Ancient Sea Creature Diorama - Anomalocaris (Cambrian Period).

古代海洋生物ジオラマ - アノマロカリス (カンブリア紀)。

The print is available on my Etsy shop.

The Maple Pomegranate Brussels Sprouts That Can Defeat Any Evil.

the original version of this recipe is from unpeeled journal, but I'm writing this out on my blog my way bc it's the season of the brussels sprout. take my hand let's go to brussels sprout world.

for the sprouts:

2 lbs brussels sprouts

4 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp kosher salt

24 turns of freshly cracked black pepper

for the vinaigrette:

2 tbsp maple syrup

2 tbsp cider vinegar

3 tbsp olive oil

1/8 tsp kosher salt

1 tsp whole-grain mustard

3 tbsp chopped flat leaf parsley

3 tbsp pomegranate seeds (measure with your heart)

preheat the oven to 420°F. halve all your sprouts and remove any stumps or outer leaves that don't look particularly edible. (if eating-quality leaves fall off, you can just roast them along with the rest for extra crunch.) toss them with the olive oil, salt, and pepper, spread them on a half sheet pan, and roast for 20-25 minutes without stirring or turning. I like to do a quite hot oven and a quick roast for an extra crisp sprout, but ymmv.

meanwhile, chuck everything else but the parsley and pomegranate seeds in a bowl and whisk them together. if you do this towards the beginning of the roast, make sure to whisk again later because it'll start to separate quite quickly.

chop up your parsley into fine confetti. my favorite trick for this is to put the parsley in a cup and snip it violently with kitchen scissors a few leaves at a time, since this helps it stay light and fluffy.

sprouts should be done now, so transfer those over to a serving bowl, pour the vinaigrette over top, and toss with the parsley and pomegranate. eat right away, but in the event of leftovers, these are still really good fridge-cold.

It also has a lot of different kinds of stitches you can do that make different densities of fabric.

I was surprised that I’d never heard of it though. It’s older than knitting and crocheting and even though it’s been done all over the world it’s super relevant to Nordic culture and my grandmother and I are both into keeping in touch with our roots a bit so I’m surprised I’ve never heard of it.

It’s also a lot easier to freehand and adjust as you go than crochet or knitting and you mostly go by inches instead of rows and number of stitches so a large number of accessories like stitch markers or whatever isn’t really necessary.

The downside as a beginner is that undoing mistakes is more time consuming than with knitting or crochet. You’ve gotta like sew your mistakes out backwards. Disadvantages of making a really sturdy fabric I guess.

I like the feel of this bone needle though and don’t think I’ll be trying the wooden or metal ones.

Also I think I’m gonna have to get good at doing Russian joining if I decide to get good at nalbinding because I don’t have wool yarn and the ends won’t felt together if it’s not at least 50% wool. A small price to pay for using big bone needle though.

Glad you asked. I have arrived at 'modern flax is Bullshit compared to what we had in historical textiles, the flax widely available for handspinning is basically the tow that would be discarded from textile creation and used with tar to caulk ships back in the day'

This naturally led me down a hole of 'why is the staple length of this stuff a bullshit 6 inches' and the answer is 'we have bred modern flax more for the oil than the fiber because cotton usurped the place of everyday textile thanks to slavery and the cotton gin'

Anyway, THIS led me to a rabbit hole that culminated in me finding flax seed bred for proper 30 inch tall plants for fiber, sold by some fellow minded nerds on a website that has not been updated since 1998 and you have to email them to buy anything.

He goes on to explain more about the process and required knowledge (for the mechanics, of skill, of fabric, etc) and how the sewing machine is an amazing thing that if you go in without respect will ruin your day. And he is correct.

Recipe => https://omnivorescookbook.com/crispy-marinated-tofu/

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30-Minute White Cheddar Mac and Cheese

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1820s suit I made over last year. The coat in particular was a huge undertaking that lasted several months.

Using your fabric efficiently? Makes total sense. No objection to that.

But specifically designing patterns such that every single part of a length of fabric is consumed by it? You're setting people up to fail. For one, you can really only do this with patterns made mostly of rectangles and right triangles, which can only make a very narrow range of garments that simply do not play nice with many people's bodies (especially bodies with lots of curvature). For another, a zero-waste pattern is also a zero-error-tolerance pattern. One wrong cut or measurement and the whole thing's toast. The wiggle-room that a more standard pattern allows also allows you to fix problems when they occur.

If you make a zero-waste garment and never wear it because it looks bad on you? That's not actually zero-waste. If you start a zero-waste garment and can't complete it because you made one little mistake? That's not actually zero-waste.

But more importantly, the whole idea of 'zero-waste' as a desireable outcome is antithetical to the methods and traditions of sewing. It's a form of functionless, guilt-driven, aesthetics-first minimalism that has no place in actual sewing practice. The scraps of fabric left over from cutting a pattern are incredibly useful. Larger pieces can become parts of new projects. Smaller pieces can become patchwork. Even really tiny scraps can become stuffing or batting or kindling or any number of other things. Home sewing has always been about not wasting things, but the way to not waste things is not by piously making only garments that suck, it's by repurposing, reusing, and recycling everything you buy. Once that fabric reaches your house, 98% of its environmental impact has already happened.