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ironmandeficiency · 3 years

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that’s not a shirt

pairing: marcus pike / reader

word count: 1584

summary: marcus comes home from work & finds the strangest thing in the laundry.

a/n: for @autumnleaves1991-blog and her wednesday writing challenge! writing domestic marcus pike is my therapy. unbeta’d and posted from mobile (honestly my laptop is becoming less convenient to post from even tho posting fic on tumblr is literally the reason i bought it last year)

three long, miserable weeks. that’s how long marcus has been out of town for a case that had him jetting all across the country, far away from you and your comfortable bed. he’s almost never at the apartment he pays rent for every month. most of his clothes and his favorite pillow are at your place, and the small quilt his grandmother sewed decades ago is draped over the back of your couch. in everything but name, he lived with you.

when he entered your apartment with his key, he took note of the fact you weren’t there and got set to cleaning up a bit. work leaves you exhausted more often than not and he doesn’t want to leave everything undone for you to worry about when you get home.

upon first glance, he could see the laundry was half done. a heaping load of clean clothes was in the hamper in front of the dryer and there were wet clothes in the open washer. when he looked further, there was also a load in the dryer, which told him that you stayed up late to get things done then fell asleep on the couch waiting for the dryer to finish. with a fond smile, he started the dryer for a few minutes to get wrinkles out of what’s in there. when those are done, he can get what’s in the hamper unwrinkled and hung and folded.

dinner was next on the to-do list. something nourishing to welcome you home after a long day but simple enough to do while catching up the clothes: spaghetti. there’s something about his mom’s recipe for the sauce that makes his spaghetti absolutely heavenly — your words, not his — and he can’t wait to see your reaction to having marcus home two days earlier than planned along with his best dish.

in the time it takes him to get the sauce cooking and the water boiling on the stove, the dryer announces that it’s finished with the first load. he hums as he folds the bath towels and dish rags without a care in the world, making the trip to stow them in the bathroom cabinet with a spring to his step.

checks the sauce for flavor and consistency before putting the second load of wrinkled clothes in the dryer, finding it needs just a smidge more rosemary before it can be left to simmer. picks another sprig from the plant you keep on the windowsill and cuts the leaves very fine before sprinkling them in with a flick of his wrist.

satisfied with his efforts, he turns back to the laundry. he dutifully empties the lint filter (you’re adamant on emptying it after every load and the trait passed onto him) before he begins to grab things to toss into the dryer. about a third of the way through the basket, his hand grabbed onto something weirdly solid and plump.

“mroww!”

last marcus checked, shirts don’t make noises like that. he tore his gaze from the inside of the dryer to the hamper to find a grey and white kitten lounging in the hamper. the little thing was nudging his hand with their head, clearly wanting the attention of the man slowly depleting its bed. he was perplexed. you didn’t have a cat when he was last here, but there was one seeming to be perfectly content in making itself at home in your apartment.

“where did you come from?” he knew the cat wasn’t going to give him a coherent answer but he felt the need to voice his confusion anyway. the first thing to do now: check to see if it’s male or female. it’s a female, looks to be about three months old and is perfectly content with being handled by marcus.

marcus can’t recall the last time he had a pet. with him being too busy with work, he never thought it would be fair to a pet to have an owner constantly gone. he didn’t have enough stability in the past with where he lived and didn’t want to only be a half ass pet parent. the past several months, however, have been nothing but stable. not counting the seldom out of town cases, he goes to work in the morning and comes home to you in the evening, and he rinses and repeats as needed. maybe this kitten is the perfect prelude to taking the next big step in his relationship with you.

for now though, marcus doesn’t let himself get carried away with his daydreams about living with you full time. he’s got laundry to finish and dinner to cook, and now he has a sous chef to accompany him. he holds the kitten to his chest, scratching her chin with a hooked finger and melting at the way she looks up as if telling him to keep going. “alright sweet girl, let’s finish up dinner.” a soft “mrrow!” is her reply and it makes marcus huff a quiet laugh.

dinner is completed with marcus using one less hand than normal, his sous chef being fabulous company. the few times he had to use both hands, his feline friend perched on his shoulder (which he thought was the best thing ever) and waited to be held again. however this cat got here, marcus didn’t know; the one thing he did know is that it wasn’t leaving anytime soon.

the front door was unlocked when you came home and you knew with absolute certainty that you locked it before you left. your walmart bags filled with cat supplies were immediately dropped to the hallway floor as you began to inspect your front door and the area around it. marcus taught you how to spot the basic signs of forced entry (like the protective sweetheart he is) and when none of them were there, you cautiously entered your apartment, mace in hand.

the adrenaline washed away when you spotted your loving boyfriend in the kitchen, gently bobbing his head along to whatever music he had playing. one hand was stirring a pot on the stove while the other was plenty preoccupied with the kitten. shit, you forgot to warn him about the kitten before he got home!

this was the last thing you thought would be here to greet you, but it was a very welcome sight; the feline was finicky and marcus wasn’t due home for another few days, a double whammy. “i see you’ve met the kitten.” you’re honestly just thankful he didn’t get upset about the little thing. neither of you have talked about pets or whatever your living situation is becoming, so the way he seems so taken with the kitten is a sign pointing in a great direction.

when he hears your voice, marcus visibly lights up. “hi honey!” the hand with the spoon immediately drops the wooden utensil into the pot and waves at you happily. “this is my sous chef, say hello, pasta!” he grabs one of her little paws and waves it at you before resuming his stirring, a beaming smile on his face.

did he really just name the cat pasta? and how in the world is she so calm with him right now?

you found the kitten, now known as pasta, huddled in a cardboard box beside a gas station dumpster headed home from work. she was mewling her little head off back there and you were lucky enough to hear her. taking her and her box, your list of things to do was thrown out the window as you rushed her to the vet. they cleaned her up real good and schedule her vaccinations, and sent you home with a list of supplies to buy and advice on how to take care of the little thing.

she was pissed at you after the vet trip. didn’t let you pet or hold her unless she was in the mood for it and if you tried to pick her up otherwise, she would scatter and give you a glare from a safe distance away. but here was marcus holding her like a baby, and the little brat was eating it up! to be fair, you were the same way with marcus when he was being affectionate so you didn’t completely blame her.

“why pasta?” you knew that cats were more likely than dogs to have strange names. you just didn’t think your boyfriend would be the type to give a cat a name like pasta. at that rate, you might as well name a dog goose and call it a day.

he smiles at the furball, giving her a few affectionate pets while he talks. “i was cooking spaghetti when i found her in the laundry hamper, and then i noticed a little spot right on her hip that looks like penne. i couldn’t choose between the two so i went for the middle ground. is that okay with you? or did she have another-”

“marcus, i love it.” and you really do; that sentimental dork just made you love the name pasta with nothing but two sentences. “and honestly, i’ve just been rotating between baby girl, squeak toy, and dumbass since i found her the day before yesterday.”

he scratches pasta under her chin as he laughs at the thought of you calling his sous chef a dumbass. “pasta is not a dumbass! you tell ‘em sweetheart, tell them how smart you are!”

“mroww!”

“see? she’ll be the next einstein.”

marcus pike taglist: @likeshootingstarsinthenightsky @obirain @themarcusmoreno @catsnkooks @torradoza @stardustsunrisekisses @darthadeline @max--phillips @jedi-mando @darklingveracruz @andysficrecs @pedropasscals @qhbr2013 @seasonschange-butpeopledont @greeneyedblondie44 @princess76179 @kaermorons @lv7867 @whovianwar @purelypascal

#marcus pike x reader #marcus pike imagine #marcus pike #the mentalist #writer wednesday #autumnleaves1991 blog #i love this so much #i’m proud of this one #marcus pike is therapeutic #my government assigned soft fbi agent

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magpieinthemorning · 3 years

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Up next for rage blogging a netflix show as I watch it: Next in Fashion

- Omg everybody’s outfits and their personalities!!! <3 <3 <3 It’s really painful that every episode someone gets eliminated because they are all so amazing.

- Really hated Isaac’s attitude, though, and the dynamics that resulted from pairing him with Nasheli. She deserved so much better! She would have done so much better with another partner! It was extremely unfair to her.

- I especially loved Carli and Daniel’s pantsdress in ep 1 - I really wish I could wear it! :O

- Painful watching Hayley and Julian - he was such a character and I would have liked to see more of both of their work, but they just did not fit together. No surprise at all that the teams who know each other well and have worked together a lot already are the most successful.

