Happy (late) Holloweeny!!

It may be like almost a week after the holiday but whatever! I decided to be Jyushi this year since I already made the hat like 2 years ago. That led to me wondering how much I could do for the costume without buying things, and well... I think the only thing I really bought was the baseball uniform but I had to dye it and whatnot so idek what I was planning with that. I think I just wanted an excuse to make stuff and this is what I got to show for it. I think it turned out well!

Though, I think I really like just dressing up as characters at this point, and of course work in process photos under the cut!

Gonna go in chronological order, so starting with the hat.

The photos of it are at the other post linked above if you wanna see it but I'll say my process/thoughts on it here.

If I went back in time to redo the hat I would've changed the way I did the white base. I did it with a spray primer and it made the hat really stiff. I used to wear it out, but also because of the primer, the fabrics not breathable anymore so you get sweaty FAST. Even with the wig on above, it made my head hot. It also made it not able to like stretch easily, so when I had it on with the wig, it kinda looked weird from some angles. Otherwise, It's pretty good. It's just the fact it has so many paint layers.

I unfortunately forgot to take wip pics of the bat and ball, but I have all the resources I used to make them if that counts!

I used the ball pattern from Supergurumi here. For the bat, I used Jay Hen's pattern linked here.

The only thing about the bat is that I switched up some things for this. Like I barely used any stuffing (mainly bc I didn't have much) but also because I just don't think the silhouette of the one on the site matches what an actual metal bat looks like and Jyushi got a metal bat. So I just crocheted around a pool noodle. And gotta say, very fun to hit my friends with, 10/10. Another thing, is that I made the whole bat the grey seen above and just wrapped some old fabric around it, since sometimes Jyushi has it and sometimes he doesn't?? It's weird.

Like in the earlier season (top right), he doesn't, but later in the show (bottom left) he has one and the grip is black? Oh but in the game (top left) he has a yellow grip! BUT THEN THE FUCKING NENDROID DOESN'T HAVE IT EITHER??? SO WHAT????

Idk. The whole thing kinda pissed me off since I didn't know what would be right. In the end, I just went with the yellow grip to match the uniform. I saw all of this like I care about accuracy- I fucked up the baseball stitches anyways, but that'll be our little secret.

I bought the whole uniform from a bulk sellout sports company for like only a handful of dollars. Even with shipping and everything, it wasn't even $20. The only thing was that they weren't selling yellow ones, so I had to dye it. Wouldn't have been that bad if it weren't polyester! Do you know how hard it is to dye polyester??? Well I didn't when I bought it, so lemme tell you.

You gotta make your witch's brew with synthetic fabric dye and soap. It took me a while, but I'd found some of RIT Dyemore in a store (but there are also some online like iDye Poly that should work). I just used a broken hanger to stir that shit for like 30 minutes since I didn't wanna ruin a spoon. Then I had to soak it in a dye fixative, which I did not buy 'cause fuck that. I'll just made some with water. vinegar, and sodium carbonate which you too can make at home. I will stay thanking NileRed for everything here, love his content. I think I soaked it for about 10-15 minutes, and from the pics above I wouldn't say much washed out.

This was probably the dumbest thing I've done. I could've just bought a wig for like $12 but no, I chose to make one instead. Also, I know he doesn't have blue strands in his hair, I just ran out of black yarn and had to make do. These are trying times, ok!! Anyway, I got one of the mesh wig caps meant to cover hair and then started tying strands to every couple of rows and holes. I guess this is where the stiffness of the hat came into use since I used that to hold the mesh cap. I got the idea from this video which helped with telling me what not to do if I wanted to make a wig like this. I was about as far into tying as the first pic below before I found cosplay veteran, Kind of Derp's, yarn wig series which put the idea in my head to press it. The only issue was that I couldn't brush out the twist since they were already tied and it would've pulled out all my hard work. So, I had to individually spread out every piece before pressing... That took the most amount of time, tbh I spend days doing that. I do not recommend it. If you're gonna make a yarn wig either do it KoD's way or like Uropa Queen does it here. That vid helped me quite a bit with styling.

Lastly, although the final photos don't show it, I did put Jyushimatsu's lil ahoge thing! I made it out of a spring and wrapped it with a shitload of yarn before stitching it in place.

And the last thing was stitching their last name! I thought about doing it directly onto the shirt, but since the uniform shirt is kinda stretchy and I don't have any fabric stabilizers, I chose not to.I wanted the stitches to be really crisp and nice, so I just did it on a different piece of fabric and pressed it on. I also kinda wanted to have a yellow shirt by the end of this without the kanji, so I wanted the chance to peel it off afterwards. But, me being silly, I didn't check if the iron-on adhesive was permanent before ironing it onto the shirt. Not the end of the world, I'll still wear it anyway. Though I think I could've cut the edges closer to the word since you can see it pretty clearly irl and even in the photos, but again the damage is done, what am I gonna do about now.

For the sketch, I used an erasable pen to draw 松. And for the stitches themselves, I just used the satin stitch to fill and some back stitches for the outline. This was probably the easiest and quickest part of the process.

I did the little "14" wristband thing a similar way. I just whipstitched the numbers onto some strap material (poly webbing, I think?) and attached some velcro. I folded it in half and stitched down the sides since I didn't ant the stitches to show on the back side of the cuff.

And I would put stuff for the mask, but that was super last minute. I literally just took one of my cloth masks and painted his smile on it with some acrylic paint and pouring medium, 'cause I was too lazy to whip out my actual fabric paint. Took about an hour to get it done, max.

But yeah, despite all the corners I cut, I still like the way it turned out. I can really see why cosplayers do what they do. It's fun to do stuff like this. I don't know if I'll have the time to squeeze in a DIY-heavy costume like this next year, but for Jysuhi and Airy, it was nice to do it.

And as always, I share the process because OH MY FUCK PEOPLE SHOULD!! The cosplayers that share their processes, I love you I love you I love you so much. Their stuff was really helpful for doing this! Hence, that's why I linked so many things. Plus, I know there are others out there who are trying to do the same and if it was helpful for me to stumble across other people's processes it'd probably be helpful to them too.

This is your sign to make a costume if you've been putting it off because you don't know how to do it. Start with something small, just for the hell of it. Hey, in 2021 I didn't think that painting his hat would lead to this, but look where we are. I believe in you, go forth and be creative!

And if you've made it this far, thanks for reading!!

[sagau-my-beloved]

Your wisp plushy is so cute! I’d love to know what alterations you made to the original pattern, or at least what yarn you used

I'll do my best to go through them all, but I'll just warn you ahead of time there's probably a more efficient way to do this and it gets kind of convoluted, not to mention tedious

So for starters, an easier way off the bat to do this is simply to crochet with fluffy yarn, but I can't properly express with words how much I loath crocheting with fluffy yarn, I can't see any of my stitches which makes it impossible to do anything and the final product always ends up so much bigger than intended because of how bulky yarn is, but I love the look of fluffy yarn crocheted plushies

So what really started this is I had to hit a local craft store in order to get some fine liners for a class and thought this would be a great time to stock up on materials and managed to find the softest yarn I have felt in my entire life, both in white and black, here's the label for that

So I buy those and get a variety of embroidery thread in colors that I think might work, get home and the first thing I do is split the yarn, futility thinking that it might make it easier to work with, it does not

So I default to plan B and find both a white and black regular yarn that's a similar shade to the fluffy counterparts and work with those

I do my pieces kind of out of order, and there is a reason for that, but I do start with the black void of a head first, and I knew going into this that I wanted to head to be bigger than what was shown in the picture because I just thought it would make him cuter, so after round 4 on the head I added in a personal 5th round, which was simply continuing with the increase pattern, so it would read like "*3 sc, inc* 6 times", then I kept the original 4 sc rounds in the middle and added a 3 sc dec before round "9" to combat the inc

After that I moved straight to the hoodie and after round 4 added another increase in order to make it bigger and accommodate the bigger head, same structure it was just "*3 sc, inc* 6 times", but this did cause me to have to change up the next line because the stitch count was no longer the same, so instead of the original "*7 sc, inc* 3 times" I did "*9 sc, inc* 3 times"

Another major change is I didn't secure the head to the inside of the hoodie to do the last round of single crochets, I kept them both separate and left a yarn tail in order to sew them together after I was done with everything else I intended to do, this was mostly because I didn't like the transition from head to hoodie, I thought there should be a little more of a "hoodie" look to it where it's separate from the head

So with the cape part attaching to the hoodie I did that pretty by the book up until the end, I was worried it was going to look to short because of the bigger head, but I think it actually ended up working out, so the two things I did different was I didn't sew the body before working the cape, I thought it would be easier to do it after because I didn't know if I would have to lengthen the body since I didn't know if I would be lengthening the cape to accommodate the head, and it was good that I held off on that because I did end lengthening the body a little bit

And the other thing was somehow my orientation was wrong, so the last step that involves crocheting the little diamond triangle thingies in the front was not done in the front, meaning I had to do an extra row in order to accommodate that, but that might have just been error on my part I don't know, I'm honestly not even sure I would recommend bothering with those because they get kind of buried in the fluff tbh

Oh and I held off embroidering it because of a pretty crucial thing I had to do which I will soon explain

So cape is done minus the embroidery, at that point I folded it back and sewed the legs in after lengthening them an undetermined amount because I didn't actually count rows, I just did it until it looked about right, and now we get to the tedious part

Well, I still had all that really soft yarn I wanted to incorporate, so I split it 3 ways so it was easier to manage, got myself a yarn needle and started sewing

Yep, I sewed the white soft yarn over every square inch of the cape, and sewed the black yarn over the head

The only place I didn't add yarn was the back of the head and the inside of the hoodie because it was going to be covered by the head, which was also the place where I tied off most of my yarn, but I even sewed the stuff under the cloak for the sake of consistency

Now the next problem arose when the yarn was actually a little too fluffy, I didn't like how much it covered the shape, and really thought it was just too long in general, so I'm sure you can guess what the logical solution was

I took a pair of scissors and cut it all myself, being very very careful not to accidentally cut the base of the yarn or the entire thing would unravel

There was fluff and fur everywhere, all over my clothes, all over my sheets and blankets, I had to take a lint roller to my mattress like ten times

I don't recommend, if I were to ever do this again I would probably go out and look for some soft fabric that I could sew over the cloak in place of doing what I did, it's just not worth it

So after that entire process, I made the two top feathers and the wing thing basically the same as how I did the cloak, which was crochet the base in regular yarn, go over it with the fluffy stuff, and then trim it

The biggest difference is I didn't use two different types of yarn like in the pattern, I simply stuck with white because I knew I wanted to dye it since I liked that gradient, which leads us to the dyeing process, and at that point I certainly felt like dying

I had a small pack of dyes on hand for the purpose of being used in resin, because I work in jewelry too, but my first thought was actually food dye, the other was a secondary thought since I didn't have any food dye on hand

The original blue I had was pretty good, but it didn't entirely match the color of my embroidery thread, which I wanted them both to match, so I mixed it with some greens and purples until I got a more accurate blue, but since you probably don't have the same dye colors as I do that isn't entirely relevant

After that I literally just applied it by hand, putting some on my fingers and rubbing it into the white fluffy yarn in a gradient manner, luckily it didn't really stain my skin

Obviously I did some test swatches first for color testing and to see how well it stayed on, soap will take it off but just plain water won't so that's pretty good, but yeah, there's not much more to be said about that

After all the pieces were dyed and dry enough I sewed them on their respective places and all that was left was working with the embroidery thread

So I did the little circle pattern around the clock first, didn't bother trying to do the cute little diamond shapes because it probably would have been covered in the fluff anyway, and for the centerpiece I kind of went off the cusp and just did it in a way that made sense to me

I'm way more comfortable working in a round than I am in a chain so here's my pattern for what I did in place of the original

Start with darker blue (I use the same yarn I used for the legs, just split so it was the same size as the embroidery thread)

Round 1: MR, 6 (6)

Round 2: *hdc inc, 2 sc inc* 2 times (12)

Switch to light blue

Round 3: *1 dc, 1 dc inc, 1 sc, 1 sc inc, 1 sc, 1 sc inc* 2 times (18)

Sl st, leave long tail for sewing

Then sew it as the pattern shows

After all that I finally decided to sew the head to the inside of the cloak, and cut the eyes out of some white felt in a few different shapes in order to play around with how I wanted them, then I simply glued them on

And there you have it, an entirely too complicated wisp Venti

Really the worst part was simply sewing the fluffy yarn on top of my crocheted base, and that could be entirely eradicated by just crocheting with fluffy yarn, so if you're not as bad at that as I am, I'd recommend just going that route, save yourself the trouble

I'm also happy to expand on anything stated here, or maybe even help troubleshoot for whatever problems you may be facing with your own wisp Venti project, I'd like to think I'm pretty good at finding work arounds, but I wish you the upmost of luck and hope you have an easier time

[pbandjesse]

I am very tired. So I did not get anything accomplished after work today. I don't feel that bad about it but I really hope that tomorrow I can get more done and I won't be as tired because it did not feel very good to be so exhausted.

But it was a really nice day and I got to spend time outside and that was really beautiful. And it wasn't even that I slept poorly last night I actually went to bed at a decent time and I woke up when I was supposed to but I just felt so exhausted. I got dressed and I didn't like my outfit so I changed and I was still pretty uncomfortable. My hair felt really dry. It still feels dry honestly. And driving to work was really tough. James had packed me a sandwich so I ate that while I was driving and tried to just keep it together.

I got to camp around 8:00 and drove to all my different sites to make sure that everything was where we're supposed to be. And then I started waiting for parents to arrive. They were supposed to be there between 8:30 and 9:30. But there was some typo or miscommunication and by 9:00 I had one adult and it was just a chaperone and not one of my parent volunteers. I was very stressed out.

The school came at 9:45 when they were supposed to but so did most of the chaperones. And it was just really stressful. Thankfully Elizabeth it wasn't teaching in the first rotation for the other schools field trip so she was able to come over and help me get them oriented and then for the first rotation I did a little intro for painting and for tools. Just to help them out because both of those volunteers were very stressed.

But after that my stress really went away. The kids were super sweet and they seem like they were having a super fun time. I had to run around kind of like a crazy person making sure that everything was settled. Because somebody ran out of material and there was some confusion but everything works great. And I ended up just having some really nice conversations with some of the teachers and parents and it was a really nice day.

After the second program I was able to sit down for a little while and work on some knitting that I had that I wanted to finish. I have decided that I am not tracking the rain anymore this year. Jess also stopped her tracking blanket because the yarn I used is just way too hard to work with. So I have a few months done and I still think it's a really cool piece even if it's not the full year.

I'll still find something to do with the yarn. Just using it on the loom it was too fragile. Maybe I'll try actually crocheting it and see what happens.

I let the groups know when to leave for lunch and everyone got over there really fast I was surprised. And then I ate my lunch in the kitchen while I watched everyone and some of the kids ran outside. One little girl wanted me to be her best friend. She had blue hair and I have blue green hair so she kept trying to involve me in their games. She invited me to come play tag which was very cute but I told her I do not run. And she said oh you don't have to run! But I did not want to play. It was very cute that she invited me though.

After lunch they had two more rotations and everything seemed to go great. I ended up sitting and talking to the parent who was leading signs and symbols and she's a teacher and a deaf educator. So we had this lovely conversation about the ways I want to scaffold the program and talk about Native American sign language and the updates I want to make and she really thought that some of them were excellent ideas. Which made me feel very positive.

Which then led me to find the time to sit and finally do talk to text to write down all of my ideas for the programs and the way I want to change them. I want to make something a little bit more formal and more like a PowerPoint with examples or at least a document with examples but at least now I have all of the ideas out and I can edit them. I also sat down and figured out a modified schedule where instead of having five groups doing five rotations we have four groups with four rotations and the first rotation I am leading a brush making program for the entirety of the group because then if the group is very late we can cut that one without there being any issue. And I think while it would make the groups larger it would solve a lot of our problems for the way that the schools come in. And it would take away a lot of my stress because it would give us more time to get everyone else set up if needed.

It also would give them just a cool take-home and since we would all be doing it as a group first it could then be used at the other sites specifically when they're using natural pigments. And I just think that that would be a really cool piece to include.

