"Sewing is a gateway drug to thinking through complex problems. It seems really simple; culturally, we make it women's work. Let me tell you: real sewing at any kind of level of proficiency is a bloody magic trick. Sewing, like mold making, involves mental frames that require one to think inside out and backwards. It requires one to work on an order of operations that is often taking into account the reverse. It's a really, really important skill, and if you learn how to sew, you're mostly on your way to carpentry and welding and sheet metal work. I'm not kidding: these are planar forms meeting under rules and conditions. And if you can make a sleeve work, I swear to God, you could build a house."
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
i'm making my own dust catcher for my work bench! and no, i'm not doing it well. and yes, it is a lot of work, because all the stitching is by hand. and i've watched a lot of leatherworking videos that were only moderately helpful.
but! i've only spent a quarter of what i would if i ordered one, and i think it's gonna be great. this is what i'm doing on a saturday night.
tossing up more low quality photos of pretty rocks!!
but we're on hour 11 now and i'm pretty proud. and getting faster with the basics, i think.
the robin's egg looking one might be sodalite, i'm guessing aventurine and quartz on the green and white, the fire agate deserves its own post because it's honestly very cool and i'll need to get good pictures of it later. and two nephrite (? could be jade but i don't think i'm familiar enough to tell the difference yet) that were half-done when i found them (with some ancient mystery wax stuck to the back) that i think turned out very well. ran these up to 3000 grit, and only accidentally filed like three of my nails in the process. a triumph!
"there is no evidence trans users were disproportionately... impacted" but by our count, since we are the only ones who care enough to count, of the ~200 blogs termed wednesday literally only one wasnt transfem
@staff @humans @support @photomatt What the fuck is the reasoning behind these bans and content removal??? Trans women being too loud about their oppression??
@humans @support @photomatt @staff why did you remove these images? why did you blatantly lie? why did you platform a violent zionist? why did you ban these trans women for speaking out against your bigotry and silencing of your shitty and clearly bigoted actions? are you going to ban me after I post this again? I have been banned about 15 times with my blogs never lasting more than two weeks. was this your work, or was it the work of the nazis and terfs/twerfs that you are complicit in allowing to harrass trans women? why did you ban a black trans woman instead of the nazi with the n word and a nazi dogwhistle in their url? when will you stop working with nazis and twerfs with murderous intentions?
An update on the available stuff. Painted stones, metal, shell and sea glass, stone carvings and two bronze satyr wax cast pendants (I can change necklaces). The prices are in-between 45-65$.
I'm in a difficult financial situation at the moment, and making art is my only job, so reblogs would be greaty appreciative. Thank you!
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
I love how it turned out, it makes me want to make more patchwork plushies
The whale shark pattern is by @makeshiftwings30 and I used all 3.5” squares to make my quilted fabric if you want to make a quilted whale shark of your own
I like this stage where everyone just looks a little dusty and soft. anyway, not sure what anything is (or is going to be yet) i just had time to dip down to the lapidary studio and tried to get a few things going on the low grit wheels. aventurine and quartz for the greenies? my favourite is the round one, which someone identified as having a bit of fire agate in the middle. it's gonna look wild when it's all polished up.
(5 hours into the 100 hours of lapidary challenge)
notes and thoughts under the cut --
1, 2 & 3
my first 3 cabs were made during training, from scrap in the lapidary studio. still have no idea what any of them are.
first one has a nick along the bottom edge (partly visible in the upper left bit of shadow here) that i made with a sloppy cut on the saw, so it was a quick lesson in being extra careful with where the lines fall when you start in (measure twice cut once is a hard thing to learn but i'm getting there).
the second i got more ambitious with the shape, but i like it the best. i think coming from a silversmith background, i actually prefer the shallower cabs for my jewelry, though i'm sure this one would be hell to set in a bezel so i'll set it aside for now. also not as high gloss, so i might take it with me next time i go to the studio and see if i can run it through the 1000-3000 grit wheels. we're lucky enough to have a bunch of machines to work on, so there's a variety of grits available to try out without causing too much trouble. i'm always hyper aware when i'm using machines at the club though, like i don't want to touch or move anything, just sneak in and out like some sort of weird rock mouse.
