i craft to cope

I realized that I’ve gifted 5 scarves now but have never made one for myself. So I decided to try cabling for the first time and make myself a scarf! Cables are actually so much simpler than I realized!

The noble suitors, who have never sewn a thing in their lives, sabotage themselves by their own ambitions: they choose difficult fabrics to work with and cut huge, elaborate patterns and select gems and pearls and beads to sew onto it, and snip such long bits of thread that they lose time detangling their stitches, and ultimately resort to pinning bits together as they run out of time, so that their offerings initially look beautiful and flashy, but when the princess tries them on they stick her with pin ends and fall apart as she moves.

The humble protagonist uses a very simple pattern without embellishments and sews using short lengths of thread (snipped off and threaded for him by little birds of course) which don't tangle and therefore save time. His dress is plain by contrast, but holds together and the princess is able to move freely in it, and so he wins the contest and her hand.

I particularly think about the bit about threading the needle with shorter lengths of thread, needing to tie off more often but avoiding tangles and thereby saving time.

I am obsessed.

I am knitting all of the time.

I am giving myself carpal tunnel.

I do not care.

I must knit myself a soft cosy rainbow.

This pretty much started when I saw this yarn:

I HAD TO MAKE SOMETHNG WITH IT!😍🌈

And after my Mt. Everest of knitting that was the King Salmon sweater (will post about that saga soon😅). I was convinced that I could complete a blanket, which meant that I could order TWO of these glorious cakes of happiness.

It has‘t even been a full month, and I am already 25% done…

I have knitted about 1 kilometer of yarn!🤯

🩷🧡💛💚🩵💜

Pray for my poor wrists

Map of Tortall (from the books by Tamora Pierce), completed February 2026, cotton embroidery floss on cotton muslin, painted with tea.

If you're seeing this for the first time, I've been updating progress on this project since summer 2024 in THIS POST, feel free to give it a look! Details on materials and construction underneath the cut if you don't want to follow the link.

Okay SO this is a longer answer than you asked for but let me regale u with

The Story Of Hubris Quilting

It is two months ago

I am so fucking cursed and trying desperately to find crafts I can actually do while lying in bed with no brain and a -4 penalty to my dex mod

I am also just sort of rewatching Mob Psycho 100 on loop bc I am in love with it and it gives me Content without needing to expend much brain power

Important background information on me, Scribe: When I love a piece of media very much I feel a deep and abiding need to create some sort of wearable talisman about it.

Anyway, I am rewatching Season One for like the third time when I notice this shot in the opening:

Haha, I think, that looks kind of like appliqué!

My brain, which is actively dying for want of a craft project, goes Oh?? Appliqué you say???

Oh man, I think, I bet I could sew that! And maybe some, like, objects from especially significant scenes! I could do it as the design on the back of a quilted vest; that would make a fun talisman!

(Had I stopped here it would have been a large but reasonable project. However, I am filled with hubris even when I also have the physical stamina of a cup of jello and the brain power of a particularly dim slug)

It's a shame there's probably no way I can quilt his aura, I think.

(This is a stupid thing to think because going "this is probably impossible" about a craft project is a surefire way to summon The Hubris)

No really, I think. There's no way I can quilt Mob's aura.

[Various McElroy voices] Unless . . .

. . .

I stare at psychic aura screencaps for many days.

I come to several emotional character revelations. I also come to the conclusion that what I want to do is, technically, possible.

To start, I'll use English Paper Piecing to sew together a bunch of tiny triangles into eight-part rosettes to recreate the 'spinning disc' effect of the aura

Then once I have enough of those, I'll remove the basting and the paper pieces, press them, and re-baste them to clamshells (making sure they're all in exactly the same orientation)

And THEN I'll appliqué all those clamshells together into rows to make a solid piece of fabric

(These are just laid out, not sewn down yet)

And then I'll tilt that fabric at like a 20-30 degree angle and finally I will have successfully quilted Kageyama Shigeo's psychic aura!

And that will be the background of my vest :)

After that, I'm going to teach myself needle-turn applique to decorate it with significant objects from every scene that's made me cry! (there are . . . many of them)

included a mistake or two to let the ghosts out. this was not foundation paper pieced, just a lot of noodling around

i'm responding to these tags so i can post my original mockup:

the three pink blooms absolutely is a traditional block that comes with a lot of different names and variations. i copied it by sight/with graph paper from the above image (Carolina Lily block by Quilt Missouri) and from this Bernina blog post about the Tulips In Vase block.

you can see i was planning to include more traditional blocks and got lost in the sauce of making stuff up. the less traditional blocks in the mockup are by BurlapandBlossom on etsy