A Collection of Neat Things

However, I have no interest in wearing a skirt or a dress. I want to create clothing for myself, for my body. A button down, a pair of pants (they can be flouncy even, I'm okay with some drape), or even a vest. Something that may require a bit more information regarding construction, but men's clothing can't be all advanced only practice.

There are no classes near me at all. The online courses I have found are predominantly quilting, or deal with dresses and other items.

Is it my search terms? Should I be looking for tailoring course and now sewing courses? I'm happy to change my search terms if that's the miscommunication here. But I just want to learn how to use my machine and make something I can wear.

Are you looking for instructions on individual techniques within sewing, or do you want a want a walk through of a specific garment?

Eg. Do you want something that talks you through: how to pleat, how to buttonhole, how to different seams, how to iron and press

Do you want the general knowledge on things like what a dart does to the garment, and why we use them? Why you put a liner, and when you attach it?

I want to learn the techniques and reasons behind sewing so I can alter my own clothes to fit better, mend them carefully so that I want to keep wearing them, and know how to alter a pattern to my size.

I am absolutely willing to just dive headfirst into something, as I've done that before and at some point I will figure it out. I also have several patterns to try. I would however like them to look like I knew what I was doing when I put them together.

So for anyone not in the know, the Japanese government decided to fight perversion with censorship.

Specifically you weren't allowed to draw penises.

So they drew things that WEREN'T penises instead. Like tentacles. Fast forward to today and tentacle porn is an entire standalone genre with thousands upon thousands of examples and enjoyers.

The attempt at censorship did not quell perversion, it only caused it to mutate.

And now I'm thinking about tumblr's decision to ban porn and of all the people leaving captions under videos of heavy machinery and industrial accidents like "I need someone to do this to me" and "this wouldn't fix me but it would help" or "everything reminds me of her"

All this to say that without porn on Tumblr

No transphobes allowed, only transborbs.

Check out my stuff!

Lost my mind a little and added (if my math is correct) 5,615 beads to Nim Teasdale's Odenwald pattern. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing!

The goal was “soothingly weighted but not uncomfortable to wear, even as someone with chronic pain.” It could have been a little heavier, so maybe I’ll make a shawl with larger beads another time, but I’m very pleased with this one. I used size 6/0 seed beads, applied as I go with a .6mm crochet hook.

Yarn-wise, used 2 cakes of YarnArt Flowers. I knitted the fully purple sections from both, then knitted all the way through the yellow-oranges with a single ball. When I hit the beginning of red-oranges, I used yarn from both cakes, alternating between them. (Not the entirety of both, I played it by ear to make sure I made it through the full rainbow.)

I do have edited charts with bead placements. I will only share them with Nim's permission.

This sick bleach shirt I made. Something to showcase my undying love for prehistoric cave art.

A census can understand population level trends just fine without storing your assigned sex as part of your legal identity. They can ask for this information in the census. The census tracking population level data is not the same as your assigned sex being permanently part of your legal identity. (At least, the way my country does a census.)

Your doctor can know your anatomy by you communicating it to them if/when it is relevant. There is never a time when they might need to know something that could only be conveyed by your assigned sex being officially relayed to them via government documentation. You can just use your words. The same way you tell your doctor any other part of your medical history.

People respond to "the government doesn't need to store your assigned sex as part of your legal identity" as if they are hearing "no one should ever acknowledge gender or sex at all" but that's not what's being said.

Your birth certificate conveys important legal information about you. Your name, as a designation. Your parents, as they have a legal obligation to you. Your place of birth, as that place has a legal obligation to you. Date and time of birth, since age is important for application of some laws.

And sex. That's on there too. But what is the legal relevance? What laws is the government going to apply to you differently based on what sex is on your birth certificate? I can only think of one thing my government really uses that for, and that is to determine who has to sign up for the draft. And guess what, fuck that shit anyway. The government also used to use this to decide who is allowed to marry who. They don't do that anymore. For now.

RAISE THE MINIMUM WAGE!

Movie Howl is a soulful and quiet. Book Howl is a drama queen and Causing Problems and has a long string of jilted exes and couldn't shut up if you paid him.

Sophie and Howl drive each other up the wall at the beginning and it's really funny. Sophie and Howl are (despite themselves) very much in love by the end and they still drive each other up the wall and it's even funnier.

In the movie, Howl has been ordered by the king to participate in The War, and Howl is avoiding it because he is a brave conscientious objector. In the book, Howl has been ordered by the king to rescue his lost brother from the Witch of the Wastes, and Howl is avoiding it by any means necessary because he is a cowardly weasel who wants to stay as far from the Witch as possible.

In the movie, the Witch cursed Sophie because she was jealous about Howl speaking to Sophie for five minutes. In the book, the Witch cursed Sophie because Sophie had been doing surprisingly powerful magic for years without knowing it and it was actually starting to cut into the Witch's plans. (Sophie does not discover any of this until nearly the end of the book, but the reader can start to pick it up much earlier and the way Sophie's magic works is pretty darn cool.)

In the movie, there's a rumor that Howl eats the hearts of maidens, but this is implied to be nothing but nasty fearmongering. In the book, there's a rumor that Howl eats the hearts of maidens because Howl started the rumor so people would stop asking him to do wizard junk all the time.

The book lightly parodies a couple of tropes from Western fairy tales. In particular Sophie has internalized that, as the eldest of three sisters, her "destiny" is to fail so that her younger sisters will look cooler when they succeed, which is why she's so resigned to the hat shop at the beginning. (Sidebar: Sophie's sisters come up much more in the book and they're great.) There's also a really funny bit where Sophie attempts to operate a pair of seven-league boots.