(edit: if i remember correctly, my instructor said this might be banded chert, but as i'm just starting out on rock identification, i'll have to come back and check)
third attempt was the hardest, and taught me about not relying on the edges of the wheel to make smooth lines. and that a moon is truly so close to a banana. i'm sure some people can shape with big wheels with precision, but i learned i'm not one of them yet, and i'm pretty sure i read somewhere that it's bad to wear out the edges of a wheel anyway. i'll probably try to take a run at the inner edge with my flexshaft drill, using water? and sanding bits? more research is needed for that, i've never worked with stone at home, it'd probably more messy and loud than my little corner apartment can reasonably take.
4 & 5
the stones i carved during hours 4 and 5 are a different story.
a distant family member i'd only met a couple times passed away a few years ago, and we didn't really get around to sorting through his work stuff until recently. he was a tiler and a toolmaker, and had a series of small benches just filled with projects and tools he'd been working on in his later years.
so a couple weeks ago i managed to get there and look at the things that were left, which the family were just going to dispose of. luckily enough, i recognized a lot of it—he'd been cutting slabs and making cabochons, and then using them in jewelry, mostly for his wife.
i left anything sentimental for others who were close to him, of course, but no one wanted a bunch of precut slabs, except me. i went into full excited gnome mode, zero dignity.
i can recognize some of them, like the very distinctive flowerstone, but mostly identifying them will be a gradual test, and i think i won't know what some are until i cut and polish them.
for the fourth hour, i picked by just what colour appealed to me in the moment, and i actually began to hope it wasn't lapis as i went, because the idea of starting with something so "fancy" on my first go on my own without an instructor present was terrifying. so as the water in the basin was getting bluer and bluer, i just had to keep telling myself it probably wasn't, so i didn't get in my head too much. very nervous it might be lapis, though. cannot stress enough it looked just kinda bluish-grey as a slab so this was all a surprise.
i've got mixed feelings about the grey parts, whether i should try and peel off more layers of stone or separate the grey from the blue, or just embrace the cloudy imperfections. i happen to love grey, but i know not everyone thinks it's as pretty as white or clear would be. maybe i'll leave it as-is and wait for someone to love it.
fifth stone, i tried for something smaller from the same batch of slabs, that was already partially cut and shaped. trying to make the most out of the limited time i had in the studio.
i think it turned out okay, but i do think it's too tall for my taste. agate, maybe? is my best guess without doing further research, because of the sort of glassy dark browns that are within it, which look more quartz-like than not to my untrained eyes.
(i do have people i can take these to, to get better identifications, but for now we're just living and learning. if you know and would like to comment or give feedback on anything else, pls do!)
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Initially I thought I'll use this one for carving, but when I cut it I found my favorite pattern, floating rocks. So, painting it is. And a process pic.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
hello! i'm a jeweler living on the west coast of canada. i'm thirty-five, they/she pronouns. i started working on jewelry about 2019-ish. i've done mostly silversmithing, some beadwork and wireworking which i enjoyed, and macrame, which i didn't really, sorry to all my macrame fiends reading this. just starting on lapidary, which i'm liking a lot. my current ambition is to do 100 hours of lapidary and stone carving, and record the results here to better see my progress! currently we're at hour 5 and looking pretty okay, albeit very oval-heavy:
feel free to follow if you're interested or comment and say hi, this is purely an experiment to see if i like recording what i've been working on. more about me and my projects under the cut!
about me:
i'm autoimmune (which can be limiting sometimes). and i'm queer! non binary, ace & biromantic, and lucky enough to have a supportive community around me here.
i grew up on the prairies before moving to the coast, hence the username—magpies, the bird famous for collecting shiny things, that used to hop ahead of me when i walked to school, and sanderlings, a type of sandpiper that i've seen a lot more of now that i'm in a place that actually has sand.
i live on traditional coast salish territory, and try to be respectful of that in whatever materials and techniques i use, aiming for as small a footprint as possible. so i'm focused on using mostly recycled and upcycled materials, practicing good waste disposal habits, and buying local whenever i can.
that's pretty much it on me, but if there's anything you'd like to know you can always ask! feel free to follow if you're interested.
for a sense of how things have been going so far, here's a picture from my very first silversmithing class, in 2019:
and here's what my current projects look like (forgive the mess) in 2026:
