R.A.L.

A picture of Mount Rainier (this year's hottest gift) with a timely reminder that "I am not a toy. I am not a Christmas present. I am a 500,000 year commitment." And just in case that didn't fully sink in for you...we also added a note at the bottom stating "Please think hard before you give someone an active volcano this holiday season."

I know, I know....I hate to derail your holiday shopping, but you may want to think twice before you buy the 370 square miles of wrapping paper.

The last flight I was on, the pilot kept giving the wind speed in knots. Which like, I know it’s basically the same as mph, but still

Potoooooooo enters the chat
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potoooo...

for the record if youre really pressed about passing heres your heads up that doing it in a rural town is easy mode and doing it in the big city is the extra hard difficulty where everything has +30% health and damage and you get unique legendary loot drops

Yeah I can feel this image

The Facebook groups. A single interaction in one killed any lingering interest I had in getting more involved in the historic textile space because the guy went full “I want to believe” about a fairly settled question, and then started attacking my character when I brought up the evidence against it

Except people generally weren’t filthy. Particularly in Middle Ages Europe, cleanliness was seen as a virtue. The methods of keeping clean would have looked different than what they are today, but we have plenty of sources that show that people took great care to avoid being truly filthy.

No lie though I’m probably going to take a few woodworking classes after the busy season at my day job wraps up so I can make flyers with ultra slow whorls for ergonomic low twist worsted spinning

I don’t *think* for this sweater having about half the yoke being possibly ever so slightly larger is going to be a big deal. It might have even fixed the problems I was seeing with row gauge on the raglan slant. But it’s the principle of the thing really.

Today I learned that some companies sell 2.75mm #2 needles and some companies sell 3mm #2 needles. First off, you’d think that with as long as I’ve been knitting I’d have noticed that by now. Second, wish I’d realized that 40ish rounds ago instead of after I finished the yoke on this sweater.

Thank you kindly!

Feel free to add me!

I spin! Though as far as social media goes this is mostly a personal profile, so not 100% dedicated to fiber arts.

Digital illustration of a tiny bulbasaur on a small patch of grass

A tiny bulb 🌱

Also the existential dread of having two loose screws that clearly go somewhere on the knitting machine, but you can’t remember where

The specialty fastener store is gonna get real tired of seeing me walk in with random screws trying to see if they can match them

In today’s episode of the ongoing saga of the Brother KH881 knitting machine that refuses to be brought back into service, I’m mysteriously missing both handle screws for the main carriage and instead have two screws that don’t seem to go anywhere.

I don't lace down anymore, but I still swear by well made and well fitted corsets for support and shaping. It's one of those topics that if someone gets me started on it, I have a hard time shutting myself up.

Apparently today is the day that my spouse decided that ignoring the results of an allergy test from last year isn’t actually a good idea

Honestly there are a couple more things I think I could tweak on the loom, but that would require tracking down about 25 flat steel heddles.

Pay no attention to how much I half-assed the fulling and finishing.

A small handwoven sampler sitting on a wooden workbench. The warp is two thick stripes of grey wool separated by a thick stripe of blue wool. The weft is black. The pattern is a base three advancing point twill, which looks like concentric diamonds that alternate by warp color and weft color. The sampler is folded slightly so that it makes a 90 degree angle, with the long part pointing towards 12 o’clock and the short part pointing towards 3 o’clock. The fringe is untwisted and very fuzzy. There’s a noticeable selvedge on each long side of the textile. There is also a small header at each end woven in plain weave, which was hem stitched.

I don’t love this as a textile, but the singular goal of this project was to confirm that the second set of repairs I made to my piece of shit table loom actually did the job, and it did manage to accomplish that.

#FiberArts #weaving

🧶

I hope Clallam transit never changes this gem of a webpage www.clallamtransit.com/route123

And I'll personally attest that if you try balancing off your feet in a forward seat, you're gonna have a bad time. But if you look at basically any mounted archery video from any tradition, all these people have impeccably balanced independent seats. No bracing anywhere if you know what to look for

That said! Basically everyone in the videos I watched was out of the saddle and balancing on the motion. Not in the most extreme kind of forward seat (think jockeys), but if you've never ridden with daylight under your saddle, it's easy to think the point of balance is under your feet.

Which is not something you want on a good day, much less in combat. But a super quick survey of mounted archery videos on youtube suggests mounted archers like to place their stirrups further back on their feet than is common, so heels would be vital safety features.

Based on some quick reading I did I think we can chalk this up to suboptimal choice of words from people who probably haven't spent a whole lot of time in the saddle. Because if I hear "bracing against the stirrups," that's a problem that usually ends up with the rider behind the motion.

A pair of English style safety stirrups for horseback riding. One side of the stirrup is the traditional metal construction, and the other side is an elastic band that’s designed to release under pressure in the event of an accident

Incidentally, this is why you see so many young riders using safety stirrups. Can’t get hung up if part of the stirrup is designed to essentially break away.

What’s the source for using boot heels to brace against stirrups? That doesn’t line up with good equitation principles. We’re taught as riders that heeled boots lower the risk of getting hung up in accidents, since heels make it harder for your feet to go all the way through the stirrups.

Opening up another front in the “stuffing vs. dressing” debate by arguing the only correct term is filling