- In the streetwear competition, on a scale from 1 to 10, how racist was it that both of the teams chosen as the bottom two had the only Black women, and the only Black people left in the competition? In streetwear? Seriously? Bless guest judge Kerby Jean-Raymond. The show is edited and scripted to be extremely emotional (literally people are crying all the time, it’s fantastic), but at that point, when he decided to walk out, I truly felt it so much. Love him. Love Kiki and Farai, who are constantly being judged much harsher than the other contestants. Thankfully here the “nobody gets eliminated” move was used for good, and not to keep in boring old white guys like in Blown Away ... because there are no boring old white guys in this show! Yay! :D

UPDATE 1:

Ep. 5 - I’m not that interested in underwear, but I really enjoyed all the boxer shorts for the women’s looks. And Angel’s men’s look was amazing! I wish they would have shown it without the jacket. There was way too much focus on the made-up bra support issue. Women actually like to feel comfortable, and wasn’t it interesting that both of the all-women teams made bras without wires ... maybe because they know how uncomfortable that shit is?! So yeah ... :-/ To be honest it felt like a setup that the tops MUST have underwire and pushup. (That’s so 90′s though?) The judges didn’t ask Farai and Kiki’s model how she felt in it, like they asked one of the others, they just straight up decided to hate their creation because of the missing underwire. They acted so rude when they were looking closer at their design, the whole “What’s this?!” and pawing right under the model’s boobs. :/ Also I didn’t like Claire’s attitude and being angry that nobody was eliminated last time - so she’d have preferred if her own team was eliminated? And guess what ...

Ep. 6 - Claire and Adolfo were eliminated, so maybe it taught her a lesson to not throw her own people under the bus? Or not ... I don’t know, it was somehow interesting how she stressed her Asian half at the end (in the speech about how she is still to be taken seriously even though she is small and half Asian), as if she wanted to distance herself from her Blackness, and look away from how racist the elimination process was? I may be reading too much into it - I’m also mixed race and really interested in how other mixed race people experience it. Still impressive that Claire and Adolfo got so far without having worked together before, if I’m not mistaken. Btw one of the judges went out of their way to compliment the unfinished edges on one look, while it had been so harshly criticized when Farai and Kiki did unfinished edges on the streetwear challenge. Sigh. All the looks in this challenge were really great, and I guess that says something about my own style ... \m/

I don’t know if I want to keep watching, because the judges are so irritating (sorry Tan :( ) and the elimination part is so stressful ... But I also want to see more amazing clothes and how these amazing people make them in such a short time!

UPDATE 2:

Ep. 7 - Nooo, Angelo ... It was totally fair that he was eliminated for his grave lack of technical skill, I just loved watching him on the show so much. Together with Charles they were unstoppable and complemented each other so well, but apart? ;___; Same with Carli, together with Daniel they were awesome. I could relate a lot to wanting to quit instead of finishing something half-assed. :/ So nice that other contestants were looking out for her. It felt a bit more relaxing to watch now, although the stakes keep getting higher and the contestants fewer, but it seems like they are being judged more fairly now that Anti-Black racism is off the table lmao ... Sigh, I’d really love to watch arts and crafts contests with only Black judges and contestants. + I adore Adidas and wear way too much of it, but cringe at Jo Aberg’s heavy Swedish accent, haha (I used to live in Sweden and way too many of them go around telling foreigners that Swedes don’t have an accent when they speak English *eyeroll*).

Ep. 8 - Daniel seems like such a genuinely nice and caring person, so it’s kind of okay that the white guy stayed in the game over the two Asian guys. Charles on his own was perhaps missing Angelo’s pizzazz ^^ ... I liked Marco and his stuff a lot, and it seemed a bit like a setup here, too, that they criticized his design for being “too costumey” (I kind of hate that word now thanks to this series) and he got thrown off, instead of just doing his thing the way he wanted it, regardless of whether he would be eliminated for it. Kind of “pro wrestling” that Minju was so freaked out by the challenge and then she made the best look hands down. Loved it! Especially with the leather band/harness - I don’t get why they criticized it. Overall I was a bit disappointed in all the other looks, because I like a lot about military style, but very few except Minju used the kind of stuff that I like. I didn’t really like Angel’s look that much - the concept was amazing, but that coat seemed a bit awkward to wear and I’m a bit confused about why everyone liked it so much, but maybe I just don’t get that about fashion. Happy for her though! Many of her other looks have been really great. + Judge Elizabeth’s crooked tie drove me bonkers. WHO ARE YOU TO JUDGE FASHION WHEN YOUR TIE DOES NOT COVER YOUR TOP BUTTON. lol

UPDATE 3: SEMIFINALS

I’m happy for Minju and Daniel and can’t wait to see them in the finale! I liked Ashton’s looks so much! I’d love to wear the women’s top (and maybe I will try to sew something similar for myself :-p). Loved the reference to hakama - I thought he made all the right choices of what to adopt from the inspiration. A bit bummed that he got eliminated, especially since he was so community oriented when he talked about what it would mean for him to win. I squealed when I heard Angel’s inspiration, Tibetan horse racing! Here I felt like the looks were a bit far off from the inspiration. But they looked so gorgeous. Maybe if she’d used the bleach lace pattern (on the edges for example) it would have been even more amazing. The women’s look was so great! Though I was a bit concerned about the crotch exposure :D Overall maybe Angel didn’t need the win so I guess it’s fine that she got eliminated. I’m a bit confused about why they were so in awe about Daniel’s looks. Both of the looks were really nice and clean, but I didn’t think they were all that interesting or innovative, and the message was a bit simplistic. And I literally made a similar quilt a few months ago, so I can’t really agree with the “it’s NEVER been done before” sentiments. I’m really looking forward to his stuff in the finale though! For Minju I felt the same, it was great, but I couldn’t really relate to how they thought it was so new and fresh. The men’s pant length would have surely gotten her eliminated if she’d been Black, haha. Can’t wait to see what she makes in the finale - I’ve loved almost everything she did so far.

UPDATE 4: FINALE!!!

OMFG MINJU!!!!! YAY!!!!! Aaaaah, her collection was so beautiful and fun! And all women’s looks! It was so nice! It was so nice that Minju’s sister also realised that she had held Minju back creatively and that it was wrong to do that. I didn’t read spoilers about the ending, and kept nervously thinking that it wouldn’t surprise me if Daniel the white guy won the entire competition, but then Minju won and Daniel was so happy for her! <3 <3 <3 I cried so much!

#next in fashion #next in fashion netflix #next in fashion spoilers

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untoasted-ravioli · 5 years

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fluff alphabet with MJ

A = Attractive (What do they find attractive about the other?)

MJ loves your eyes and how sometimes you can gaze at her so deeply that she swears she can see into your soul

B = Baby (Do they want a family? Why/Why not?)

Yes MJ wants a baby but only after college because then she can devote all her time to her kids instead of giving them her divided attention

C = Cuddle (How do they cuddle?)

MJ is a little spoon and she likes to nuzzle into your chest after a long day or when you guys are watching a movie

D = Dates (What are dates with them like?)

Dates with MJ are usually lowkey like study dates in a small coffee shop (because Starbucks is overrated) or, in the olive garden because the food there is the bomb

E = Everything (You are my ____ (e.g. my life, my world…))

You are each other’s reason to keep smiling

F = Feelings (When did they know they were in love?)

You and MJ met during your sophomore year of high school in a psychology class and then she made you join The Science Squad. You became closer friends and then started dating a few months after you met

G = Gentle (Are they gentle? If so, how?)

MJ is very gentle, even sexually, (mostly because she’s a bottom but you didn’t hear that from me)

H = Hands (How do they like to hold hands?)

MJ likes to intertwine your hands and then she’ll kiss the back of your palm kinda like this

I = Impression (What was their first impression?)

both of you didn’t really have an impression of each other at first glance (that is a fanfic for another day lol)

J = Jealousy (Do they get jealous?)

You and MJ have been together long enough for her to trust you to not cheat on her so there is little to no jealousy between you two

K = Kiss (How do they kiss? Who initiated the first kiss?)

MJ was tired of both of your mutual pining so she grabbed your face in the middle of the hallway and gave you a nice fat smooch. You usually kiss slowly and sensually but sometimes in really sexual situations it’s fast and very very dirty

L = Love (Who says ‘I love you’ first?)

You did, you and MJ were sitting on the roof of some random building in New York and taking aesthetic pictures of each other. Right after taking one rally beautiful one, you just stared into her beautiful chocolate eyes and kissed her and right after that big fat smooch, you laid those three magic words on her

M = Memory (What’s their favourite memory together?)

MJ’s favourite memory of you is a few weeks after you started dating when you mutually decided to come out as a couple in school. There was really cute hand-holding and little pecks on the lips in the school hallways and life was great

N = Nickel (Do they spoil? Do they buy the person they love everything?)

MJ isn't the type of person who shows affection through gifts but, sometimes she will spoil you or take you on a shopping spree when you’re in town

O = Orange (What colour reminds them of their other half?)

