karanguni | (no subject)

Today, I fought the AO3 battle once more. Sometimes technology is hard.

Creating Stuff: Knitting

Knitting is a ridiculous hobby that I picked up because I thought it was very funny and I was a bit of an idiot – oh, ha ha, stereotypical mental image of old women sitting around with needles – and I wanted to challenge myself to do something that I felt was very out of character for me.

Two years later, turns out that I can take any stupid, self-imposed challenge and find a way to do it involving my spending a lot of money on nice things for no reason and doing finnicky work. It's supposed to be meditative, and sometimes it is, but it appeals to the somewhat challenge-starved part of my brain. Considering I find it extremely hard to sustain interest in anything, this has been an interesting excursion.

I've just picked up a colourwork project and now feel simultaneously like a wizard and a muggle.

Circle folk: what do you muck about creating outside of fandom? I'll trade you a talking post prompt if you trade me.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

January 26: How did you get into Vorkosigan?

January any-date-that-is-a-multiple-of-5: how did you get into inks?

I also knit a bit, mostly simple things like scarves (or blankets, which are essentially long wide scarves), and do cross-stitch once in a great while. I don't have a lot of room for sewing these days, but I used to make cosplay costumes for myself, nearly all of it hand-sewn -- there's a half-finished muslin for a jacket languishing in my sewing box right now. I bought a small quilting pattern last year for a wall hanging, though I haven't had a chance to do much with it.

Basically, lots of small crafts, but right now I'm in between projects because my life has too many moving parts to add another one to it.

I have this dress that all it needs is a hem, and yet...

I acrimoniously divorced lace knitting because I was bad at it and I have little use for knitted items as garb in Louisiana of all places. I still cross stitch intermittently, and I do watercolor/ink art, although it doesn't feel as hands-on as the needle/fiber arts.

I've knit a bunch of linen to use back in Singapore! We have a lot of air conditioning.

I also knit. I taught it for several years at a craft store in town before it shut down. Now I just do it occasionally as the mood or need for something strikes. As we're in the cold months I'm working on some handwarmers for myself currently and as my sister is pregnant and due in March, I have a little baby sweater on the needles as well.

Teach me the ways of continental tension, o wise one...*

I'm trying to get some mittens down and suffering. I hate DPNs somehow.

* practice, I know, sobs.

Jewelry jewelry jewelry! Anything shiny, I have probably played around with it at least a little. I used to do wire wrapping, have done chain maille, both of which I like. My favorite is fabrication (sawing, soldering/brazing, etc.) but it's hard to find time or space to do with the kiddos around, so I don't really do that right now but will probably start taking the local classes again once they get a little older *crosses fingers*. I also have 3D modeled jewelry in blender and got Shapeways to print it out in metal for me. ...I might know a little of what you mean when you say involving my spending a lot of money on nice things for no reason and doing finnicky work, lol.

Ooh, any pictures of the printed metal stuff? Jewellery sounds awesome, honestly. There's a guy at work who is doing chain mail ring by ring and I admire his tenacity.

I'll try to remember to take some pics this weekend!

Chain mail is great and something I keep coming back to, probably along the same lines at knitting (which I never was able to stick at, because not shiny, lol), in the sense that some of it / some designs can be repetitively soothing (I sometimes do it while on telecons) but you can get arbitrarily more finicky and interesting if you want to. But there are so many ring sizes, I have a huge bag of rings I need to do something with...

We could have a stashbusting circle challenge...

I just saw on FFA the homemade2homemade exchange, which might also be interesting and I'm sooooort of vaguely thinking about signing up for it. Although it doesn't look low-key at all, lol.

i cross-stitch, and i make jewelry out of beads and wire!

I crochet a lot of hats when the mood takes me. Then I don't crochet them for a few years, then I see more yarn I want and make all the hats and really, I'm not sure why I keep doing this, given that I have baskets of hats and rarely wear any of them.

Sometimes I'll go wild and make a scarf or two. To match the hats.

Origami and cross-stitch since age nine or so. I always take breaks but always come back to them.

Picked up knitting at 16, put it down again because I hated it, picked it up again for the drive from San Francisco to NYC (since I didn't have a driver's license and was going to be spending eight days in the passenger seat) and liked it a lot more because I'd learned a) about nice materials (previously I'd used cheap acrylic yarn and cheap metal needles, UGH) and b) about relaxing my hands and arms. By the time we got to NYC I had a nice scarf and was a confirmed knitter. I'm still wary of it because it can trigger arm pain, but I do love it.

Misc. other arts and crafts: hand-lettering (very out of practice but I used to be really good), DIY projects around the house, woodworking if I have a shop and materials but I haven't had a shop and materials in ~25 years, knotwork jewelry (I briefly did it for money but it was quite hard to earn money with homemade jewelry pre-Etsy), simple wirework (earrings and such), weaving, machine sewing, hand sewing... I'm so protective of my arms that I don't do most of these things very often, but I'm happiest when I'm making something.

Does hand-coding HTML count? It scratches the same itch for me.

I'm not doing the talking post thing but always open to questions in general. A question for you: which fandom are you most surprised to have written for or enjoyed?

Edited 2020-01-07 07:52 (UTC)

I don't know that I create much outside of fandom? My main other non-work interests are organizational work (in a union and in an environmental organization), and nature geekery (that is, learning how to determine species in various organism groups).

I build gunpla, though I guess model kits are still fandom, in a way, just a different post code compared to fic and whatnot? I also sometimes make jewelry or bead, just stuff to give away because I have the supplies around and I don't wear any jewelry myself anymore. There's something soothing about it both hobbies, really. Putting things together...