Posts made by surreality

@Auspice Also people with wool allergies, which are shockingly common!

@Auspice Not strange in the least.

@tek A lot of handspun comes out like that, or similar. Or it's not impossible to manage. If you ever consider that craziness, feel free to poke. I have a little automated "wheel" that's about the size of a toaster, fits on the desk. I used to spin yarn between poses back on Reno1. (No, really!) It wasn't a cheap gadget, but if you really like that look and think you'd be interested, definitely look into one of those. Company is Hansencrafts; they have a range of options. It is weirdly soothing and meditative to do, and with that thing, did not take over a ton of space or anything.

(ETA: https://www.ravelry.com/people/surreality/handspun/tdf-2014 -- if you can pull that page up, it has pics of some of the yarns and of the machine, too. Is tiny!)

@tek You totally had me at 'Noro', period. SO MUCH LOVE. I don't think they've ever made a yarn I don't like. (My budget hates this, but it can go shut up and sit in the corner.)

@tek I love that yarn.

Also: for the nail polish color. (I am addicted to greens and blues and greys for nail polish.)

@Auspice Or the bill for all the patterns.

ETA: lottery dream house would have to have a sign somewhere that reads 'I blame pinterest for most of this'.

@Auspice It needs a pinterest one with some glorious cu$$$tom-made artisan cabinet that is full of literally everything, flawlessly wound, with an assortment of things you haven't been able to get since 1930 artfully assembled in front of it.

Probably with a link to 'ideas to store your supplies on a budget', just to rub in the comedy factor.

@Auspice If it's tariffs on Chinese imports, I'm going to be extra mad. One does not fuck with craft storage and get re-elected.

@Auspice That is awesome. I ended up getting a couple of their 'multi-section' not-actually-floss-boxes recently to wrangle all of this stuff. I think they were about $5 each? They're almost twice the size of the typical floss box, and have the little adjustable dividers in them. Not so much travel friendly, but super handy for sorting things.

Also, when in the fucking hell did generic floss boxes in the old traditional style get to be $5+ each?! They used to be perpetually 99 cents a piece all the time not even 10 years ago or so.

@Auspice Avoid the 'Le Paon' on amazon, in that case... they're the 'WTF is this texture even?!' one, unless you like mixing them up. The '300 mystery skeins' one is Caydo -- I was surprised by how nice they work up. 300 skeins and some floss bobbins for $17 prime, definitely a good deal. They have a nice kit with a light box I'm looking at, too, since I've needed a light box just generally for a while and it comes with all manner of stuff for the typical price of a decent light box.

I suspect they're not reeeeeeally 100% cotton and have a small amount of poly in them, because they tangle NEVER, when even DMC tangles on me every so often. It's not DEAD ON for sheen with DMC, but if I had a color or two in the Caydo that's some mystery dyelot weirdness that filled a gap in DMC colors I'd definitely at least try it to see if it stands out as an issue. (DMC colors have gaps, and they're ALWAYS OMGWTF gaps that are things I need, and it... is totally why I'm just gonna dye shit eventually.)

DMC's site has one of their 'every solid color' sets for like... $290. I want it. Badly. But, uh. Having $290 doesn't happen for me very often.

I WISH the Sullivans site took paypal (I do everything through paypal except things on amazon) because they have their full color set for $113 and it's supposedly all the same colors and on par for quality with DMC, it's just not imported so it's a lot less $$. (MyNotions.com for them if you want to peek. Hate hate hate they don't take paypal, my heart broke totally.) Their normal skeins price is $0.25 each, which is pretty frickin' great by comparison.

My one mental bookmark with the DMC is that if I do get into dyeing the stuff -- they have a 1/2kilo cone of white available on amazon affordably I wanna order next month to experiment with -- is that they do do wholesale, so if I did start dyeing the stuff to add to the yarns and such for shows and whatnot, I might be able to set up a wholesale account with them that would make things a lot less bonkers. (Sullivans has 1lb cones as well, but the price comes out to be about the same for both companies retail, and people know the DMC name more, so.)