After the last program everyone came back to the lodge and I asked the kids a few questions and they did pretty good. And then because I knew they had to get right on the bus I wasn't going to do my whole spiel so I instead asked if they could all take their chairs outside to help me stack them. And you should have seen some of the parents faces. They were very expressive and very panicked. But the kids were so excited to help and the chairs are aluminum so it was not a big deal it just sounds really loud. And so they carried all 75 chairs outside and got them stacked up and then I didn't have to worry about it. Because that is my least favorite part because while the chairs are not heavy they don't stack super well to be carried. Specifically by one person. And I wanted to be done as fast as possible.

I waved everyone off and told them all goodbye and thank you so much for coming and then the bus was gone. I worked on packing up my car with all the stuff from the hacienda and then Bonnie was there to start cleaning.

I asked if she wanted me to fold the tables away too so I stayed with her for a bit All we did that and just talked to her. She's a really nice lady. She didn't have her dog with her today though which I was a little disappointed about. I love buddy but it's fine I understand.

Then I was off to the art building to drop everything off. And then continued on to get everything else from the woodlands village. I do not like driving on that really thick gravel that's over there. I am convinced it's going to pop my tires somehow but all the construction vehicles go back there and it seems fine. Although I do keep finding big old nails on the ground by the hacienda and picking those up. Thankfully no one has gotten any flat tires yet but it is a concern.

It took me a little while to get everything in the car and then I brought everything back up to the art building and packed it away. And made sure all the walkies were plugged in and ready. I do seem to be missing one walkie. I really hope a parent did not take it home with them but it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

And then I went down to the office and checked in with Elizabeth and she said that if I was done to go over the lodge to help put chairs away with everyone else.

But when I got there no one else was there. Well someone was there. His name is Jeff and he works with Bonnie. He has a prosthetic leg and I desperately wanted to ask him about it. And he did give me an opportunity to and so I got to tell him about my dad and he told me that friend of his got a prosthetic when he was 16 and then when he was 70 the socket came off and he fell down and broke his hip! So he told me to warn my dad about that. Make sure that the fit is correct so that you don't fall down. He was a really nice guy.

And then everyone else was there and we got all the chairs away very quickly. We took the trash out and I get very frustrated at camp when communication isn't clear. I just wanted to know if I could go home. I am absolutely willing to stay as late as you need as long as I have something to do. But this amorphous like sitting around waiting for instructions drives me crazy. And I want to leave immediately if you have nothing for me to do I don't want to sit around I have a long drive home. it makes me very annoyed. And it has the entire time I've worked there. It's why the end of the day always stress me out so bad because I didn't know when I was allowed to leave because it was never clear about when my work was done. So I asked Heather and she said that I could leave and then they Dachelle said I can leave but I wanted to wait till Elizabeth said that everything was done. So I kept popping back into the office and going to my car and then coming back up but eventually everyone was like go Jesse get out of here. So I did.

I was going to stop at the store because I need new eyeliner but I got so tired again all of a sudden. I'm fine when I'm moving but as soon as I stop my brain is just like time to sleep. But I had a half an hour drive home so I kept it together best I could. Sang along to music. And let James know.

When I got home I parked and I brought my stuff inside. Sweetp seemed very excited to see me. I would take a shower and put on my flannel and get in bed.

And once James let me know that they were at the grocery store I fell asleep. And I slept until around 5:30. When wind blew against the back door and made a banging sound and startled to me. And I was a little disoriented but it was a good nap and eventually I would wake up enough. James made me a falafel salad which was really good but would have improved with bread. And I was in a little bit of a weird mood for a while but eventually the food made me feel better and I wasn't being as much of a birch to James.

Me and James just spent the rest of the night on the couch together. They are playing the new Zelda game and I'm just watching tik toks and crying about people winning music competitions. And laughing entirely too hard at comedy videos. Stand up. I used to love stand up so much and I don't really watch long form stand up anymore but I love seeing clips of it on TikTok.

Now I want to do my lotions to my face and pick an outfit for tomorrow because I don't think I like the one that I had planned. And then I went to go to sleep. Because hopefully I will feel more like a person tomorrow. I'm at the museum and I'm really looking forward to it and I hope that the school is really good and that whatever I'm doing is excellent. I don't remember what I'm doing tomorrow but that's fine. And then maybe tomorrow I will actually get my market stuff ready for Saturday. Fingers crossed.

I hope you all sleep well tonight. And take care of each other. Good night everybody. Until next time!

[roxysmini]

I'm gonna ramble a little, pay no mind, or actually give me ideas and feedback but anyway I just need to write down my ideas somewhere

So for the bjd doll hair, there are. So many materials !!! I didn't know wig could be made of such different things

For the Kaeya cosplay, since it's long, dark blue (not a common color it seems) and straight (unlike Kaeya himself lol) I'm thinking nylon/fake saran. I'd have to make the wefts myself but that way I can adjust length layers to fit the Canon haircut better. It's cheaper than real Saran, and looks as good on pictures. For the light blue strand either I yarn brush a single weft or use a dyed white strand (depend on Louis' hair)

Emilie will probably be my next doll, and oh my god her hair is going to be the most annoying. Why did I make a girl with longish curly two-toned hair ? So either curled synthetic fibers (nylon too? Is it easy to curl/wave ???) or curly cheap mohair. It will depend on the brown shades disponible I guess, and then I'll have to see if I can use Regular Rit dye or some acrylic ink/alcohol mixture to dye the end of the wefts

Christopher will be the easiest : pure black, mid-lengt, straight in a proportionally inverted way to his sexuality. Either I buy more Nylon fibers or I do brushed yarn. The nylon would be better I think, his hair is pretty flat

Louis. Now Louis I now what I want but I'm unsure how to achieve it. See his actual haircut is rather short and fluffy, so I'm guessing brushed yarn would be good. BUT ! I want to use that boy as a Barbie model and dress him up in all kind of clothes and so I'd also like a wig with his "younger" haircut. Which was very long but still kinda fluffy hair. So now if I make both wigs I think it might be best to use the same fiber so no obvious and weird color/texture change between pictures. Does the straight Nylon fibers can curl and "fluffy up" well? Because if I do brushed yarn it's going to be so annoying and hard to get a nice, even length. I think I might end up putting a little more money for actual mohair lambskin for him. 15cm length on a 33cm doll should make nice long hair, right ?

I think I have some leftover yarn wefts from back when I became interested in bjd for the first time (before I made hard hair for my 1st attempt) so I guess I can use this for a random wig to get used to the feels/practice cutting. I definitely don't have the patience to make several whole wigs out of brushed yarn tho. And synthetic fibers are pretty cheap, especially if I buy all my colors at once to regroup the delivery costs

Guess I should try making some hard and soft wig caps at first.

[1863-project]

So, the other day I was playing through my Pokemon Black copy, and naturally I made my daily detour to Anville Town to see what train would pop up on the turntable that day (the type is determined by the day of the month, so it's always a surprise to see which one I'll find), and lo and behold they show me an old train! (iirc this one still runs in Pastoria City's Safari Zone)

Here is the entire description, plus a close up of the train (courtesy of our friends at Bulbapedia):

I don't have as much knowledge of trains as you do, but perhaps if you could tell us a bit about that train and/or it's real-life inspirations, then we might be able to date how long the Battle Subway's been around? I believe that this dialogue implies that the Battle Subway may be as old as this model. And, if it is old enough, then our beloved submas may not be the first ones to have run this very cool facility :0.

// The route gates in this game also give us interesting tidbits of information, and I happened to stumble upon an interesting detail- that being that the Battle Subway was established by a Rail Fanatic who also liked to battle (or something similar to that, I forget the exact wording and I cannot find any of the Route Gate text online :<).

The singular "Rail Fanatic" is a rather interesting choice of words considering twins currently run the Battle Subway, don't you think?

Anyway, thanks to all of this corkboard and yarn talk I just have a hunch that in game canon, the submas didn't actually start up the idea of the Battle Subway. I'd appreciate some of your insights on the matter if you're up to respond :>!.

Thanks! (and also, sorry for making another massive ask I guess I just can't help myself haha ;w;)

Aaah, yes, I will be DELIGHTED to take this on for you!

