Cottagecore in College

Finished stitching my Oversight series.

“They know your name,”

“They scan your face,”

“They time your call,”

“They hide your post,”

“They form your view,”

“They sold your data,”

“They view your work,”

“They note your exit,”

“They mark your test,”

“They flag your card,”

“They read your file,” and

“They lock your cell.”

Step two: dig out stash of old seed catalogues saved for this purpose. Get super crabby because you can't find the Mod Podge anywhere. Give up, then have daughter find it immediately, in the "glue box" you forgot you created.

Step three: decide on a color scheme, and start cutting. I asked @phantomtheraccoon if we should coordinate or contrast and she cleverly said both.

Step four: collect your flowers and fiddle with layout.

Step five: paint item with Mod Podge, place your images, and paint them again. Leave to dry, which honestly doesn't take long.

Step six: trim edges add cut out holes. I didn't actually cut out the screw holes; I just cut little X's there for the screws to go through. Worked fine to put it up, we'll see someday how it survives taking it apart again.

Step seven: coat everything with Mod Podge at least one more time, paying special attention to edges. Dry elevated on something (say, the top of the Mod Podge bottle) so it doesn't stick down.

Step eight: okay, wow, that's awesomer than expected!

🎶whiiiiiiiite gluuuuuuuuue aaaaaand waaaaaaateeerrrrr and aaaaaaaaaastrobrights!🎵

a. She’s 5′ 11″ and can never find pants long enough for her legs or shirts long enough for her arms.

b. She hates synthetic fibers as much as I do and it’s difficult to find natural fiber clothes that aren’t made of cotton

c. She’s a biologist and would physically fistfight microplastics if given half a chance

So her gift from mom and dad for her birthday was a sewing machine. Not a super expensive one but a good solid serviceable one.

And recently she asked “So where do I GET wool or linen and thread that isn’t polyester” and mom was like ‘go ask your sister’

“Bets, u know I’m a 15th degree blackbelt of buying shit on the internet”

cotton and Silk thread; https://redrockthreads.com/

Linen thread and wool fabric; https://burnleyandtrowbridge.com/ (they’ve got wool stuffs and worsted wool fabric for $15 a yard! I just got three yards of navy worsted wool I’m making a constellation winter skirt from)

More linen thread and wool; https://wmboothdraper.com/ (just ordered wool broadcloth to make a coat)

Silk fabric (THE best place to get silk lining fabrics and raw silk fabric):https://www.dharmatrading.com/

A varying assortment of wool and silk and cotton and even some leather, use coupon code  spring2020 for 50% off your full order, worked yesterday when I bought some stuff there; https://metrotextilesnyc.com/

The Linen Lab has a variety of weaves, weights, and colors available

I hate synthetic fibers and it’s difficult to find natural-fiber clothes that are made of cotton if you’re not looking for t-shirts.

It’s. It’s really really hard to find denim jeans that aren’t at least 5% spandex. It’s hard to find cotton shirts. It’s hard to find socks or underwear that aren’t poly-blends. Vests? Blazer? Sweater? Hahahaha. Oh, and many clothing websites won’t let you filter by fabric material, or at least won’t let you filter by “ONLY show me stuff that’s 100% cotton, or at least has no polyester.” (If you search amazon and try to filter for cotton, you will get clothes that have “cotton-like feel” in their descriptions.) (Don’t get me started on looking for silk.)

I need to dig out my sewing machine (or get a new one; it’s been buried in the Misc Whatever pile long enough that there’s a chance something’s been damaged) because I am 5'2" and I can never find off-the-rack clothes that fit right.

aaaand now that you’ve got places to get good fabric, you need something to make with it:

Yes, because the Washington state government activated like a sleeper-cell and ruthlessly, systematically hunted them down and annihilated them.

“Y2K came to nothing amirite?”

Yes because an army of software engineers working around the clock, losing sleep, and busting ass till the last minute prevented it from happening.

“Remember the hole in the ozone layer?”

You mean the one that was fixed through rigorous world wide government action?

One of the root problems of our society is a refusal or inability by media to articulate that all those “it’s gonna be an apocalypse” disasters were not disasters because we collectively did something about them.

The good news is this is actually quite correctable. I maintain my firm belief that we as humans are capable of solving almost all of our problems, when we decide to do so.

And I still think that’s going to happen. I don’t know when or how, but I do know that abandoning hope won’t help bring it about.

...b/c it totally does & it whips

some of my fave pickups from opening weekend:

94 feet and a peach basket by jeremiah wistrom: did a DOUBLE TAKE when i opened this one & was like holy shit i know that basketball court!!! i've BEEN IN THAT NEIGHBORHOOD!!!  and the accompanying writeup was like "yeah i was eating a sandwich in boston's north end & did a double take when i turned a corner and there was a basketball court shoved right up in there?" and i'm like I KNOW THE SANDWICH YOU ATE haha

but yeah—beyond that initial shock of startled & delighted recognition, it turns out this whole book is a photomemoir of sorts, in which the author's taken all these (cool/interesting/from-unusual-angles/etc) photographs of random basketball courts in all these places he's visited, all across the country, and written up a little bit about the history/context/etc of each one, what it was like to shoot some hoops there, what brought them there, etc, and... just a lot of love & interest & local color in it, i really adored reading through the thing

it reminded me a lot of what i love about birding: like birding, i guess you can in fact do basketball Everywhere and just by doing it you learn a little bit about Everywhere in the process.

weird tigers by kiriska: AS ADVERTISED. 10/10 delightful. i love every weird-ass tiger in these pages

what horse are you? by aya borucki: i'm a friesian :)

ἄγχω (ankhō) by s. barnes: i love it when things are claustrophobic & paranoid & bad!  spend the Night Before Battle inside the trojan horse with Odysseus, in glorious black & orange :)))))

i picked up a bunch of other zines too and spent too much money ahlgiehalgie... no time to photograph them all, but, there's unsettlingly-illustrated toxic fish!  there's traumatized geese!  there's surprisingly-affecting poetry!  it's all good shit

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