DMC suckers me badly on their fancies, though. I LOVE the Coloris colors so much. They had a '20% off first regular price item order' coupon if you signed up for their newsletter a bit ago, so I picked up one of each of those. (Tragically, that wouldn't have applied to the big set... otherwise I would have been hella tempted.) They're also evil in that they put out these sets of 'here's a special collection of colors you can't get regularly, hahahahahahahahahahahahaha! in the fancy types that... welp. FML on that. Sloooooowly building up a collection of 'I'd like to at least have one of each of those to just have it in case I for some reason NEED something that glows in the dark/is neon orange/is metallic lime green/etc.' My goal is to organize that box today.

I did luck out and got a tin of the etoile ones for 40% off at Michaels, though OMFG still $painful$ at 40% off. Amusingly, my husband has totally fallen in love with that tin for whatever reason, so I told him he was more than welcome to send me cash to buy another one for him. (I am horrified that he even seems to be considering that.) I have to admit... I kinda love their tins. We got one of the 'new colors' ones with a 50% off Michaels coupon a ways back, too -- $15 for 35 skeins and a nice travel-project tin and some decent patterns is pretty good -- and I have those set aside as 'this is for travel foo, no stealin' for bass gear!'

I may also just be amused that he'd have a floss tin for small bass guitar parts, but it's kinda endearing as hell, too.

ETA: https://www.dmc.com/us/etoile-collectors-tin-bundle-9007363.html -- still not cheap, but I wish I had seen this before I got the one at Michaels. Comes out to about the same as what we paid at Michaels, and has all the nice extras with it. I dunno how I feel about their 'stitchbow' things -- they seem like a good idea but part of me is like... they're kinda ugly and I bet I could make something nicer that's similar with stencil vinyl if I ever set up the damn cricut machine.

Crafter woe: I have no choice but to finish sorting floss today, along with the housecleaning. I have too much weird random stuff to not bite the bullet and just do it.

The vast, vast majority of what I have is some weird brands I bought from amazon or have picked up over the years. Since I'm working from my own charts or concepts usually, that they're mystery colors or not going to mix in with each other tends to not be a big deal, but it does mean I need to sort out each brand into its own space as they don't mix well texture-wise.(1) For instance, the tie-dye fabric piece a few posts up, I'm just using a cheap rainbow color pack from Michaels' home brand. 40% off $18? Pfft, worth a shot for 100+ skeins in a simple rainbow with enough duplicates of each to get pretty far on stuff where I'm just fucking around.

Worse - awesome, but worse for this sorting fiasco - my mother saw I needed a ton of floss for a crochet thing(2), bitched at me that I was getting the more expensive DMC, and did a 'THIS IS ALL THE FLOSS YOU WILL EVER NEED IN YOUR LIFE' and ordered a shit-ton from amazon for me, which was SUPER SWEET OF HER AND I LOVE HER FOR IT, but she, uhm, got 12 packs of 300 totally random skeins each (they were incredibly cheap). It took two days to sort it all into baggies(3) and it fills like... 6 shoeboxes? They also can't be sorted just by number, because the dye lots vary wildly, so I had to go by number and then by dye lot and... yeesh. Sad fact is, I actually really like the quality of them, so while they'd only work for my weird stuff, I do like using them! Some stuff we've gotten over the years has been much worse quality and cost a lot more, they'd just be awful for dye lot consistency or knowing you can get more of a specific color period.

Pulling one skein from each sorted baggie to card and box is something of a challenge, though, no lie. The one box of 'red-purple-pink-peach' took a day.

I may just chicken out and do the 'ooh so fancy!' box of weird DMC stuff today. I can never resist their fancies ever.

1. ...and one of them has a zillion textures and finishes from just the one brand. Supposedly the 'nicest' amazon brand, no less. Definitely one of the pricier ones among the cheapies. This is great if I feel like varying textures, but if I wanted uniformity, dye lot consistency, or even labeled colors? I WOULD BE SO PISSED.