I'm pretty sure that's definitely supposed to be the old car they use in the Great Marsh, looking at it more closely! But it does resemble a lot of our older subway cars here, too, which delights me. In particular, in color, it looks like our Redbirds!

The Redbirds were built between 1959 and the early 1960s, but they were given their red paint scheme in the 1980s to combat graffiti. They were retired by 1993, but there are still a lot that serve as maintenance vehicles for the MTA, and quite a few still exist in preservation as well!

Or, if you want to go older...before things went underground, the elevated lines often had old wooden cars.

(link to read about these guys)

The three separate companies that make up today's MTA quickly figured out that steel cars worked better, and that was that, but the old wooden ones are awfully pretty. Here's an example of an early steel car:

(Some of these guys served for a long time - from 1915 until 1969!)

Now, for that other information...holy SHIT, am I interested in knowing who that Rail Fanatic was. And given that we have a lot of historical cars that could fit the description of the old one in Unova, that gives us a wide date range! It could have been there from the beginning - the early 1900s - or it could have come in later, but that text absolutely sounds like it's saying the Battle Subway predates Ingo and Emmet themselves. I now absolutely know what I want a Unovan Legends game to be about, oh my God. Will I get this game? Probably not. Will I fantasize about getting it anyway? Of course I will.

Seriously, though, thank you for that information. I absolutely have to know more now and I am...so curious about who this person was. An ancestor of theirs? A former boss they worked for who they took over for when that person retired? Someone entirely unrelated to them from one hundred years ago? The possibilities are endless.

[oh-for-fic-sake]

Superman's Dishcloth

A small cute headcannon thats been sitting on my tablet?

Summary: some people use pick up lines to get a womans number, henry uses a crochet lesson.

Warnings: Fluff?

Your fingers twisted the yarn around the hook automatically looping and pulling untill you made another double crochet stitch that the pattern required.

To be honest you wasnt paying that much attention as you worked your project, which was stupid really because you were making a new pattern, a bobble popcorn style head band.

You couldnt concentrate for two reasons

One. You were on a goddamned plane soaring across the Atlantic ocean. And if things went tits up you cant swim.

And two? You were seated next to none oher then mr henry cavill himself.

Not that you made a thing about it or even dared to look at him.

He he was watching you, eyes frowning as your fingers twisted the yarn into an intricate looking yet fairly simple pattern.

Youhad to stifle a laugh as his fingers twitched tryig to follow the moves and figure out what you were doing.

You growled missing count again. One, two, three three, skip three. A crochet, half double crochet, two double crochet in one stitch then skip three stitches and repeat untill the end.

Normally youd have no problems but your audience was putting you off.

You dropped the project in your lap as you miscounted again and realised you had to undo the last twelve stitches otherwise you'd be a set out on the end.

You closed your eyes grunting before slipping the hook out and began to tug the working yarn slowly before pinching it and slipping the hook into the loop catching it before it all unraveled.

"Why'd you undo it?" You jumped a little as the huge man beside you spoke up after watching you quietly since take off.

"Huh?... oh i misscounted i skipped four instead of three so it'd be out of line on the end and curl round..."

"How'd you know?" He frowned now leaning over even more curious then before.

You chewed your lip trying not to freak out as he peered over your little project.

"Err well i just counted the stiches i had left on the row, see i was up to here and there was five left not six, so i pulled it taught to spot the odd one out" you explained pulling more yarn through so you could point out the stitches to him with the hook.

"It looks complicated, you twist it so many times?" He said as your fingers began moving once more creating the repetitive pattern.

"Yeah... its not too difficult, Im doing a few different stitches is all, once you know a single crochet stitch and a chain stitch your good to go" You muttered with a smile.

"I doubt its that simple" he replied trying to keep up with watching your fingers guiding the hook jthought the piece making the fabric grow.

"It really is, here you see the little v on top?" You said slowing deciding to show him just how simple it was.

"Yeah?" He hummed quietly watching keenly.

"Thats the row before, so you slip your hook under both strands like this and loop your yarn over then pull through under that v so you have one loop on your hook" you said moving slowly and loosened the stitch with a light wiggle so he could see properly.

"Then loop the yarn over again so you have two loops, and pull the second one through the first... and thats a single crochet stitch" You explained showing him slowly.

"So you make lots of tiny loops and pull them through one another and it some how becomes fabric?" He asked fascinated by it, watching as you began to work on the next stitch.

"Yeah pretty much"

"But that one you pulled the wool over before you did anything at all?" You paused impressed he had noticed the slight difference... he had been watchkn that closely?

"So that was a half double, when you do a half double or double you yarn over first, then you just keep yarning over and pulling through until your left with one loop on the hook" you tried explaining as simply as you could.

"... it still sounds hard" he uttered still focusing on your hands that had been creating stitches.

"Honestly its not, i taught myself in about an hour and a half? Here try it? I've got extra yarn in my carry on if you want to give it a go?" You offered and instantly flushed you did not just offer to teach superman how to crochet like a fucking granny!

Before you could take it back and apologise he beamed.

"Really? That would be fun, i've never tried anything like this before" he said eagerly.

"Err yeah sure lemme just get you started, i'll give you a 5 hook... here" you said surprized digging about pulling the small ergonomic crochet hook out and some mustard yellow yarn.

"So you start with a slipknot... and then a few chain stitches" you began guiding him through it slowly teaching him the steps.

"So do you always crochet on long flights?" He asked pokeing his tongue out as he tried concentrating on the stitches he was doing.

"Yeah, im not good with confined spaces... especially confide spaces that are a good few miles in the air over the open ocean" you chuckled nervously chaining a stitch then turning begining your next row.

"Honestly im not either, usually i have kal- my dog but... not this time... this is good though, its helping take my mind off it thank you" he said sincerly.

"Dont mention it"

"Oh... i think ive done it wrong?" He said andnheld it out to you, you prodded it and to be honest you were impressed, it was neat, not a dropped stitch in sight... just a few loose stitches here and there, but he was finding a good tension.

"No, thats not wrong... just your tension thats all it comes with practice" you said handing it back to him.

"Tension?" He said making you pause. Oh yeah, he wouldnt knpw what that is yet.

"Yeah, how tight you hold the yarn and hook determies how tight your stitches are... mines pretty bad, i have to always use a size bigger hook" you expalined simply

"Really?"

"Yep, i do it too tight- even snapped a metal hook in my hand before" you chuckled remebering the way the hook had just... snapped mid project.

"Wow that sounds painfull?" He huffed eeingnyour hand curiously as if expecting you to snap a hook then and there.

"Yeah, i will admit i was frustrated with the project so it probably didnt help" you chuckled sheepishly.

"Frustrated? Was it complicated like that one?" He asked nodding to your growing head band.

"No, i kept loosing count on a pattern of 78 stitches" you said trying to wave it off but in actual fact that project had been murder.

"So what are you making?" He finally asked eyeingnyour work that had grown wider.

"A little headband, and hopefully i will widen it at the ears to keep em warm" you giggled wrapping it around pinchingnthe ends together proudly presenting it to him.

He grinned and looked down at his little square fiddling with it.

"And im making a... mess?" He laughed holding up the uneven square cheeks tinted pink when you giggled again.

"... Dishcloth?" You offered prodding it gently.

"Perfect, im making a dishcloth!" He bellowed nodding proud of his new diy dish cloth.

"I'm henry by the way. But from the way you were shaking in your seat im guessing you knew?" He finally introduced himself holding out a hand.

You smiled shyly and took it shakingnhands trying not to fawn over how huge hot and soft the palm was.

"Yeah... sorry i was nervous and you probably dont want to be bugged. Im y/n" you tried explaining nervously but he chuckled.

"I wouldnt mind being bugged by such a cutie~" he uttered quietly smirking at you tipping his head down a little too make sure you heard him despite his voice being quiet.

"Oh stop it" you flushed quickly looking down at your headband noticing your stitches werent as even as they could have been, but it couldnt be helped you had handsome distraction.

A very distracting handsome distraction.

"Its true. Besides i think it was me bugging you... and i have managed to plunder through your wool" he grinned sheepishly holding up his little dishcloth.

