Best wishes, and godspeed

Diplocaulus salamandroides

Originally drawn for the DinoCon 2026 Art Exhibition

not to worry! my connection is now 4 hours late

I’ve seen a lot of designs that are incidentally named after things from fantasy books, but the actual look of the piece wouldn’t tell you what it’s inspired by. I’m more interested in designers doing dragon scale designs or at least sweaters I can picture on a hobbit.

Fabel Knitwear has some pretty stuff, but I hear her gauge is weird af and her patterns are confusing. I have the Montmartre but haven’t made a serious attempt at it yet, so we’ll see what I think. I’m not finding the instructions bad, but I agree with all the nitpickers that her own knitting is that trendy airy bullshit where the needles are 5 sizes too big and you’re making up for it with hairy yarns. My sense is that she’s one of those designers whose shots of herself in samples are by far the best thing about the designs.

Her other knits are a range of “normal” to “fantasy-esque”, but I think they’re neat. :)

Heavener Scarf

She also has a lot of lacework in some of her shawl designs but all are very pretty.

Here are some cool fantasy-ish pieces I’ve seen:

Olivia’s Cape by Amy Gunderson

The Seer by Ninja Chickens

Silversmith Hoodie by Meiju K-P

Dragon Scale Mitts by Colette Smith

Sekiryu Kimono Sweater by Tania Richter

Long Cardigan by Little Bunnyxx 

Firebird by Inna M (a colorwork chart)

Imperial Dance of the Dragon & Phoenix

Running Free

(above) Royal Peacock: (Ravelry link/Website link)

(above) Dripping Ripples (Ravelry link/Website link)

(above) Taboo (Ravelry link/Website link)

(above) Squirpool (Ravelry link/Website link)

(above) Pavlin (Ravelry link/Website link)

are u guys hearing this

eyes hit serious diminishing returns wrt resource costs vs vision quality as they get bigger, so the question became: what the FUCK do giant (and colossal) squid need to see so badly that they couldn't see with swordfish-sized eyes that's justifying that massive energy cost? that nothing else in the deep ocean needs to see so fucking badly??

turns out the one strength eyes that big really have over much smaller eyes is: seeing large glowing objects in water deeper than 500 meters from an appreciable distance.

sperm whales are the primary predator of giant squid. sperm whales don't glow. BUT! water that deep is full of bioluminescent creatures-- these creatures light up when bumped into. something a sperm whale's size is continuously bumping into those critters, it's just surrounded by a glowing field all the time when it's swimming at those depths, visible from a distance-- if you have the right eyes-- as a massive glowing shape. so basically the only reason to have eyes the size of soccer balls is if you live in the deep ocean and your life depends on having a heads up when a hungry sperm whale lurking around

An ex-libris, also called bookplate, is a kind of printed stamp at the beginning or end of a book that says who owns it (think of the stamp you surely have seen in the books owned by a library). Though ex-libris have been used since ancient times, their "golden age" in Catalonia was during the Modernist movement (the Catalan equivalent of Art Nouveau), where many bookworm people commissioned artists to have a beautiful personal ex-libris that they could use to stamp all their collection.

The text in the 1st one, written in the Catalan language, says "no matter how much you know, there's always much more that you don't know" (per molt que sapies es molt mes lo que ignores).