MJ thinks a lot of brown when she thinks of you because of your warmth and how homey you are with each other

P = Pet names (What pet names do they use?)

honestly, neither of you use pet names, but sometimes a simple babe gets thrown around. I'm not sure if ‘my bitch’ is a pet name, but if it is then that is one she uses for you

Q = Quaint (What is their favourite non-modern thing?)

sewing. Like it doesn't matter if she's making a quilt or she's patching up some old clothes as long as she's sewing something because that's kinda calming to her

R = Rainy Day (What do they like to do on a rainy day?)

If MJ isn't reading then she's most likely asleep and there's no other option. Those are the only things she'd do on a rainy day

S = Sad (How do they cheer themselves/others up?)

The both of you love to watch videos of Peter/Spider-Man goofing up because there’s just something about him that cracks you up all the time

T = Talking (What do they like to talk about?)

A lot of your conversations are very deep, like about politics, and societal norms, and things of the like. In more depressing moments, you like to talk about your feelings, and stuff like that. Both of you are each other’s, personal therapists.

U = Unencumbered (What helps them relax?)

You like to give each other massages and random romantic baths with a lot of scented oils and rose petal are very relaxing for both of you

V = Vaunt (What do they like to show off? What are they proud of?)

MJ is proud of her pin collection. Whenever she visits a new city or goes on a parade/protest she always manages to get at least one pin to stick to the large quilt(which she made) in your bedroom

W = Wedding (When, how, where do they propose?)

MJ proposed in a skating rink with a ring pop because both of you are broke Millenials. but no matter the price range, it was the best proposal ever because both of you were having a really romantic moment (and the ring pop was your favourite flavour)

X = Xylophone (What’s their song?)

The Search Is Over by Survivor which played in the background during your first kiss

Y = Yes (Do they ever think of getting married/proposing?)

MJ wants to get married because she’s been with you for so long that there is literally to reason not to. You both have such a domestic life that sometimes she just watched you cook and sing at the same time and is just hit by a massive wave of love for you.

Z = Zebra (If they wanted a pet, what would they get?)

A cat because why not?

#mj x reader #mj x fem!reader #mj x male!reader #mj x gender neutral reader #gender netural reader #fanfiction #fluff #mcu #mcu fic #fluff alphabet #zendaya x reader #zendaya x fem!reader

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star-anise · 5 years

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i was hoping my last ask would get me a free rant without having to make a dreaded choice uhhhhhhh do maybe washcloths or fake smile?

Hahaha no you have to specify what white person thing you want a rant about, or else I’m paralyzed by too many choices. And nb. by “white” I generally mean white Anglo-Saxon Protestant; WASPs have traditionally been held up as the cultural standard everyone else n North America or other British colonies should follow, and the “whiteness” of different European ethnicities in those colonies is generally judged by how assimilated they are to the WASP ideal. So my observations will not apply very well to, for example, other European ethnicities, or people from areas colonized by those other European groups.

WASHCLOTHS. Related to another trap, Guest Towels Guests Must Never Use. Which are usually distinguished by their elaborateness and a thin layer of dust. As a certified White Person (Anglo Canadian) I can say: This is a real actual literal thing my family does. If I stay at an aunt’s house, I don’t use her guest towels; I walk past the guest towels on the towel rack and ask my hostess, “What towel do you want me to use?” and she fetches me a new, less nice, towel out of the linen closet.

The actual washcloth meant to be used is hung somewhere separate. When I was about 13, I rebelled against sharing a washcloth with my brothers, bought my own washcloth from a department store, embroidered my name on it, and zealously defended it against all comers. These days, my older brother has four children. When we go to his house to eat dinner, his children all wash their hands before they eat… and then wipe them dry on a single towel hung in the downstairs bathroom, which his guests also use. So we all wash our hands and then share germs. I… think? There might be a bar on the opposite wall with guest towels hanging on it? But my eyes have been trained to skate right over guest towels. They’re decor, not things we actually use.

Why White People Do This:

1. Washing and cleanliness… have not traditionally held a central place in European life the way, say, wudu does in Islam. Although priests ritually wash their hands before performing the consecration of Mass, nobody else in the congregation has to. This is partly because in Christian Scripture, Jesus says that if something is ritually pure but spiritually suspect, it should be treated as impure, which Christians kind of took to mean “ritual purity and cleanliness rituals are things non-Christians do.”

So in the 19th century, a German doctor discovered that you could reduce the rate of infection dramatically when doctors washed their hands and instruments between dissecting dead bodies and attending in childbirth. Doctors were OFFENDED and APPALLED by this–partly because the guy pointing it out was an asshole, yes, but partly because there was a feeling that “a gentleman’s hands are always clean”, so it was offensive to say their hands were dirty because it impugned their class and education.

Cleanliness is hugely related to class and status–I could go on a LOT more here about how in the 19th century, British and American attempts to “educate” and “civilize” poor white people and people of colour included imposing standards of hygiene on them that felt cruel and punitive–scrubbing skin raw, using caustic soap, delousing with kerosene–partly because white people didn’t have a very advanced idea of what chemicals made good cosmetics, and there wasn’t much awareness of the need for oils or moisturizers. (For a long time very few sources of natural oil, like canola, olives, or sunflowers, or even petroleum products, were available in Britain, so until somewhat recently they only really had pine tar and animal fat, which they used for everything from making soap to lighting lamps to greasing cart axels.) And the 19th century cleanliness movement did not have a good opinion of traditional bathing methods like the sauna, banya, or steam room, where sweat was scraped off the skin. So people who HAD hygiene rituals that worked for them, when they emigrated to western Europe or North America, got shamed and discouraged from using them. It was just expected that part of “civilizing” a child who hadn’t been “well brought up” was forcefully ducking them in a bath and scrubbing them while they screamed and fought you.

So for white people from everything but the highest classes, if you go a few generations back, there’s this feeling that cleanliness is something unnatural and unpleasant, something imposed by a punitive authoritarian force, and not something intrinsically desirable. Old men used to talk about “taking a bath once a year, whether I need it or not,” and fear of losing their “protective coating of dirt.” Which makes sense when you realize how awful old cosmetics used to feel.

I mean, as I type this, I’m applying Vaseline to the hangnails on my fingers, because when I use soap in the bath or do the dishes or wash my hands after going to the bathroom, the soap strips oil from my skin and dries it out, leading it to crack and bleed. This is a really common problem but the current solution seems to be “women carry tiny bottles of moisturizer everywhere in their purses, and men… suffer if they want to seem manly, and then post memes to facebook about how rough and terrible their hands look to emphasize their heterosexual masculinity.”

This also relates to why white people say racist things about people of colour being “dirty” when they use natural methods of keeping their hair or skin clean. The white conception of cleanliness is honestly really fucked up.

2. Cloth holds an especially weird place in white society. I mean, lots of cultures everywhere like their cloth to look nice! But in Europe and American colonies in the 1600s there was an extra special movement to restrict women economically and bar them from business and public life–so while a rich woman could run a business outside the home and buy and sell in 1400, that freedom was disappearing in 1600. Only women of the ~lower classes~ did real actual work. And the religious sentiment at the time really emphasized Purity, Hard Work, Productiveness, and No Fun. So women were supposed to stay inside all the time and not participate in industry! But they were always supposed to be busy. The saying was literally “Idle hands are the devil’s tools”.

That turned embroidery from an aesthetic, decorative art into a moral act. You didn’t embroider to make something pretty; you embroidered for the good of your soul. Fancy embroidered pieces displayed in a home were meant to demonstrate a) that the house was rich enough to have idle women, and b) the moral purity and obedience to gender norms of the women of the house. (This also extends to things like quilts, lace doilies, hooked rugs, etc.)

So towels used to be made of linen, a plain flat cloth, and then embroidered and otherwise embellished. My mom, in the 1960s, learned how to do embroidery where you painstakingly pull a few threads out of a piece of linen, and then embellish the place where the threads have been taken out.

Linen, incidentally, is a strange and amazing fabric. When new, freshly starched and ironed, it is flat and crisp. But pressure and moisture can change it really easily. When I sew with linen, I just have to lick my fingers and fold it over, and it stays like that–something most fabrics don’t do. So if you actually use a linen towel to dry your hands, you will crumple it in a way that is very hard to reverse.

Therefore: Fancy linens were displayed prominently in the home as a status symbol, but a guest who wanted to stay on his hostess’s good side did not use them. There are a lot of ettiquettes around using linens when you absolutely have to, like just gently wiping your fingers on a towel, that diminished the damage the fabric would take.

So, I mean, actually rich people used their good towels, because if they ruin them, they can just get new ones. Fancy linens were intended for high-class guests who knew how to keep from damaging them. So using someone’s guest towels sent the message, “I am so high-status that I’m WORTH potentially ruining something that took a ton of work to make and maintain.” Or, if you obviously weren’t that high status, “I don’t know about the work that goes into making nice things, or don’t value the work you did and don’t care how much effort you’ll have to go to because I wanted to wipe my face.”

But that was in the days of linen. Guest towels are going out of fashion, partly because modern terrycloth towels are almost impossible to crease or ruin, so it doesn’t really matter if guests use them. But even with terrycloth towels, homeowners sometimes like to create really elaborate towel displays. I don’t know how those people feel when guests use them, but as a white girl I feel really uncomfortable taking a towel display in somebody else’s house apart, and try to wipe my hands while causing the least disturbance possible.

Oh, I guess I should mention that invisible tests no one will ever mention if you fail are absolutely a white person thing. Like, if you watch costumed period drama movies, there’s often a scene where someone is really unbearable and rude, and everyone is super polite and awkward and just sits there and says nothing. That’s not consciously an exclusive practice; from the perspective of white people it’s just an ingrained reflex, “Freeze and smile when something awkward happens and then later cut them out of your life.”

That reflex comes because the Industrial Revolution and colonization (1600s-1800s) led to a lot of class mobility. Ordinary men could get involved in business and become wealthier than the hereditary landowners! Which the hereditary landowners felt super threatened by, so they went out of their way to cultivate manners and standards that were very unlike those used by the common people. Upperclass accents became more marked and exaggerated; dictionaries decided to make English spelling and grammar especially hard to learn; manners got super weird and unintuitive. They wanted to make it as hard as possible for common people to fit into high society.

Therefore, to enable that system, the rule became: Never tell someone when they’re fucking up. If they know what they’re doing wrong, they’ll FIX it, and then they’ll fit in better! And that would lead to the absolute downfall of Western civilization! Which would of course be a bad thing! And that got codified as The Right And Desirable Way To Do Things. A low-class person might say “Hey, you just insulted me, I’m upset,” but someone with aspirations of rising higher in life learned to freeze and say nothing. That was how you defined “polite”.

So like I said, if I, as a white person, point out to other liberal white people that the freeze-and-smile-awkwardly response is really exclusionary to people from different backgrounds, they go, “Oh my gosh, you’re right!” and we can talk about changing it. It’s why white people invented assertiveness training. It’s a thing white people have to unpack and decolonize. But it’s not commonly a conscious attempt to exclude someone by not letting them know they’re breaking the rules.

ANYWAY. Towels.

So IF someone has guest towels taking up their towel rack in their bathroom, there’s very little room left for the actual towels. (Unless they’re like my aunt, whose bathroom literally has a second towel rack to accommodate her guest towel arrangement) Therefore: The entire fucking family sharing a single washcloth because that’s all they have room for, and it doesn’t feel that important not to share.

WHITE CULTURE IS WEIRD AS HELL.

And if you come to my house? You’re allowed to use my guest towels. It’s what they’re there for.

#staranise original #white culture #lis explains white people shit #AND I DIDN'T EVEN NAMECHECK CALVINISM ONCE #chucktaylorupset

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jbmillerauthor-blog · 4 years

Text

I can sew- Almost

Let’s start off by saying, I can quilt. However, I have never sewn an article of clothing in my life!

You would think a normal person here, would start with something simple. Me, yeah, not so much.

I decided to make my seven-year-old an Easter dress.

Did I mention that I started this sucker on good Friday?

What was I thinking? I must have totally lost my mind. Not only was I going to make an Easter dress in two days, but I was doing a fully lined one, with a gathered waist.

I had no idea what I was doing. I sure didn’t have a clue what I was letting myself in for.

Let’s just say mistakes were made!

But I was optimistic. I found a blog that made it look so easy. The link is below check it out!

Dress Pattern

I mean, if I knew the first thing about dress making, it would be totally easy. However, I knew nothing!

First of all, I used an old sheet for my material. I mean, we are in lockdown. It’s not like I can run out and just buy material.

This is what lock down drives people to do. We take on projects that are insane but that will kill time, and hopefully have something at the end to show for it.

BTW, trying to sew a dress with said seven-year-old hanging over your shoulder wanting to know how much longer, or coming in covered in paint from the freaking spinner wheel thing that she

Got for a past birthday. I thought I had hidden that damn things well, but she found it. Its literally a spinning wheel you put a round piece of paper in and pour liquid dye into it.

It should have come with a warning label: This will make a mess of EPIC proportions and stain everything it comes into contact with. This product was made solely to be the bane of parents everywhere.

But I digress.

Back to the sewing.

First of all, I printed out the pattern for the bodice.

That was easy enough, it all started so well!

Then came putting those pieces together.

You wouldn’t think that figuring out right side out and right side in would be so hard. I’m blonde, I need all the help I can get though.

So, when I was to the point of tears, had ripped out the same seam three times, I went to YouTube.

There I watched countless videos until my poor sleep deprived mom brain soaked in the very simple instructions on how to do this.

Dress making is hard. Don’t let those ladies on YouTube fool you. They make it look so easy, and I guess once you’ve made five million dresses you can do it in your sleep. Me, not so much.

However, I persevered.

The bodice was done. Although, I had to add an extra panel as the size 8-10 dress that I had a pattern for wouldn’t fit my 7-year-old! I still have no idea how I screwed that one up.

Then came the skirt. I will admit I finally just winged it. I really tried to follow the instructions, but it was like, nope, your brain is dead now Brandy. You will do it this way.

In the end, it came together. There were many bad words said in my head, a few out loud and I may have bled a little due to the pins stabbing me every chance they got, but here is the finished product.

I have a happy child, and a dress made from a sheet. So, calling this one a win!

#sewing lockdown momthings

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sleepless-in-starbucks · 5 years

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pssssssst,,, so like,, i was looking back over that post you made about your fave part/least fave part/brotp/otp/notp/random hcs/etc about remy and, if your muse wants to cooperate and you've got time,,, what about some hcs for a remy who excels at sewing ( ˘ ³˘)♥ ( ˘ ³˘)♥ ( ˘ ³˘)♥

My muse has agreed to do some hcs:

Remy is great at sewing!!! He has to be to keep his jacket together

He has had it for a LONG time alright, and he’s too stubborn and attached to it now to replace it

But at the same time he can’t have an obviously raggedy jacket, so he gets really really good at sewing; so good that you can’t even tell it’s been stitched up literally all over unless you look at it really close

He learned everything from Virgil, and then refined it a bit, since Virgil’s patchwork look looked good on him but not Remy

After that he taught Patton, and the two of them regularly meet up to sew together. Sometimes they’re fixing things (between Virgil’s hoodie- which Patton kidnaps every once in a while to fix himself- and all of Roman’s costumes, they always have something to do), sometimes they’re doing projects they found online

It’s all really nice and soft.

Together they sewed a quilt made up of torn fabric from all of the sides’ clothes (because they’ve all gone through a shirt or cape or two at some point) and other fabrics they just thought looked neat and gave it as a joint Christmas gift

Most of their reactions (minus Virgil) were: REMY YOU CAN SEW?!

Remy didn’t take that much offense tho since they all adored the quilt

It now lives on the mind palace/Commons couch and is often used to wrap everyone together during movie nights because it’s real big and real snuggly

Remy also becomes Roman’s best friend because Remy prefers taking time with his work, but he can also fix a costume rip with five minutes to show time and the audience would never even know

#the cryptid speaks #the cryptid answers #not as many as normal I know #but I love them all nonetheless #triple kiss anon #ts sleep #ts remy

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gosecretscribbles · 6 years

Text

Diptember2018 Week 4: Family

Mabel: Whenever I get cold, I steal someone’s jacket, but then I forget I have it. I have at least seven jackets in my room that aren’t mine, and the others are starting to complain.

Dipper: The other friends?

Mabel: The other jackets.

In which Mabel and Dipper care for a family of magical living jackets!

Dipper stopped typing and looked up. He could've sworn he heard a faint scratching noise. Then again, he'd been working on editing his latest Dipper's Guide to the Unexplained episode for hours and it was now 2 AM, so he might've just been hearing things. He went back to typing.

Scrit, scrit.

He looked up again, frowning. That time there was definitely a noise.

He got up and stepped carefully over Waddles, who was asleep on the floor. Mabel was snoring in the top bunk. He tip-toed over to the closet, turned the doorknob veeeery slowly, and then swung it open in one big rush.

There was nothing there.

Dipper grabbed a camera stick and poked it into the clothes. All he saw was the usual mess – his vests and orange shirts, plus all of Mabel's sweaters and a few jackets she'd borrowed from her friends. He even checked the shelf above the clothes, but his paranormal paraphernalia was undisturbed.

He yawned, closed the closet door, and went back to bed. Definitely time to actually go to sleep. Maybe he'd just imagined it.

The next two nights, though, Dipper heard the exact same weird noises coming from the closet. And it was definitely coming from the closet, not the roof, which ruled out stuff like raccoons or rats from outside. Finally, Dipper set up nighttime recorders so he could catch whatever it was in the act.

Saturday morning found him setting up his laptop to watch the feed while he ate his breakfast. Mabel walked in just as he was pouring himself some cereal, with Waddles following close behind, oinking sleepily.

“M-m-moooorning, bro-brain,” she said, yawning hugely. “What fantastic nerdery are you up to today?”

“There's something in the closet and I'm going to find out what it is.”

She grinned. “There are so many jokes for that I don't even know where to start! Let's see, is there a wozzet in the closet? Or perhaps a skeleton – figurative or literal? Oh! How 'bout a monster? One with shaggy blue fur and purple polka dots!”

Dipper sat down at the table and pressed slow fast forward on the recordings. He took a spoonful of cereal and munched it, still listening to Mabel with half an ear. A flicker of movement on the film caught his eye. He hit play –

“PHHFFFF!”

“Ew! Dipper! Spit takes are much cooler without chunks of chewed Cheerios!”

“Mabel Mabel LOOK!”

He grabbed his sister's arm and pulled her close, jabbing a finger at the screen. Mabel gasped.

One of the jackets she'd borrowed from her friends was moving!

And it wasn't like there was anything in the jacket, either. As the jacket slowly raised its sleeve, the angle of the camera clearly showed that there was nothing at all moving around inside it. The sleeves of the jacket, both totally empty, just raised up on their own, appeared to stretch on the hanger, then shook themselves out. Then the left sleeve reached out and tapped the jacket in front of it.

And the other jacket moved, too!

Mabel squealed, grabbed Dipper's shoulder, and shook him vigorously. “OH MY SWEATER SOCKS, ARE YOU SEEING THIS!?”

“I'm seeing it, I'm seeing it!”

They watched as all seven of Mabel's borrowed jackets come to life, stretching and yawning with their necklines as though they'd been asleep. The first one, which had faded red roses stitched up both sleeves, hopped off its hanger and started swinging on it like it was an acrobat. The jackets next to it, including a denim jacket covered in little round anime buttons, were pushed against the door, creating the scritch scritch noise that Dipper had been hearing. A very puffy green jacket flapped its sleeve at Rose Jacket until it stopped, then checked to make sure Buttons and the other jacket were alright.

“Awww, it's like the mommy jacket!” Mabel whispered.

“Or the dad. Do jackets have genders?”

“Probably not! OOOH!”

The smallest jacket, which was black denim with bright aqua rhinestones stitched into its collar, had reached over and was shyly tugging on the sleeve of a heavy-looking pink jacket. The pink jacket pretended to resist, but after a moment scooched closer on its hanger and hugged Rhinestones, the cuffs of their sleeves folding together.

“They're in love!” Mabel leaped away from the table and went bounding down the hall.

“Mabel, where –”

“I MUST MATCHMAKE MY JACKETS, DIPPER!”

“Shh, Mom and Dad are still asleep!”

Dipper caught up with Mabel in their room, but when she opened the door the jackets were perfectly still.

“Aw, c'mooon,” she whined. “It's okay, we totally know you're secretly alive!”

No response.

“Very well, you leave me no choice!” She began pulling everything out of the closet.

“Mabel, what are you –”

“Silence, mortal!”

Dipper knew better than to mess with her when she got like this. Instead, he took out his camera and started filming.

In about ten minutes, she'd made a huge pile of knitted sweaters in the middle of the carpet. (It was actually taller than Dipper.) She pulled a quilt off of her bed and folded it so it covered the closet floor, then got all the buttons out of her sewing kit and sprinkled them around. Finally she went to get all the lint rollers they owned from the hall closet and threw them in a pile on one side of the closet.

“There!”

“A...jacket nest, I'm assuming?” Dipper asked.

“Exactly! Now for just one final touch...” She took the sleeves of the jackets and started tying them in loose knots, pairing them up. Rhinestones went with Pink, Buttons went with Polka Dots, Bunny went with Rose.

“What about the puffy green one?”

“They're a strong, independent jacket, who don't need no jacket!”

“Riiiight. Aren't your friends going to ask for their jackets back, though?”

Mabel laughed. “Are you kidding? My friends have long since accepted that they will never rescue their clothes from the sweater vortex that is my closet! Now set up your cameras, nerd-bro, and let the matchmaking commence!”

Dipper diligently sketched and recorded the jackets as their little handkerchief babies grew up. First the handkerchiefs simply got bigger bigger. Then, when they were about the size of dinner plates, they began spontaneously growing pockets, embroidery, even zippers and buttons. Dipper's personal favorite was a baby jacket decorated with light pink rhinestones in an intriguing spiral pattern, while Mabel doted on a mini-jacket covered in rose-red bunnies in a field of golden grass.

Then, after nearly a week of observations, Dipper and Mabel woke up one morning to find the Button jacket on the floor of their bedroom. Waddles was absently chewing on one button.

Mabel gasped. “No, Waddles, that's not a chew toy, that's a friend!” She practically flew down the ladder and rescued the jacket.

Dipper sat up, blinking himself awake. “That's new. Isn't this the first time a jacket ever left the closet?”

Mabel clutched it to her chest. “What do you think happened? Do you think it wanted to escape the suffocating confines of domestic life? Did it want to pursue its dream of adorning the greatest matchmaker in history?!”

“I doubt it was the last one,” Dipper said, but Mabel was already slipping it on over her nightgown.

“Fear not, Buttons Jacket! I, Mabel Pines, shall grant your request!”

Dipper looked toward the closet with a frown. “Well, I guess we'll have to wait to watch the tape after school. But I would put it back in the closet if I were you, Mabel. You don't want your friends to take it back, or let Waddles chew on it.”

Reluctantly, Mabel agreed.

But when they got home from school that day, not only was Buttons Jacket back on the floor, it had a few small tears on its sleeves.

Mabel gasped. “I thought they were asleep during the day! Waddles must have chewed it!”

“I don't think so, Mabel,” Dipper said, opening the closet. There were similar tears on three other jackets. “At least it looks like none on the babies got hurt.”

Mabel was practically in tears. “What's happening? Is some supernatural monster attacking the Jackets?! We have to do something, Dipper!”

“Okay, hang on.”

He set up the video on the floor of their room. Mabel took out her sewing kit and immediately started repairing Buttons.

“You guys are next, don't worry,” she told the other jackets.

Dipper started the video at 10:00 PM and hit slow fast forward. But the video had only gone through thirty minutes when they saw a flash of rapid movement.

Mabel grabbed his arm. “Wait, go back, that was it!”

“I know, hang on...” Dipper quickly manipulated the film until it was back to the beginning of the movement. “Okay, starting.”

The two of them leaned forward intently. But as they watched the screen, identical looks of horror and dismay dawned on their faces.

It took about ten minutes. Then it was over. Dipper hit pause.

“Oh, no,” Mabel whispered.

Dipper glanced at her, worried. “What do we do?”

“We can't do anything,” she said slowly. “But I think I know who can.” She gave him a meaningful look.

Dipper understood instantly what she was getting at and held up his hands. “Yeah, okay, no. Seriously. That's probably a reeeally touchie subject, and I don't think our grunkles –”

“Dipper, trust me on this.”

“But...”

“Look at Buttons, Dipper!” Mabel held it up by the shoulders. A button with a smiley face on it was hanging by its pin, upside-down. “Sewing needles can only help so much. If we don't do something, the whole Jacket family could be torn apart! Literally and figmentally!”

“Figuratively.”

She ignored him. “Even if it's hard to ask, we really need their help.”

Reluctantly, he agreed.

Dipper stayed up until 11:00 PM, the best time to catch their grunkles, if they were awake. Mabel sat next to him, Button Jacket in her lap. She had repaired the seams of every jacket, but somehow even her nearly-invisible seams looked like faint scars on Button's sleeves.

Dipper gathered his nerve, opened the Skybe app, and called their Grunkles.

It didn't take long for them to pick up. Stan and Ford appeared on the screen after just a few rings, sitting at the table in the Stan O' War. Ford was wearing his usual navy jacket, but Stan was wearing a bright green sweater with an octopus on it, courtesy of Mabel.

“Hey, kids!” Stan greeted them, holding up a massive lobster shell. “Guess what? We ran into a lobster that told riddles and I won so I got to eat him!”

“He was spouting limericks for the last hour, but I think it's wearing off,” Ford told them. “What've you two been up to?”

“About that,” Dipper started, and he gave his Grunkles a quick run-down of the Jacket family saga (with comments from Mabel). Stan was intrigued at the idea of turning the jackets into a traveling roadshow at $50 a head, while Ford asked several dozen questions about the jackets, right down to the kind of thread Mabel had used to fix them.

“Fascinating,” he said, scribbling furiously on something just out of sight. “I wonder if the introduction of a foreign material will affect the jackets' ability to animate themselves.”

Mabel looked worried. “I hadn't thought of that. D'you think it'll be okay?”

“We'll know in about five minutes,” Dipper said, checking the time on his laptop. “They usually come to life around 11:30, but never in front of us, so we might have to set up cameras and wait 'till tomorrow morning to know for sure.”

“We can't wait that long, it could happen again!” Mabel cried.

Ford looked up. “You mean the sudden evidence of an attack?”

“Just lay down some rat traps or somethin',” Stan said with a shrug. “The way Mabel packs all those weird snacks under her mattress, I'm surprised you guys haven't had an animal problem sooner. Well, a rodent problem, anyway...” He shot a dark look at Waddles, who was flopped behind Mabel, snoring loudly.

“It's not a rodent problem,” Dipper said. He'd relaxed when telling Ford about the jackets, but now that they were coming to the problem, his gut was starting to tense up again. “Um...I got a video of what happened last night, so you can see it. Hang on.”

He clicked a few times and a video screen popped up in the bottom-right corner of both computers. He hit play.

He'd placed it at the start of the event. The jackets woke up like usual – and then Polka Dots and Buttons immediately started fighting. The handkerchief babies around them fluttered in a panic, and Puffy Green one tried to stop the fight, but several of the pins on Buttons had come open and tore Puffy Green's sleeves with a loud rip. Two other jackets tried to intervene with the same result, and finally Polka Dots wrestled Buttons to the door, shoved it open – and then threw Buttons out. The closet door slammed shut, with Buttons outside on the ground. Buttons flapped its sleeves angrily, started to pull itself away from the door, then stopped. After a moment it flopped over on its back and slowly, soundlessly, collapsed.

The video ended.

Ford's face had become perfectly still and emotionless. Stan looked a little nauseous.

“So?” Dipper asked, not quite meeting his grunkles' eyes. “I – I didn't really want to ask, but –”

“We have to help them!” Mabel cried, pressing Button to her chest. “They just fought and then they threw Buttons out – twice!! I don't speak jacket but I'm sure everyone's got a huge tear in their little fabric hearts! Please, Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford, you guys have been through this before – you've gotta talk to them before they spend thirty years miserably pining for each other!”

“Well that wasn't an obvious reference at all,” Dipper muttered. “Look,” he said to his grunkles, “I told Mabel this might be a little...sensitive...so if you guys don't want to –”

“No, no,” Ford said quickly. “I don't mind helping you with your fieldwork, Dipper. It's simply that Stan and I have never properly...er...”

“We don't do squishies,” Stan said flatly.

“But you guys have made up already!” Mabel protested. “I mean, you have, right?”

Stan shrugged. “If we haven't, we'd have killed each other by now. I'd like to see you try bein' on a boat with only this guy for company for several weeks straight.”

“Hey!”

“Point is, we just never really talked about it. I mean –” Stan leaned back, gesturing to the small, warmly lit living quarters of the Stan O' War. “We got the ocean, the boat, and I got my nerdbot back. Plus a few mermaid babes who may or may not want to date me.”

“If they ever forget that you stole their crown jewels,” Ford muttered.

Mabel sniffed and her eyes brimmed with tears. “But...they're supposed to be a family...”

“Alright alright, geez!” Stan said quickly. “Dipper, quit making your sister cry!”

“Wh – I didn't – !”

“So you'll help?” Mabel asked, sniffing.

“Yeah, sure, whatever.”

“We should look at this as an exciting opportunity!” Ford said, somewhat brightly. “Unless I'm mistaken, which I never am –”

Stan coughed something that sounded like “Bill”.

“– which I rarely am, these jackets are actually sentient clothes from Dimension 212^, where a fashion faux pas could mean a life sentence as a cleaning rag! I was practically de-vested of my trench coat upon my arrival, but this multigenerational mini-community presents a fascinating opportunity to study them at close range!”

“Great!” Stan got up. “Welp, have fun nerding out, I'm gonna go –”

“Sit right back down,” Ford said loudly, grabbing the back of Stan's sweater and yanking him back. “I can and will find another riddling lobster and see how you like listening to 'There once was a Nerdbot from Jersey.'”

“Well there was.”

Mabel smothered a laugh.

“Fine, then I get to go first,” Stan said. “Alright you fashion wannabes, here's the deal: I don't care who started it, suck it up and make up or I'll take a pair of scissors to you the next time I visit the gremlins. Capiche?”

Ford rolled his eyes. “How characteristically mature of you, Stanley. You can't just 'violence' a problem away. ”

“What? I'd like to see you do better!”

“Well – it would help if the button jacket admitted that he'd made a mistake. And,” he said, holding up a hand as Stan opened his mouth. “It would also help if the polka dot jacket sorted out its priorities. However justified the polka dot jacket may feel, it appears to have had a very close familial relationship with the buttons jacket. There is very little in the world more important than family, and nothing worse than losing it.”

“Can't argue there,” Stan muttered, his voice hoarse. “Alright, so the Button thingie may have made a mistake. It might've just – not wanted the dot thing to know about it. Or leave. But it shoulda been thinkin' about the dot thing, since they're family, and how to fix it up so that they were both happy, instead of just one of 'em...”

Stan and Ford continued in that vein for a solid thirty minutes. Then Mabel put Buttons back in the closet, Dipper checked to make sure his cameras were still set up, and they closed the closet door. They had about half an hour more before the jackets usually became active, and even though it was late, all four of them wanted to stay up to see if their attempts at reconciliation had had any effect.

“I'm sure it did,” Mabel said confidently, hooking her chin over Dipper's shoulder (they were sitting on her bed). “After hearing Grunkle Stan's story about the New Jersey Devil, there is literally nothing that could make me believe in family more!”

Stan grinned and wrapped an arm around Ford's shoulders. “You shoulda seen this guy, kids! It was like somethin' outta one of those detective comics. He tracked it down like it was nothin' – and then gave it all up!”

“Gave it up for you,” Ford corrected, grinning back and nudging Stan in the ribs. “Which, in retrospect, was probably a mercy to the NJD. You probably would've tried to make money off of it as some carnie attraction!”

“Darn right I would!”

Scritch, scritch.

“Wait!” Dipper whispered. “D'you guys hear that?”

“Do the thing with the video!” Mabel urged, and Dipper clicked on the camera icon at the bottom of the screen. As before, when he'd shown their grunkles the video, a square popped up in the corner of their Skybe. It showed a live feed of what was happening inside the closet.

Puffy Green Jacket was the first one to move. It reached out and put one sleeve firmly on Polka Dot's shoulder, as if to hold it off from attacking Buttons. Buttons, meanwhile, had re inflated itself – but hung on its hanger, stiff as if it had been badly starched. The other jackets looked equally tense, waiting. Handkerchiefs and baby T-shirts fluttered around the bottom of the closet, sensing the weight of the tension like a thunderstorm.

Buttons' hanger started to rattle. That's when they noticed it – the jacket's shoulders were shaking slightly.

“Oh, no,” Mabel whispered. “Is it...crying?”

But before Dipper could answer, Polka Dot tore away from Puffy Green Jacket, launched itself at Buttons and began waving its sleeves forcefully, gesticulating so harshly Dipper could practically hear it yelling. Buttons took it in silence at first, then started gesturing back, and Puffy Green Jacket moved in to stop them just as both jackets came flying at each other, sleeves extended –

– and then Polka Dots wrapped both sleeves around Buttons, squeezing it tightly. Buttons froze, then hugged back just as fiercely. Around them the other jackets breathed a collective sigh of relief.

“It worked!” Mabel whispered. She grabbed Dipper's shoulder and started shaking him. “It worked it worked it really hey what's that?”

A weird light was coming from nowhere and everywhere inside the closet. The baby handkerchiefs and T-shirts climbed up from the floor and the other jackets scooped the babies into pockets and inside their chests. The jackets grouped themselves together, sleeves wrapped around each other in a giant group hug. Then, slowly, Dipper realized he could see the back of the closet right through Pink Jacket.

“They're disappearing!” Dipper exclaimed.

Ford sighed. “Your closet doesn't happen to run through a ley line, does it?”

“A ley – what?”

“Simply put, it's a line of interdimensional, magical energy. 212^s are nomadic, and they use ley lines to travel from dimension to dimension. My guess is there was a surge planned for tonight, and this is when they're returning home.”

