This is far and away my most popular work published yet; made last spring for a discord server’s weekly theme, “Cozy.” I’ve decided the caterpillar’s name is Jackson, after the kind old gardener who introduced my sister and I to his summertime pests when we were little. (More like summertime pets, am I right?)
While considering whether to participate in the challenge, I went looking for a tutorial for knitting with geometry nodes (thinking I could make a joke about a granny getting carried away making cozies for everything). But instead, I found Erindale’s tutorial on UV-based procedural knit textures and wanted to test it on something more complex than a square plane. And then there was a tomato hornworm.
It was a fun puzzle combining armature, object, and shape key animations to get a slightly hacky knit loop together in a week. The only things I added after the deadline were sound design (self-recorded foley and CC0 nature sounds) and an improvement to the loop of the modified Unsplash image from Matteo Silvestri in the background.
Proudest moments so far:
A weaver on Twitter who had tried to learn knitting before, for whom the theory clicked while watching this loop.
The surprise of getting an honorable mention in the challenge, and the judge’s heartfelt appraisal of it: “This one is disgusting...but darn cozy.”
Video description under the cut.
[Video id: a short 3D animated loop of a plump caterpillar (identified as a tomato hornworm) knitting its own cocoon. Its body centered in the vertical video, the hornworm is a light green with large wrinkles across its back, four shiny dark eyes set low and wide in its face, and light colored mouth parts and legs. Its legs are just visible through the top stitches of the fuzzy yarn on silver-tipped circular knitting needles. The cocoon is stockinette stitch from the outside; the hornworm is purling left-handed. Its cocoon is rounded at the bottom, presumably holding the hornworm's curled body, and has seven stripes of various thickness. The yarn has fine hairs on it, like eyelash yarn, and its color blocks are variations of blue and plum until the most recent rows, which are bright orange. On either side of the hornworm are two vertically stretched strands of orange yarn from which the whole pupa is hanging; they periodically twang from released tension during the knitting-driven rotation. Behind the hornworm is an out-of-focus copse of trees and lush green grass, lit from the left by dappled morning light. The hornworm and its cocoon are lit indirectly with softer light from the left. The yarn fuzz and randomized stitch colors on the pupa cross-fade every four seconds as the pupa rotates. Each active stitch on the needles, while in motion to form a new stitch, is without fuzz; this is the only part of the looped animation that pops in and out. The artist’s social media handle is written in green in the lower right: @cjgladback ]
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it turns out i really enjoy making educational posts about the comics making process and ways of thinking. here's another one featuring characters from my graphic novel in a very anachronistic art museum.
Happy #WorldWaterDay! Fetch yourself a big glass of the good stuff and take a look at the watery wonder which is Hamonshu (1903), a Japanese book of wave and ripple designs: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/hamonshu-a-japanese-book-of-wave-and-ripple-designs-1903
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I went to a fiber festival for the second time this weekend! Same place, Hoosier Hills Fiber Festival, two years after my first visit. The first day was without a doubt the highlight, from starting out early afternoon (celebrating my vacation by sleeping in a little and enjoying some TV mysteries after breakfast before embarking on a beautiful drive) to get there with time to see everything and shop before my volunteer shift, which in turn had a luxurious hour to swap out some things and touch base with some people before the 2+ hrs social crafting time in the evening.
That social crafting time was something they started last year, the big thing I'd been missing from the first time I went. I did feel less helpful with the timing of my volunteer shift being in a bit of a dead-air-conditioner afternoon lull in what turned out to be the hottest building that day, but my covolunteer there was a lovely person to chat with in those empty spaces between visitors.
And between the generous raffling to make sure every attendee to the social time had at least one gift (I got a Turkish drop spindle!), the kind volunteer goodie bag (including stitch markers, the item I'd planned for my in-case-of-needing-to-buy-something), and my having a class the next morning that would include unknown amounts of fluff--my only shopping to cross off was actually a super easy choice I'd made in that earlier exploring time. I didn't expect any supported spindles but there was one vendor selling some (Cardinal Woodwork) and one of them was exactly my comfort zone but denser and sturdier than I'd dare hope. Something I wouldn't have braved without getting to spin it and feel the slight grippiness of the shaft with the wood's open grain (it's padauk wood--red, dense, not smooth); all of the pros of the 3D printed spindle @dangerphd gifted me to learn on, but hopefully longer lasting as that one's slowly losing material from both ends via friction and layers snapping.