"Its fine, it not expensive, this is left over yarn from other projects" you waved him off. It was true ou had lots of odd ends and half skeins of woll from other projects.

"Well still i appreciate it, i hate flying" he said sincerly.

"Well now you have something to practice. Youll leave the plane with a new skill to stick on your cv" you added with a grin nudging him playfully.

"Indeed... And perhaps i can leave the p,ane with err...maybe your number to? You know to replace the wool and erm swap err instructions?" He said nervously jumbling his words.

You paused and looked at him shocked blinking. Did he just?

You blinked again watching as his face grew red and he chuckled nerously plucking at the woll on his dishcloth.

"Well i suppose every student needs to be able to contact theor teacher~ and these instructions are called patterns" you smiled to him nodding slowly.

"Right right i knew that of course they're patterns" he chuckled grinning ear to ear relived you hadnt turned him down.

"Well we have a good few hours, perhaps a few more lessons for my little student?" You teased picking up the pattern to show him some of the abbreviations. Mostly to try and concentrate on somthing other then the fact superman had just asked for your number... and was taking crochet lessons.

"Of course" he said excited eyes glittering with glee whilst looking at the small page.

[livelovelaug-h]

Irreplaceable you pt 1

Sam x reader

Summary- inspired by the movie irreplaceable you. Sickness/cancer and a lot of emotions. Definitely grab a box of tissues.

You: "What if we stayed in bed all day?"

" That sounds like the best day ever. We should stay here all week."

You: "What if we got bored?"

"Us, bored? When have we ever been bored?"

" What if we got hungry? What would we do for food?

Sam: "Well, we could order takeout and have it delivered right there."

"you know dean would come in and make us get up."

Sam laughs "Stop. Stop worrying."

~~~~~~~

Full disclosure:

I didn't have to worry about any of that, because this is where my story ends. So does yours, by the way. So does everyone's.

It's okay. Really.

Most of it I don't miss at all.

One with nature.

Really.

Calm. Peaceful.

But then, there's Sam.

Sam was... is the love of my life.

Sams walking to your grave. You narratoring: " Hi, Sam."

Sam by your grave: "Hi, y/n."

But let's start at the beginning.

~~~~~

Even with being a hunter, you were so excited. You were late for your period, it had been a couple weeks late. Now it felt like you were bloated like maybe a baby bump showing.

"Sam?"

"Hey what's up ?" He answers as you walk into the library.

"I kind of have some good news." Siting down next to him.

"oh yeah what's that ?"

You smile big "well... we need to make a doctors appointment. Because... I think I'm pregnant. I haven't had my period for about two months."

His turn to smile real big "really????" You nod.

"This so great, I'm gonna be a dad.!" He hugs you and kissed your forehead then nose and then lips. "And I'm gonna be a mom."

You set up your doctors appointment for about a week later. You were getting some stomach pains. You got up to throw away your wrapper when:. "ah ouchhh".

'Why does this hurt so much.' you thought.

You were waiting for the doctor to come back and confirm your good news !

There's a big picture of a baby inside of a belly showing the insides and sam says

"that picture makes it look gross and painful."

"that's not helpful!" The doctor comes in:

"I'm so sorry to keep you waiting."

"Um, y/n, I have some difficult news. The blood test shows that you are not pregnant.

Oh. Sam grabs ahold of your hands and squeezes them.

" Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Oh, okay." It felt like someone just ripped your heart out but you couldn't believe it. Sam started rubbing your arms and hands.

"I guess that's okay. I- I mean, the whole thing was kind of a surprise... Yeah. We probably weren't even ready."

" Right-"

"It-it-it's just.. its weird 'cause, um, I know it's super early but I really feel something there." You say.

"The sonogram shows that you have a mass in your pelvis roughly the size of a tangerine. It can mimic pregnancy."

"A mass?"

"What kind of a mass?" Sam asks. He looked pretty discouraged to.

[Dr. Michaelson] "I don't want you guys to panic, because it couldbe nothing."

There's this moment

when everything changes.

You look back, and there was the moment before.

See that person?

Flashback to a few minutes -

"It's not helpful!"

She's thinking about whether she's hoping for a boy or a girl, and tiny fingers and toes, and then...

[Dr. Michaelson] "I'm so sorry to keep you waiting."

[you] and now Suddenly...

End of flashback

~~~~~~~~

You and Sam were laying down in bed:

"At least we won't have to pay for college." You say.

"Unless it's a really smart tumor... Too soon?" He says.

You sigh "It's too soon."

"A tangerine is better than an orange." You say.

"Or a grapefruit."

"Right. Or, um... What's bigger than a grapefruit?"

both of you say "A watermelon."

Cas can't heal you because he's human so there is really no other option.

.... At the doctors again .....

Did I say that was the moment?

[Dr. Kessler] "It's two tangerines and a grapefruit."

Correction, this is the moment.

"That's a lot of fruit."

[Dr. Kessler] "Uh, the tests have shown that it is cancer. And I know how hard this must be to hear. It's incredibly rare in someone your age. It's just... It's just terrible luck. Now we can talk aboutoptions whenever you're ready."

"Is there one that doesn't involve dying?" You ask.

[Dr. Kessler] "Uh, I-I've already consulted with a colleague, and after the initialsurgery, there's a clinical trial I'd like to enroll you in"

"You didn't answer my question."

Did he answer my question?

[Dr. Kessler] "We don't like to make predictions. But in addition to your treatment, I want to talk to you about your quality of life. Uh, we can help with pain management and some palliative care. And also some people have found great solace from supportgroups. I know this is a terribleshock, but let's take it one day at a time."

You knew you would go out one day probably hunting, but not like this. Not cancer.

"hello yes I would like to cancel my subscription to you guys."

"oh why is that?"

"I just have cancer now so I figured I wouldn't really be exercising."

"oh that's terrible. Are you sure you want to cancel?"

"yes . ... I am."

~~~~~ later that night ~~~~~~

Sam: "how you feeling?"

"I'm scared."

"It's-It's gonna be okay."

"What if I die?"

"We're gonna fight this, I'll always be there for you"

~~~~

Your laying on the floor because They say after surgery there's gonna be some minor discomfort.

It's Stage IV cancer.

Nothing is minor.

Nothing is comfortable.

Your doctor talking :

"So, let's, um, let's take another look at the proposed model for auto-associative memory and its constituent neural network."

'Or not. Let's not and say we did. Class dismissed.' you think.

you're walking to the other clinic and the guy greets me. "Hey."

"Hi."

"How's it going? I'm Dominic."

"y/n, Nice to meet you."

"I'm gonna be running your treatment suite."

"Treatment suite? "

"Oh, yeah, don't get excited. It doesn't even have four walls. Uh, go ahead and grab a seat right there. For the next time, you're probably gonna want to bring your own pillow in from home. You're also gonna need your cell phone with headphones and grab a magazine. Some of these guys tend to hoard 'em. You're gonna end up reading an old ripped up copy of Duck Enthusiast.

"Oh. It's okay, I don't read Duck Enthusiast. "

"Yeah, well, you will. All right, feet up. " he says.

"Uh, yes, you will feel like shit after this, but it's different for everybody. And no, your hair isn't gonna fall out right away. And besides, it looks like you have plenty of it, so you're doing good. Uh, and if you need snacks, you got to bring them from home."

Great. Just great.

You walk into one of the support groups.

"Hey."

"Come on in. We're just getting started. " the girl says. "Go grab yourself a hook and yarn."

One of the people in the group start saying "have you heard of Catholic yoga? It's a full Latin Mass with vinyasa yoga positions, and I come out... "

"You serious? " someone asks. "yeah!"

"How is Estelle holding up?"

"She's good. There's a new hawk in Central Park. Every morning we go out there and watch the little guy. I hope she keeps up the bird-watching after I'm gone. With whatever new guy she's banging.

[laughs]

"Welcome to group." they all say. "It's the way we roll."

" We have fun. "

"Cool." you say. The end of session finishes up and you start walking away when the guy who was talking about the bird calls to you.:

"The whole point is to mingle. "

"Not feeling up to it. " you say.

"Neither does anybody. That's why we do it. Myron. Multiple myeloma. You've never heard of it? Stay a while. " he says.

"I'm not really a mingler. "

"Not a crocheter either, apparently. "

"Didn't have time for pointless hobbies then, really don't have time for them now, and I'm especially uninterested in discovering that crocheting is a metaphor for healing or whatever."

"What you're feeling is totally normal." Myron says.

"You know, I wish people would stop telling me that totally insane things are normal."

"Have you looked around? "

"But you just accept that? You just accept everything that's going on? You make jokes about your wife having a new boyfriend?"

"I don't accept it, but in the event that I do kick the bucket, I hope she does find a boyfriend. Somebody nice. Less well-endowed to be sure, but nice. "

"Well, I just think I am in a different situation. Sam and I met when we were kids, and then started dating 10 years ago."

"How old is he? "

" Thirty-five."

"Yeah, he's gonna go through a major slut phase."

You laugh.

"I also have Tourette's."

You- "Good to know."

"Yeah. You come back."

"Nice to meet you, Myron."

"Nice to meet you, y/n."

"And thanks for the advice. "

" All right"

~~~~~~~~~~~

"Are you gonna go through a slut phase?" You ask Sam.