“Buttons would've been left out of the closet,” Dipper realized. “They would've been separated from their family. We got through to them just in time.”

The Jackets had nearly disappeared altogether by now. Just before they faded out of sight, Buttons turned to Dipper's camera and waved one sleeve in farewell. Polka Dot clutched Buttons all the more tightly, and together the pair of them vanished in a soundless flash of light.

Mabel immediately hopped off her bed and opened the door. “They really are gone,” she said.

“Oh, Mabel,” Dipper said, but she turned around with a smile on her face.

“They left together,” she said, smiling wider and wider. “They stayed a family. Grunkle Stan, Grunkle Ford – you guys are the best, sweetest gross old men ever.”

“Er...thank you?” Ford said.

“No, no, she meant it as a compliment,” Dipper assured him.

Stan grinned. “In that case, can I get thirty copies of all these videos you made? I can sell 'em online at fifty bucks each!”

#diptember2018 #week 4 #family #dipper pines #mabel pines #stanford pines #stanley pines #jackets #buttons #puffy green #polka dot

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sallythedreamweaver · 3 years

Note

(feelinunlucky) oatmeal raisin, dutch letter

Oatmeal raisin - when you were a kid what was your absolute least logical but most hated thing to do?

Sally: “Having to force eye contact. They expected that kinda thing a lot back at Spindle’s when talking to people, especially superiors, and I just...I dunno, it was hard! I just couldn’t, a-and I tried to tell ‘em that, but a lot of the time they just went ‘you literally just gotta look at me! it’s easy! Don’t be a baby!’ and all that other shmuck. But it just... I dunno, it hurt to do. Honestly, it still kinda hurts.”

Minim: “Oh, I was so insecure as a little slig, don’cha know! Did’ja know that it ended up gettin’ so bad while I was growin’ up in the Cartel around other Sligs that I stole from ‘em? All kinds of things I snatched and sneaked off with, just to make myself feel the slightest bit better. Why? Who knows! But I did it, even from dearest ‘ol momma! I did always feel bad about it... but not enough to stop.”

Paprika: “... Dental appointments. It ain’t enough that back then I was stuck in those labs, havin’ myself cut up again, and again, among the other atrocities that make my feathers curl, but the smells? The whole bein’ strapped down and metal bits and all? The hands forcin’ your mouth open and the needles and the - No. No.”

Dutch letter - if you could decorate your room anyway you wanted, how would it look?

Sally: “With all of my favorite things! I’d have a window with a couple of easy plants to take care of, a small and soft bed, and all the sewing supplies I’d ever need! And I’d also steal back the quilt that I didn’t get the chance to take with me from Spindle’s Threadworks. I miss that thing a lot sometimes...”

Minim: “Pink! All over the place! And hearts all around! With cakes and sweets all around the joint! With letters from people that think I exist and think that’s okay, and they smell like roses and love! And a mountain of cute clothes just for me! And a biiig, biiiiiiig knife or somethin’, too! As a treat!”

Paprika: “Hmm... A hot tub, full of bath salts, and petals to soothe the joints. Gentle music to waft the aches away, and perhaps even a manner to adjust the lightin’ to make everything softer. And also the heads of those bastard doctors in right at the front of the place, all for me to admire with a glass of wine waitin’ for me to drink. And the moon. That’d be delightful too, I should think.”

#((you didn't specify characters so i did all three i hope that's okay d;fsdmujfhsduhdshu))#sally #minim #paprika #asks

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armory-rasa · 7 years

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Leatherworking with gremble: the Anders brigandine

Alright, Anders fans -- let's talk brigandine.

PART I: SEWING

So most of the other Anders cosplays I've seen have done a quilted effect for his coat, which can also come out looking quite nice, but when I look at his outfit, I see brigandine. Brigandine is an armoring technique in the subset called "coat of plates" because it consists of small plates -- metal or heavy leather -- riveted to a garment of leather or heavy fabric. Since that's more in line with my skillset anyway, and considering that I've been hoarding scrap leather like some scrap-leather-hoarding dragon for just such an occasion, brigandine it was.

If Anders' coat is indeed meant to be brigandine, then it wasn't rendered right because it doesn't have enough rivets -- each rectangular plate needs 4 rivets (one in each corner) to attach it to the coat.

It distresses me when I can't be screen-accurate, and distresses me even more when I can't be accurate because their costume doesn't actually make sense, but such is life.

So the first step is to make the coat that will form the backing onto which you rivet your plates. It's pretty basic; I took the pattern from a coat I'd done for an unfinished Thrall cosplay, which I believe had itself been adapted from an inquisitor coat. Original:

Pattern laid out:

Sorry I can't give you something printable, but it's just too big for that. =/ (Not to mention that you'll be adjusting it to fit you anyway.) You shouldn't have too much trouble drafting your own though, and it is a very forgiving pattern.

The piece in the foreground is the front, and the further-away piece is the back. The front looks considerably bigger, but only because I fold the center edges over like three times. Remember that the edges are not actually supposed to meet in the front -- he's got that line of O-rings over his chest, so you're going to be leaving like 3"~4" of space down the center. I think I might also have wound up dropping the neckline a bit, I'm not sure.

It's also worth noting that the hem on this pattern makes a pretty dramatic dip in the front -- rather than being the same length all around, it's shorter in the back and comes to a point in the front. This is not accurate to what Anders wears in-game, his coat is indeed all squared off, but guess what looks better? And guess what gremble cares about more?

Anyway, cut out your fabric:

I used a black microsuede, because I bought a metric fuckton of microsuede when Hancock was going out of business and it was cheaper than dirt, and now I have microsuede for days (weeks. years) and I use it for anything I can. However, you can use any material that is (A) sturdy and (B) fray-resistant. You're going to be putting rivets through it later, so tight, sturdy weaves are your friend.

And even if you can put the back pieces on a fold, cut 'em apart anyway, because we want to put a vent in the back:

Sew the seam down the center back, stopping about 12~14" from the bottom, and crossing over that point a couple times with like your buttonhole function to make the endpoint strong. Seriously, that point is going to have a lot of stress put on it later, you want it to hold.

Fold your seams over:

Stitch your seams down:

And yeah, there's where you can tell that I'm not actually all that good at sewing. Parallel, what is parallel?

Anyway, keep going and attach the front pieces to the back pieces along the sides. I can't remember if I did the same seam as above, or if I did flat felled seams for these. It doesn't really matter, either way:

But considering that I then felt the need to document how to make flat felled seams on the shoulders:

So now you get to try on the coat and make sure that it's not completely off base:

Is good to me.

Next I edged the neckline and the armholes with bias tape. Goddamn do I hate bias tape.

But it makes it pretty tidy:

Alright, now it's time to do the center-front edges. We are making them VERY THICK AND VERY STIFF. I have seen too many Anders costumes where the weight of the O-rings drags down the edges of the coat, it is not a good look, but it's pretty easy to avoid if you plan ahead. So when I was making my coat I (1) folded the edge over twice (2) ironed some interfacing into it and (3) sandwiched a strip of felt into it. And I'm still not sure it was enough -- if I had it to do over again, I'd probably work a strip of 5-6 oz veg-tan in there instead. Truly, I don't think it's possible to make this part TOO stiff, while on the flip side, it's not going to look sexy if your coat is sagging under the weight of the O-rings.

So here is my felt and interfacing, both of which were 1" wide:

Iron on the interfacing:

Fold the felt into the edge:

Pin it, check how much of a gap it leaves down your front:

(This coat, for the record, is not the slightest bit adjustable. You make it, and then you don't gain or lose weight, ever.)

If the sizing is all good, then sew it down.

Time for your O-rings -- three of them are attached to the coat, the fourth one is on the belt, but needs to be spaced proportionally to the other three. Here is the spacing that worked for me (a 5'10" dude):

Test, 1, 2, 3...

You can see how the O-rings are too heavy for the straps holding them up, with more of their weight on the bottom instead of being distributed evenly -- that is okay. For this test I just snipped off some lengths of the bias tape I'd used on the neck & arms, so it's very thin fabric, but for the final version I use Legit Actualfax Leather (tm) and it is sturdy enough to hold the rings correctly.

Okay, time to put the gold edging down the center.

Full disclosure: I HATE bias tape. Like, everyone who knows me has at some point accidentally let themselves get cornered into having to listen to me rant about bias tape, how I hate it, let me count the ways. I get why it's used in cosplay so much -- so many costumes for the small-screen, be it anime or panels in a comic book, where you don't have much space for detail, add visual interest to a costume by putting contrast edging on it -- which, irl, is achieved with bias tape. But look the fuck around you, how many people have bias tape on their clothes?? Fuckin none, is the answer. So when I see bias tape, it feels strikingly cartoonish. It looks like cosplay; it doesn't look like something that anyone would ever actually wear out and about.