2. I love the yarn that's made from multiple threads connected at different points to build gradients. She bought me a bunch of thread for this, but it is HARD to work with and super fine, embroidery floss works better for smaller items.

3. Tooooooootally not kidding about that sorting thing! That was weirdly soothing.

@SG I tinkered some with an idea like this for a game, so clearly it's an idea I like!

I would set certain boundaries with it to handle things like the 'hiding magic items away' thing. That, or if people start doing that? Oh, hey, the adversary trapped in that cave found it first and now they have to battle the orc that now has that +2 broadsword they left behind, OOPSIE! (This happening once will prevent it from happening again, pretty much guaranteed.)

@Vixanic Youtube has some great tutorials.

If you look at amazon, you can find a LOT of older/used books. They may have cheesy or ugly color choices if it's some 20 page pamphlet from the 70s or somesuch, but the step by step illustrations are still accurate and the designs tend to remain the same, just use the prettier new seed beads we can find today and they really are totally transformed.

Check for beading magazines, too. There have been about a dozen of them, not sure how many are still around since our brick and mortar bookstores went poof in my area, but for about $5 you end up with 20-30 ideas per magazine.

DEFINITELY check here: https://www.interweave.com/store/beading

They don't have a lot of free stuff, but I think they have a newsletter (or had, I ended up dropping it since I had so many daily things already) that sometimes has free projects. They do a LOT of pdfs for $10 or less, and sometimes have some truly amazing bundle deals for more. I know I picked up something for like... $35 once that had five or six nice books and over a dozen pdfs from them. So while those are a bit more, it's enough stuff to be SO incredibly worth it.

Their photos, instructions, and designs are pretty spectacular. The kits are too pricey for me to ever bother with, but everything else tends to be reasonable. Since a lot is available as pdfs, you can take them with you everywhere, too. They keep up with what kinds of supplies are coming out that are the 'oooh, I wanna try to make something with that weird new shape of thing!' as well, which is really neat.

(Interweave is awesome for a variety of other artisan crafting work, too, so errybody in this thread should go peek at what they've got, seriously.)

https://www.interweave.com/store/quick-easy-beadwork-collection-volume-1-4-ep15687 <-- a good example of what I mean. $20, 140 projects. Even if half of them suck, that's a pretty good deal.

Another edit to add: https://caravanbeads.com/blog <-- they have a bunch. They tend to be simpler/stuff I'm not as fond of (a lot use expensive supplies to make stuff that's kinda 'ehhhhhhhhh' to me, but it is a bead store/supplier so they are trying to push expensive products, can't blame 'em).

FWIW, DMC's site was doing a thing where any order from them over X amount, they'll send 3 decent sized pieces of red aida as a Valentine's Day promo. Not sure if they still have any in stock to hand out, but it's good stuff and worth checking to see if they do if you need/want anything from there.

New experiment below, normal high quality cotton. The stabilizer can go through any inkjet or laser printer, and is water soluable. (Grid is printed on the inkjet here.) Trying the same stitch pattern from the tight gradient thing in a more 'open' look over the fabric, which is a crazy rainbow tie-dye cotton that will ideally show through; the cross-framing will proooooooobably be metallic and done after the stabilizer is removed since I think it will make the metallics even worse, and all the places to put it will be obvious by then. Fingers crossed it will work.

Also, yay, new neato scissors came. (I've wanted those forever, and while they're cheap as hell at a whopping $9 they kept getting put off for over a year.)

@Auspice <eyes cross> ohgod.

Also, this is win: https://www.etsy.com/listing/737904921/not-flat-nasa-logo-cross-stitch-pattern?ref=shop_home_active_15&pro=1

@GreenFlashlight Carbs make for comfort food for some reason. Mild, filling, usually warm. They're like the fuzzy blanket of foods.