"What? No. Why would you say that?"

"You're not even thinking about it?"

"That's the absolute furthest thing from my mind right now. It's further than like meeting someone on Tinder." You chuckle.

"Okay, but Tinder can't be that far from your mind because you just said it, which means you had to be thinking about it, which means you're thinking about this too."

"Yeah. I'm busted." Sam says.

"I'm serious. Look at you. The puppy-dog eyes.

"What?"

" This is a disaster. "

Sam: "What are you talking about?"

"You don't know. Because you have no experience. Women are gonna eat you alive."

" I can take care of myself."

"I know But what if you can't? Who's going to get you to go to bed and stop researching? Who's going to make you real food?"

"you don't make me real food."

"Yeah, but I would, hypothetically. "

"Well, our hypothetical food has been in the freezer for like a year." You got up and started near the kitchen.

"What are you doing?"

"Figuring out how to cook a real meal."

"Now?"

"No time like the present."

"How do I cook a chicken?" You say into the phone.

[Siri] Let me think about that.

Okay, I found this on the web for "How do I cook a chicken?"

"It's gonna be amazing."

~~~~~~~~~~

Just 'cause you're dying

doesn't mean your life stops.

Sam has been through so much so maybe if you found him a new girl, he wouldn't think about your passing.

In group support-

"And so, uh, when my numbers came back this time, I just, honestly, I just thought I can't keep fighting."

[Kate] "Jim, you don't have to go there. 'Cause it's all about attitude. "

"Well, let's let Jim have his process."

[Kate] "Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I just think that his process should be more positive. Everyone is entitled to... to be sad."

"Thank you."

"You know what I'm loving these days is meditation. And I... I know it sounds trite, but I just have been feeling so blessed every time I sit there in silence. Maybe you could try that now?

You laugh.

"Or we could laugh."

"That's okay too. "

" Sorry. I'm sorry. Just... Some of these women are so cheesy. "I want to dip you in whipped cream and put my cherry on top." What does that even mean, anatomically speaking?" You ask.

"Using a sundae model as a sexual proposition. It is confusing. I have to s... " Myron says.

"I mean, cherry... cherry's got to be a hymen, right?" You ask.

"Probably a busted hymen." You giggle.

[Kate] "Mm-hmm."

"I... I, um... mine broke on a horse. And me, I was born without one. So... It was my favorite horse, though. " ......

"Okay, uh, that's about it for today. "

~~~~~~~~~~

"Were you sexting just now?" Myron asks while you sitting down looking through tinder.

"Let me have my process." You say.

"Your process is sexting?"

"You're the one who said Sam would go through a slut phase. I thought you were crazy, but then I thought about it more, and he's gonna be a chick magnet. he already is And the worst part is, he's gonna have no idea how to handle it because he's going to be too sad. He hasn't dated to many people in his life. He's gonna be lonely and vulnerable. He already lost his fiance."

"Classic rookie mistake. " Myron states.

"What are you talking about? "

"Thinking you can do something to lessen the loss. There's a word for what you're doing. It's a technical term. You want to know it?"

You: "No, thanks."

"Anticipatory grieving.' Trying to cope with the loss before it happens. So, Meryl over there writes a birthday card to her husband for every year she's gonna be gone, and Jim... makes a video montage of himself as Santa for all the Christmases he's gonna miss with his kids. It doesn't change anything. Look, what do I know? My advice? You're hooking him up, concentrate on a booty. Yours, you know, it's... it's flat."

You laugh "My booty is not flat."

"You have a terrible ass. "

"Fuck you."

"Here, give me that. Oh, you got a match. Sexypants89."

"Okay, let me see that."

~~~~~~~~~~

You started interviewing girls that Sam got a match on from tinder at a coffee shop.

To be continued.

[izukillme-moved]

*cracks knuckles before typing* Here we go: Fic/Drabble anything that you are comfortable with. 1. First of all, Jelray (because Jelray): “It doesn't matter if we can't describe it–we both feel this way.” (taken from a Tumblr prompt) 2. Gratsu: “And that is why I come to you over everyone else. That is why you are my boyfriend.” I can and WILL give more since I am bubbling up with ideas and at the same time can't save myself by writing them since I'll probably ruin it.

Okay, so here it is! I’ll edit and post the Gratsu later because I really wanna post this aah!!

The first time Gray sees Jellal Fernandes, he knows he isdone for.

He meets Jellal through Lyon. Jellal works at the library Lyonfrequents every so often when he feels he’s thumbed through his book collectiontoo many to pick up one from it. When Gray’s local library closes down, as atired college student (read tired corpse), he is obligated to go to this‘amazing library’ that Lyon describes as having a really good selection ofnovels, research books, magazines and whatnot.

The instant Gray lays eyes upon Jellal, he knows exactlywhat that evil glint in Lyon’s eyes was.

Damn it all! hecurses the silver-haired devil that is his older sibling.

For once, for once,he thought his brother would be nice and kind and show him to a library wherethere are no stunningly hot boys to distract Gray, he thought he could ignorethe look on Lyon’s face, passing it off as his usual smug smirk, but no. Lyon’s not that nice, and Grayshould know that by now.

Jellal is tall, half an inch taller than even Gray himself. He’sgot natural blue hair – now Gray wouldbe sceptical, but one of his ex-boyfriends and current best friend has naturalbright pink hair, so yeah - and a strange red tattoo working its way down theright side of his face. Oh, and did Gray mention that Jellal has the mostbeautiful, kindest brown eyes that seem to hold the entire universe in them,constellations, asteroids and all? His smile is like the sun, and it lights up Gray’sworld every time Jellal so much as looks at him.

In short, this boy is perfect, and Gray does not knowwhether to kill or thank Lyon for this gift from the heavens.

He decides to hold off on both, preferring to maintain thathe is in no way interested in how pretty Jellal is, or how his brown eyessparkle just so when the light hits them.

–

“Ugh!” Gray grunts as he searches through the racks for a book;he knows he saw it here yesterday. itcan’t have gone, there aren’t many people who even know who Stephen Hawking or RichardFeynman or Michael Faraday are, let alone like their –

“Are you looking for TheDreams That Stuff Is Made Of?” a kind voice comes from behind him.

Gray turns around, almost losing his balance, and issurprised to see Jellal, a small blush on his cheeks, holding in his hands the verybook Gray has been wanting for so, so long.

“Yes, oh my god,” he says in surprise, reaching out to takeit. “How did you-”

“Not many people like this book, it’s been checked out exactlythree times,” says Jellal, hand scratching his neck. He gives a small chuckle,and Gray knows that he would pay good money to just listen to that one sound forthe rest of his life. “I love physics, and I thought I would try it,”

Gray’s jaw drops. “Me too,” he says. “It’s so interesting!”

“You really think so?” Jellal’s pretty eyes widen, and hesmiles. “That’s awesome. We should talk sometime. I guess you know my namebecause it’s on my card,” here he laughs a little, and it sounds like the pealof bells in heaven, “but I never caught yours,”

“Gray,” Gray says, breathless. “I’m Gray Fullbuster.”

Jellal smiles in amazement. “no way. Ultear’s littlebrother?”

“You know Ul?” Gray questions in surprise.

“Yeah. She’s my best friend’s girlfriend,” grins Jellal.

“Wait, what?!” Gray leaps up. “You’re Erza Scarlet’s best friend? You’re that Jellal? The one she just won’t shut up about, the guy who tookcare of her till her real family located her? I should have known, Jellal isn’ta common name,”

“Yup,” Jellal says with a proud smile. “Erza’s mentioned youa couple of times to me. There was a lot of winking and suggestive smilinginvolved,” he says thoughtfully. “She has a tendency to act really weird attimes.”

Gray blushes to the tips of his ears and looks away. Heknows exactly what Erza means whenshe looks like that.

“Anyway, I should be getting back to work.” Jellal says witha little smile, handing the book out to Gray. “It was nice meeting you, GrayFullbuster!” And he runs off.

Gray stares after Jellal’s retreating back, the spot wherehis fingers brushed against Jellal’s burning oddly.

Damn it all, he curseshimself. Damn you, Jellal Fernandes.

–

It has been exactly three months, sixteen days, ten hoursand forty-five seconds since Gray met Jellal.

Not like he’s counting, of course. Certainly not.

Not like he wheedled out Jellal’s birthday (Jellal did thesame, he might add) and wrote it into his phone calendar – it’s the fourteenthof November – so he can wish the guy a happy birthday.

Not like he likes him.No, not at all.

Jellal now regularly makes it a point to say a hello to Grayand ask him how he’s doing every time he drops by.

(Which is becoming more and more frequent. Of course, Grayrefuses to admit that it’s for Jellal – he stubbornly maintains that it’s becausethe books at his own local library aren’t enough for him anymore, but even he struggles to believe that nowadays.)

Gray makes it a point to blush a little and stammer out, “Thanks.I’m doing okay, how about you?”

And then Jellal will inevitably launch into a story aboutErza’s friend Millianna and her cats – “terrible, nasty creatures,”, Jellal rants– a story Gray would have heard from Erza not an hour before, but he findshimself listening avidly, hanging off of every word that comes out of Jellal’s mouth.

“And then – and then the stupid thing nearly ripped apart asweater I’d been working on for almost a month,”Jellal yells exasperatedly, clutching fistfuls of his pretty blue hair. “I’m makingit for someone really special, see, and I can’t afford any more expensive yarn!”

“I didn’t know you knitted,” says Gray. He really didn’t –but it isn’t that surprising. Jellal is the kind of guy who seems like he likesknitting, and baking cookies, and all that sort of grandmotherly thing.

What is surprising is that Jellal is poor. His polite, cultureddemeanour and excellent grooming wouldn’t tell you that. But, well, it shouldn’tbe so surprising – Gray himself comes from a large business family, and is currentlystudying to be its next head, but you can’t tell by looking at the scruffy messhe is. Gray almost offers to buy Jellal some more yarn just in case, but biteshis tongue. It might come across as very rude.

“Not many people do,” Jellal says with a little smile. “Ifeel like I can tell you anything, though.”

Gray’s breath hitches.

“Y – yeah,” he says nervously. “Yeah, sure.”

–

It’s ten am on the fourteenth of November, and Gray standsoutside the library, chewing his lip, holding the little wrapped gift in hishand.

Should he be doing this?

Probably not.

Is it a thing that friends do for each other?

Are he and Jellal even friends?

Shut up, me.

Gray takes a breath in and pushes the doors open. It’s toolate now – he can’t turn back, and he won’t.

I’m going to do this.

He walks in and sees none other than Jellal, lifting a cupcaketo his mouth to take a bite. Gray can tell it’s strawberry on instinct, knowingwhat kind of cake Erza likes to give her friends on their birthdays. It has alittle number twenty on it, and Gray smiles a bit – that’s cute of her. He knowsshe baked it herself.

“Hey,” Gray greets.

“Gray?” Jellal sets his cake down. “Hi! How are you doingtoday?”

Gray shoves the gift at him and attempts to smile. “Happybirthday.”

Jellal gasps. “You remembered?”

Gray shifts in place. “Well, yeah? Is that a question?”

“No, but-” he pulls the wrapper open, long fingers carefulnot to tear it. It’s cute how he is so meticulous about it.

Friends can be thought of as cute. They can, Gray insists to himself.

He is brought out of his thoughts as Jellal gasps, eyes flyingwide open. He stares disbelievingly at the brand-new (second-generation, butGray feared buying the new fourth-generation one would be going overboard) iPodTouch in his palm.

“Gray – I can’t accept this-” he begins, pushing it backtowards him. “It must have cost you a fortune, how even-”

Gray cuts him off with a slight blush. “It’s not a problem. Youmentioned you like Linkin Park. It has all their albums except The Hunting Partybecause you don’t like that one. What are friends for, stupid? Just accept thegift.”

Jellal looks in awe at the iPod. “Thank you, Gray, but-” Heputs it back in Gray’s hands.

“Jellal, take it. It’s really not a problem. Trust me.” Graysays firmly, closing Jellal’s fingers around the touchscreen device. “Theearphones are in the case, too,” he adds, pointing at the neat little pile ofwrapper on the desk. “Try it out – I hear the sound quality is amazing.”

Jellal stares at him unsurely. “Gray-”

Gray grabs the box with a roll of his eyes, pulls out theearphones, plugs them into the iPod and shoves one into Jellal’s ear.

“Pick a song,” he whispers, putting the other one into hisown ear.

Jellal hesitates, but turns the iPod on, shuffling throughthe song list. He stops and smiles at one name, then presses the ‘start’ button.

Gray’s eyes widen as the first bars of his favourite songbegin to play in his ears.

“Castle of Glass,” he realises.

“’Cause I’m only a crackin this castle of glass,” Jellal sings along. He has the voice of an angelas well.

They spend some time listening to all Jellal’s favouritesongs – which happen to be Gray’s as well. Iridescentis a particular hit with the both of them.

“So let it go, let it go,” hums Jellal.

(If he’s being completely honest, Gray is more listening to Jellalsing along in bliss than anything.)

And they stay like that for a long while, until Gray realiseshe has to meet Lucy for their English project. They’re assigned partners, andshe’ll kill him if he’s late.

“Jellal, I have to go. I’m meeting a friend for a project, I’mreally sorry!” he says with a bow of apology.

Jellal’s eyes widen. “Don’t you dare apologise, you’ve givenme the best gift you could,” he says vehemently. “I – I can’t thank you enough.”

Gray smiles a little awkwardly and runs out of the librarywith a “You’re welcome!”.

Jellal Fernandes has himso screwed.

–

Fast forward to the twenty-fifth of December, Christmas.