The next day started off getting to the grounds before 9 and asking a kind volunteer at the welcome tent to take my photo at the community art project arch (I'd added my two tiny green butterflies on arrival the first day) while I wasn't having to squint much or be in a crowd's way. I was there for a class called Gettin' Batty with It, instructed by The Foldout Cat. I don't know that my learning style meshed well with the approach, between not really knowing what any of the fiber was we were grabbing or the goals when grabbing it. The second part was lessened by the fiber remaining available throughout the class, but all I really know about the fiber content at this point is that it will dye my hands while working with it. And some of the locks were obviously wool and one labeled bag was recycled silk thread.
We worked up from optical blending on a dog brush (fun!) to unblended layered batts on a hand carder (like half of my usual process but some practice using the dog brush to burnish? feel like that wasn't the term used but press the fiber down the teeth between layers, which I will absolutely be incorporating in my regular workflow since that brush was a take-home item) to doing the same thing but rolling the batt off with dowels and drafting as one rolag per carder full. My first carder to convert to rolag was overstuffed but drafted well. The second one in theory should've been better but fell apart a little because it had a section that didn't seem to have as much long-stapled fiber so I couldn't get a good grip on it to draft at the same time as the rest and what should've been the final pull popped off before it could draft. But the last carder rolag and the three from the blending board went more smoothly, so perhaps some skills were built! And finally, with about thirty minutes left of the class, we were granted access to the drum carders for what I'd set as my personal goal of getting a *bigger* gradient in hopes of being able to divide it for a fractal spin with a bit less organization than doing everything on my hand carders at home would require. That should be fun, and since it's not like I have specific patterns in mind for my other spinning plots it might happen relatively soon, but first I'll be trying out the Turkish spindle on regular wool and then trying to get a 3-ply out of the three rolags from the one blending board, plied from turtles if that's a possibility.
First first, though, I've already spun the single hand carder mini batt in the same way I did all of the skeins for my recycled fingerless gloves, to test out my new spindle and check how drafting with those silk threads feels--it's just a touch trickier than when I didn't successfully fluff and blend recycled yarn pieces.
Varied colors are a lot of fun to spin! Not quite as good as a long progression in my opinion, but still. The spindle performed beautifully and I can't wait 'til I have my ladle belt set up and can pace/walk while doing this. This teeny tiny skein is so little I messed up my math--I'm so used to needing to convert from inches to feet immediately before multiplying by the number of loops in the skein, but this time they were all such small numbers I forgot they were inches; I accidentally published my bsky post saying it was 170 yds when it is more like 14 yds. And yes that post is 5 hrs old with no notes and could easily be deleted and reuploaded with a correction instead of just the reply from ten minutes later but I'm principled.
STORYTIME. Last February, I sold a mug on Etsy. Common occurrence. Great. After it arrived at its new home, I got an email from the woman who bought it. She thanked me for the beautiful piece and remarked that the handle was perfect—she struggles with arthritis and finds many mugs difficult to hold. I was so touched!
Fast forward to six weeks ago—I receive an email from her husband, explaining he broke the mug (lol) and asking if I’d be willing to take on a commission to replace it. He reiterates how she has arthritis but also shares she used to make pottery, herself, but can only really paint, now. I say of course! Come to find out, he wants a WHOLE SET of mugs to replace the broken one. Even better! I end up making the whole set twice (I wasn’t satisfied with the first attempt), but finally get them packed up and sent off across the country.
I just received the kindest message from the husband, saying “It is not often in today's world that someone does 100% of what they have promised,” thanking me profusely, and sharing that his wife is already happily using the new mugs.
Anyway, I guess the point is that making art is hard. And commissions always cause me a lot of undue stress, but things like this remind me why I love creating and connecting with people. 💙
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I’ve been at this since like September. Originally the plan was to do five panels but by the time I reached three I realized it was absolutely going to be too heavy. If the back bothers me then I’ll just buy some black fabric and sew it on.
I pinned it excessively since I have been warned the feathers won’t flatten unless blocked aggressively. They still don’t behave themselves 100% but again, if it bothers me I’m willing to steam block it in the future. Super fun before and after pics.
Pattern is of course the feathered wings shawl by my favorite pattern designer craftyintentions.
I went to my first fiber festival this past weekend! Hoosier Hills Fiber Festival; if I'm still in this state come June next year, I'll probably be back and would love to meet anybody else there. Socializing/hanging out/talking to people without feeling like I was obstructing Real Customers was the one thing I missed, though I didn't really get to any of the free lectures so maybe that's where I could've met some people. Since it was an unknown situation with a lot of people and nearly an hour drive each way, I strategized to make sure I'd go:
First day, I signed up for a couple volunteer shifts. Absolutely a recommended strategy.
Got to be helpful!
They happened to have goodie bags, to help me justify the gas and time (I now have a nice tape measure to replace the one that's been vacationing with a missing sewing kit for a couple years and a lasercut wood two-inch gauge window that might help me with consistency versus my suboptimal practice of just trying to knit perfect squares when swatching in pattern)
I got to learn things about the layout and schedule I wouldn't know to ask when answering questions and acting as a gofer -- especially true working two different locations
And of course, some people were pretty much guaranteed to be happy to see me!
Second day, I signed up for a workshop in the morning so I'd be there and able to shop for anything I needed at the end. Ombre yarn dyeing was the class! It's acid dyes, something I'm several years off from wanting to get into enough to commit to dedicated cookware, full pots of dye powder, etc. The room with the workshop was a barn that had plenty of outlets--but they did not represent plenty of breakers. So there weren't quite enough functional heating elements for the class to have sufficiently cooked our yarn before leaving, and I did need to risk a giant stock pot at home for three batches of four jars, almost-simmering in a water bath for thirty minutes each, of the yarn that hadn't proven it was done (all but the two palest greens). I was a little worried the delay/drawn out heat situation would affect the results but if it did it wasn't much; I got pretty much exactly what I was hoping for with my two color gradient and the single is great too!
The single dye gradient is the color Moss, which did some interesting things with the red portion separating out once they were heated. Every skein has redder blotches, so I'm not bothered about any inconsistency -- if anything it'll help my finished product camouflage stains. Though it was definitely a surprise for me and the other Moss user in the class when our first yarn to have exhausted the dye was the complementary color to what it went in as.
The two color gradient used Rhodamine Red on one end, which was one end of one of our instructor's samples where she chose a cool-green for the other end to show how multi-component dyes mix less predictably than most paint. (It was kinda like shading with markers where you can still see washes of the pink and green in what you squint at and call a grey-brown.) The other end was Cantaloupe, which was one of the maybe three colors she didn't have a sample cut of yarn for. But she described it as the flesh of a perfect ripe cantaloupe and obviously I had to see that, and it sounded like it would be fairly guaranteed to combine nicely with the magenta while being just enough around a bend in the color wheel to be interesting--warm orange versus cool pink. As I said, it turned out pretty much exactly as I was picturing. Not anticipated was how much the jars looked like they were full of some delicious dragonfruit-mango beverage. Were I still a barista I'd be trying to recreate this for my shift drink.
Image descriptions under the cut.
[ID: Five images following fourteen small skeins of sock yarn dyed in individual glass jars, in two gradients. One gradient is six skeins from a medium forest green through a pale creamy pink, the other is eight skeins from a vibrant yellow orange through an even more vibrant magenta. The first photo is inside under fluorescent lights, showing the 32oz glass canning jars with metal lids and rings, full of dye and yarn on a table at the end of the class in which they were filled and heated for a short time.
The next two images are animated gifs. The first gif is two frames showing the finished dye jars sitting in grass, with their yarn and with it removed. The green gradient left only transparent blue color in its jars, and most of the pink to orange gradient's water looks more orange without its yarn, aside from the third and fourth jars from the orange end, which shade toward a neon lilac with the peachy pink yarn removed. The second gif is a view of the inside of the bright green wash bucket, with just the pink-orange yarn in it, then all of them mixed up, all as they were after a soak with the rust-brown water, in the first rinse, and that rinse water alone showing its transparent but still brown tint.
The last two photos show the gradients lined up along a weathered wooden bench on the side of a deck. The first photo has the wet piles of yarn bundled in front of each of their respective jars with remaining dye. The final photo has the clean, dry yarn wound into center-pull balls and still vibrant in the direct sunlight. End ID]
I'm officially going to this festival again this year! Had to miss last year due to starting my job the previous week, but now I not only have the time off but have signed up for a volunteer shift and class again to get me there.
I will also be walking away with more fluff from that class, despite still not having finished processing those fleeces from two years ago, and I refuse to feel sheepish about it. Pun acknowledged.
i desperately need like a canopy bed or a tent bed or an in-wall bed or something i need to be tucked in i need to be protected from the elements i need to be in a little hole in a den in a nest im just a prey animal trying to get by
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Since a few friends/coworkers of mine have been getting into quilting (I simply don't have the space), I took extra notice when Carly B, my designated patchwork YouTube creator, made another one this week. And because it's imitating one unified fabric and probably also due to the athletic/menswear references, it's a slightly more understated one I could imagine wearing! So wanted to share here while I had the link in my clipboard.