@Auspice It is seriously one of the best 'quick food that tastes like something a lot more fancy' approaches ever, and 'tastes fancy' is one of those nice things that helps food not taste depressing. Plus you can sometimes get that little glimmer of being all proud of yourself that it took two whole seconds to turn boring into pretty dang good, and those tiny little sparks of 'I did good' are pretty awesome.

@saosmash This is gonna sound potentially dumb, but: look for some spice blends and find a few you like. The old classic Italian 'bread and butter' is actually bread dipped in olive oil with spices thrown in it, and it is pretty flavorful. That stuff keeps for AGES, and if you ever find yourself in a similar position, you at least know it's more or less just a twist on an Italian classic. Bread and pasta are made of similar ingredients, after all.

This approach has saved me so many times. Not for pasta, but Trader Joe's 'Umame' seasoning blend has saved my 'meh, I don't want to effort' ass regularly over the past year, for example.

@Ghost said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@Macha Were we pals IRL and I made a joke like that, my arm would be prime real estate for a slug.
Sometimes I make jokes like that when one of my friends NEEDS to slug something, knowing going in I'm gonna get thwapped.

Pretty much this, yep. If it's somebody you know well and know they're cool with that sort of thing, obviously do whatever's cool with y'all.

Just... don't assume a stranger or someone you don't know really well is gonna be OK with that. I've been hurt by people doing this kind of thing and I have hurt others doing this kind of thing (so I am seriously not trying to be holier than thou here, I have screwed up this way with people as well) and my takeaway has been 'really unless you know for sure it's cool with somebody, please don't'.

Being able to keep a sense of humor about things that hurt is immensely helpful. (I know I'm in a very bad place if I can't crack a joke about whatever is happening to me, for instance -- it's one of my red flags to take something seriously and focus on resolving the thing.) It really is. It tends to kick in not right at the peak of misery, though, so, y'know.

(This message brought to you by 'shit that's gonna sound preachy even though I don't intend it to', and 'the good intentions paving company'.)

People not liking jokes about real world pain or issues is not exactly uncommon. Maybe just don't, people.

If someone has a sense of humor about their actual real world suffering? They will open that door themselves.

Unless they do? Seriously, just don't.

Adding insult to injury' is a real thing; in a real world act like a fucking grownup thread, maybe don't be that person that piles more unwelcome stress on somebody this way. It isn't funny, and being an asshole to someone already hurting is seriously not cool; all it does is compound actual pain.

@Auspice I have it, but mine is more 'special counting numbers' and obsessive sorting than cleaning. I count myself pretty lucky that way. (Partly it's also because my back simply won't allow much before I can't move at all for three days, which is like 'three days of staring at the ceiling with the itch to do something and knowing something I meant to finish is not being finished'. Ironically a different feel than 'I will start thirty things and never finish any of them', which I also do, and WTF is it with that even?!)

Like, that craft room floorplan is not even a joke re: dream house. I have a 'space for everything' problem and I'm one of those people that can super-pack things. (Whole college dorm worth of a ton of stuff including all required art supplies and sewing supplies packed into a small car that... well it HAD a back seat, but we called it a two-seater with delusions of grandeur for a reason... and with room for a passenger and their luggage to spare!) I bend laws of time and space when I have the storage gear to manage it like this house is a Tardis re: storage.

It's why the beach trips are super OCD mellow reset meditation time, though: sorting through a mountain of shells to pick out nice ones to keep is like... AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhh-I-can-breathe-again. We do the same re: the pebble piles at a beach up here when I'm a ball of tension and the weather isn't pure garbage. (Of course, now we have a ton of boxes of shells and rocks to store somewhere, and I am probably not too far off with 'a ton' after years and years and years of us doing this.)

A friend of mine who lived around here a handful of years ago would come by to sort sometimes beads while we'd babble on the couch that helped her out a lot, too. She'd call all 'DO YOU HAVE A BEAD REMNANTS BOWL?' and if I didn't (I usually did) I'd just secretly dump out a box for her before she got here. She'd run out of small apartment to clean and be stuck mid-insomnia-flail with nothing left to do, and call over in the wee hours of morning.