And also, Gray’s nineteenth birthday.

Gray grins as his cousin Juvia whirls him around one last timebefore going off to dance with her girlfriends, Levy and Mirajane. “See you!”he calls after her, and she turns back to shoot him a smirk.

“Waiting on someone?” Erza asks, sidling up next to him witha suggestive smile. “Someone by the name of Jellal Fernandes?”

“No,” Gray says. “And that wasn’t subtle at all, Erza.”

“Mm, I know.” Erza grins. “But dense idiots like the two ofyou don’t get subtlety, so…”

“I invited him, but he said he might be a bit busy.” Graysays hastily. “Said not to wait on him. So that’s exactly what I’m not doing.”

“Would be a shame,” says a familiar voice from behind him.

Gray turns in shock to see Jellal, holding a lumpy wrappedpresent in his arms. The wrapping has flying reindeer and a little Santa on it –it must be old Christmas paper, but it’s the effort that counts, and Gray can’tstop a small smile from painting itself onto his face. He’s excited, he realises, something he hasn’tbeen all night – happy, yes, for his closest family is here, but not excited.

“You came,” Gray breathes. Erza has slipped off to god knowswhere, but Gray is glad she isn’t here, to be honest.

Jellal laughs. “Took me a while. Nice place you got here. I seenow why the iPod wasn’t a problem.”

And the way he says it, so light-hearted and friendly unlikea lot of others, warms Gray’s heart.

“Yeah,” he says quietly.

Jellal looks a little ashamed of himself, handing the giftto Gray. “It’s not cool, like anything you’re probably used to,” he says uncomfortably.“But, well, this is the most I could do. Sorry.”

Gray rolls his eyes and takes the gift. “It’s fine – it’sreally nice of you to even get me a gift, Jellal,” he says.

Gray holds the lumpy package tentatively. It is soft and pillow-like,and he can almost guess what’s inside. He takes his time to unwrap it,unwinding each piece of cheap Sellotape slowly and carefully.

Once he is done, a beautiful cream sweater spills into hisarms. Gray kneels and puts the wrapper on the floor, holding up the lovelyknitted article of clothing. It has an exquisitely detailed snowflake, in varyingshades of blue – is that silk – in thecentre, and two simple bands of the same blue silk near the wrists andneckline. It’s knitted even better than most of the luxury brands you’d see instores, and Gray clutches the fabric to his chest. It must be custom-made – it’s absolutely beautiful, and Gray wants toput it on immediately.

“This must have cost you so much-” he says in shock. “It’sgot to be custom-made, you wouldn’t see anything so amazing in a store-”

Jellal shakes his head with a smile. “I knit, remember?”

Gray’s jaw drops, and he recalls a certain conversationbetween himself and Jellal.

“And then – and then the stupid thing nearly ripped apart asweater I’d been working on for almost a month,”he’d ranted, and then explained why it was so important.

“I’m making it for someone really special, see,”

That special someone…

Was him.

Gray shakes his head.

“You went to all that trouble, spent money on real, actualsilk – for me?!” he says in utterdisbelief.

Jellal rubs his head. “It wasn’t that much trouble,” he answers.“Really, Gray, it’s not much at all,”

“Shut up,” Graysays, staring at the masterpiece in his hands. “I’m wearing this right now.”

And to prove his point, he shucks off the suit jacket he’sbeen wearing all night and slips into the cosy comfort of the sweater instead. Itfeels even more amazing than it looks, and Gray lets out a sigh of pleasure.

Jellal stares at him, and Gray cannot fathom why until –

“God, I can’t take this anymore,” he breathes, and suddenlyhis hands are on Gray’s hips, pulling him closer, and then he smashes his mouthinto Gray’s.

Gray makes an ‘Mmph!’noise at first, startled by the sudden kiss, but soon melts into it, kissingback with equal vigour. Jellal’s hands trace Gray’s hips, coming up to rest inhis hair, and Gray’s hands draw patterns on his back, pulling him closer,closer, closer till there is no room between them anymore.

The kiss is soft and sweet and loving and fiery andpassionate all at the same time. Gray’s insides are on fire, and his heart isburning with something he cannot place.Sure, he’s been kissed, has kissed others before, but not like this. Never likethis.

“Shit,” he gasps when they finally break apart for air.

Jellal’s cheeks are red. His eyes are wide. His tattoo isalmost invisible with how much he’s blushing.

“I’m sorry – I shouldn’t have done that. I crossed a line. Ihave to go. I better go.” he gabbles and runs off.

“Jellal – wait!” Gray shouts, trying to chase after him,hand outstretched. But Jellal has melted into the huge crowds, and Gray cannot spothim anymore.

He sinks onto the floor, clutching fistfuls of his newsweater.

–

The next day, Gray marches into the library to see Jellal lookingsadly into a book – the same physics book, TheDreams That Stuff Is Made Of.

He walks straight up to the older boy and grabs his collar.

Jellal looks up in surprise. “Gray-” he begins.

“No,” Gray half-shouts. “I’m not letting you run away. It doesn’tmatter if you can’t describe it – we both feel this way. I’ve liked you fromthe minute I saw you. Your cuteness and your personality didn’t help matters.”

“I – what?” Jellal looks absolutely furious. “There is noway someone like you deserves someone like me. I’m not good enough. I bet youhated that kiss.”

“I don’t know how it felt – it was too short for me to tell.”Gray says. “Kiss me again and I’ll tell you exactly what I think.”

And he doesn’t wait for an answer, pulling Jellal’s body towardshis. Melding their lips.

The kiss is eternity itself to Gray, and when they finally resurfaceto breathe, he says in a daze, “That was the best kiss I’ve ever had.”

“What-”

“Go out with me, Jellal.” Gray’s daze is gone now. He leanshis elbows on the desk and stares into Jellal’s eyes. “Go out with me.”

“Okay.” Jellal mutters.

–

“And that is the story of how Gray and Jellal ended up gettingmarried like the idiots they are,” Erza announces proudly, lifting her glass. “Tothe grooms!”

They all drink, and the newlyweds share a shy glance.

Jellal places his palm over Gray’s.

He smiles, and Gray smiles back.

Meeting you was thebest thing that ever happened to me.

--

Hope you liked it!! I will be editing and adding the Gratsu soon enough, hopefully that doesn’t turn into a 3k thing like this did xD@tardisthroughthefandoms, you’d asked me to @you, so I did haha

[pbandjesse]

Today was a pretty nice day but I am pretty bummed that it's over. I am very busy the rest of the week. But it's alright. I think it will be a good week.

I did have a good day. I slept alright last night. And woke up only mildly upset about it. I am glad I washed my hair last night but now my hair feels a little strange. Like it has to much product on it but it's fine. I woke up and felt alright and got dressed and soon me and James were leaving for my appointment.

We drove out to the office. But we made a stop at Dunkin for munchkins which was a nice little treat.

My appointment was supposed to be at 9. I got there at 850. And they didn't even give me papers to sign until almost 930. They were very busy. It's alright. Once they weren't wildly busy I got checked in and filled out my papers and soon I was in the room.

The medical assistant was very nice and his name was Sincere so that was sweet. He was new I think and was like oh you don't have to take off your sweater to do your blood pressure. And I'm like that doesn't seem correct. And I was right on the end. Took my sweater off and I have good blood pressure though my heart rate was 99.

When the nice lady who gives me the injections came in I wanted to ask about side effects. Specifically that my hair has felt very thin and that my belly where I got the injections was incredibly itchy.

She said she would get the doctor to check in about that and I was like alright. But that would take a while. When she did come in she confirmed that the chemo meds is what's making my hair feel thin. But I only take that through February. And she suggested doing the injections in my legs to see if that also made me itchy. That's science.

So we did that. And while it hurt it wasn't as bad as in my belly. Much more comfortable honestly. And I didn't even have to wait. So I made my next appointment and then after that I'll get the injection monthly. Neat.

And for really my skin has been looking so good. I wish I could have done this before the wedding. I was slightly embarrassed by my skin at the wedding. I doubt anyone else cared but it was on my mind. And it feels nice to have clear skin again.

I was a little tired once everything was done. James has spent the almost 2 hours waiting for me going grocery shopping. And we would pretty quickly go home.

When we got home Mr Will caught us outside to let us know he was cutting down the new door for the fire escape and he was going to be in and out of our apartment. Which was fine. I was excited to have a proper door again.

While all that was going on James put the groceries away and made me an egg sandwich. I worked on my new crochet row. It took a while but I got the row all put together and attached to the larger blanket and it's really looking like a blanket and I'm really happy. The back is a little ugly but I am going to put a fabric back on it I think. Jess thinks that's a good idea too.

I had a pile of yarn that needed to be unraveled and wound. James would help me with that. And by the time I was done there I laid on the couch to wait for Mr Will to be done. James helped get the door set. And once he was done and cleaned up he gave me a hug goodbye.

James would get ready to go on a bike ride. And I would get in bed.

I fell asleep pretty quick. And wouldn't wake up until 4. And even then it took me a while to shake off the sleepy.

James made me fries to eat while they made us dinner. And I did some setting up for tomorrow's embroidery. And chilled on the couch.

Dinner was some beautiful home made tacquitos. James used the pot frier I got them for Christmas and they came out so nice. If a little big. They could also benefit from like. A corn side or something. But they were great.

We chilled on the couch and watched videos.

Eventually I decided to take a bubble bath. James boiled an extra pot of water. And it was an excellent bath. My skin feels great.

I have been chilling in bed since then. James is mostly asleep. I will probably be up for a little longer. But I have to wake up early for work tomorrow. I hope that it is a good day. I hope you all have a good day. Take care of each other. And be safe!! Goodnight!!