...and then there's Anders with his fucking gold bias tape down the center of his fucking coat, and all over the edges of his cute lil bolero jacket.

Sir, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Anyway, I wound up doing gold piping on the jacket--

--because it looks so much less shit than bias tape, but there really was no choice but to do a very wide band of gold fabric for the edging of the coat. This is, strictly speaking, not bias tape since I didn't do it on the bias -- it was wide enough that I thought bias tape might pull weird, and straight enough that I could get away with doing it on the grain, so I did. Oh yeah, and I put interfacing on it to keep it smooth, so I guess the center edges actually have THREE layers of interfacing to keep them sturdy:

Ignore the plates -- I will explain how to do the plates later, but I am encouraging you to do as I say not as I do and put the gold edging on it now, not after you've already riveted the plates, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DO NOT PUT THIS STEP OFF UNTIL YOU'VE ALREADY PUT THE PLATES ON IT.

If you can incorporate the gold-edging step into the hemming-the-edges step you can probably make something tidier than what I came up with. I did a zigzag stitch along the edge to keep it from fraying and then tucked it under and stitched it down by hand, but it was not fast, and the underside is not pretty, so I am not exactly holding this up as the definitive way to do it.

And when it was done, I hated it. It looked like cheap shit, just like all things made of bias tape. So gross, why oh why did I try to make it look like the screencaps instead of doing something more realistic, o god I hate bias tape so much.

Luckily, it turns out that when you pile on the rest of the costume, the bias tape on the coat looks less awful. ‘ “It looks less awful now,” I said grudgingly’ is pretty much the story of this cosplay.

PART II: LEATHER

So now that you've got the garment that's going to be your backing, you need to figure out how the leather plates are supposed to fit. I sized mine based on the screencaps, assuming Anders was my height (5'10"), so the top 7 rows came out to 3.75" L x ~2.5" W and the bottom two rows are 4.5" L x ~2.5" W. (I can't tell what width they were supposed to be, but they come out to about two and five-eighths inches.) Since some of the pieces have to get trimmed to fit around curves, I started by making a bunch rectangles out of graph paper and pinning them where the plates are going to end up:

TAKE A PICTURE OF THIS STEP. You will need it later when you've got your plates all done and you're trying to remember how to arrange them.

I did the front half from beginning to end, and then went back and did the back half later, but it would probably be easier to do it all in one go. I just didn't have proof that it would work as intended, so I was holding off on doing the whole thing.

This is my box of scrap leather that I'd been saving for a rainy day, and since it was literally flooding in Sacramento during this project, I decided to take that for a sign. The coat uses 90 plates of leather, all told, and I managed to get 79 of them out of this box, yay.

This is veg-tan leather in the 8~10 oz range, and you can't really tell once it's all put together, but I was using the werrrrst shit for this project, we're talking the dregs and weird ends that got rejected for everything else. Lumpy leather will mess up your tooling and won't shape well, but guess what, we're not tooling or shaping here! :D

(I think it turned into a false economy, because it was pretty time-consuming to find & fit the scrap leather to the pattern pieces, whereas it's insanely quick to cut strips of rectangles out of a full hide, but hey.)

Tracing the pattern onto the plates. Don't do this, make your pattern out of cardstock, graph paper is too bendy. If you're using a pen/sharpie, trace it onto the BACK of the leather, because we're not beveling the edges down and you don't want pen lines along the edges of your plates.

Edge rounding tool, you can get 'em at Tandy and they will save you so much time and heartbreak:

Time to DYE. I like Angelus alcohol-based dyes, they are versatile and inexpensive and waterproof. Water based dyes will run if they get wet; oil based dyes will bleed and ooze oil onto everything they touch, forever. Alcohol based dyes are great, but Fiebings (the Tandy alcohol-based brand) is prohibited under California's chemical laws so I buy Angelus instead. (And they send me weird swag, it's great.) Dilute it like 1:3 or 1:5 with acetone for dip dyeing:

(Okay so the color I used for this project can't really be replicated, because I went nuts one day and bought a 3 oz bottle of every shade of brown Angelus had, like 15 different colors, made a bunch of test swatches, and went, "Huh, the only one I really like is the dark brown." So I dumped the rest of them all together in a tub and added about three quarts of acetone. Pro-tip: your tubs for dip dyeing HAVE TO be hermetically sealed, because alcohol really really likes to evaporate, it will escape through the crevices and leave you with sludge. Granted, I think I can reconstitute this sludge with more acetone.)

Also note how all my pieces are different colors -- that's the range that natural, undyed veg-tan leather can come in. And they WILL take the dye differently, so if you have a project (not necessarily this one) where the pieces need to match in color, you HAVE TO cut them from the same hide, and ideally dye them at the same time.

So here's them all freshly dyed:

Apparently I didn't take a picture after they'd dried, but they looked awwwwfulllll. Sure enough, the different leathers had wound up different colors, weird and blotchy. Some of them I gave another dunk in the dye bath to make them darker, but mostly I just crossed my fingers and forged ahead.

Good news, they will look much better after you put a clear topcoat on them:

50/50 mix of resolene (which you can buy at Tandy) and water. I've messed with other topcoats before, but this is your best bet. It dries quite water-resistant; one coat will leave you with a matte finish and if you want it shinier you can add more coats.

They will also look better after you add lines along the edges. I forget what this tool is called, but you want one, it is invaluable, lets you put lines parallel to the edges of your leather very quickly and very neatly. The lines I did were 3/8" from the edge:

And now you have also conveniently marked where to punch your rivet holes:

Lay 'em out (I was eyeballing this, not measuring it):

With a gel pen or something, mark where the holes are:

I debated whether I wanted to use small or medium rivet caps, went with medium. These are what's called double-cap rivets, because there is a cap on both ends so it looks clean and finished on both sides of the project, but rapid rivets (the ones where the post end does not have a cap) would work fine here. Tandy sells rivets in lengths XS, S, M, and L -- the post length you need for this is S, but you can mix and match the posts and the caps, so I paired small posts with medium caps, which I felt were better proportioned for this project.

Use a burnishing awl to poke holes in your fabric, wide enough that you can push a rivet through. You will break some threads doing this, which is why you want your base fabric to be fray-resistant:

Add plate:

Add rivet cap:

Grab your rivet setter, apply hammer:

Yessssssss:

That was the point when I said, awww yeah, son, this might actually work. I'd been kinda iffy about it til then.

Alright, doing the rest of it. Here's where the patterning for the plates gets weird, because the coat is not a tube, it's narrower at the chest than at the hem, so some of them are going get cut at angles along the side seam. You can see that I labeled the plates this time because the assembly was getting kind of crazy, but it wound up not mattering because the acetone in the dye bath stripped off my labels. ;_;

So I labeled them again when they came out of the dye:

And repeated the same process as above. Aww yeah:

By the way, I did not make boots for this costume; I bought those boots in Harajuku like ten years ago and they turned out to be one of the best investments I ever made, because I wear them all the time and they blend seamlessly into so many costumes -- including Anders.

Anyway, you're not done yet, time to put the O-rings on it. I cut some tabs out of 5 oz leather and cut stitching grooves about 1/8" from the edge. That is the same tool I used above for creasing the lines along the edges of the plates, you just swap out the head to carve a groove instead of leaving a crease. Also I should have cut the grooves before I dip-dyed them, because I wound up having to go back and put dye in the grooves:

Mark your stitching holes (rolling wheel is great) and punch your stitching holes:

Punch your rivet holes:

I clipped the corners on the underside of the tabs so they wouldn't be poking my chest.

Same MO as attaching rivets to the coat, use your burnishing awl to poke a hole through the front edge and attach your tabs. (Hearkening back to the picture waaaay above, where I measured where you want to attach your O-rings.) While I'm stitching, I hold it in place with a brad, not the actual rivet. Stitching:

This is waxed nylon cord, by the way -- you can buy it at Tandy, or you could probably substitute dental floss, it’s about the same weight.

So one side of tabs is stitched & riveted shut and holds the O-rings, the other side consists of snaps so that they can come on and off the O-rings easily.

I hate snaps almost as much as I hate bias tape, but sometimes they're unavoidable. At Tandy, you have the option of glove snaps, segma snaps, or line 20/line 24 snaps -- they are all terrible, but glove snaps are your best bet for this operation. Segma snaps and the line 20/24 snaps are too heavy-duty for putting in fabric, they will slide sideways when you try to set them and you will have to pull REALLY HARD on them to make them release, and you'll end up stretching your fabric out of shape. Glove snaps will also slide when you try to set them, because all snaps are assholes, but once you get them installed they will work well.

(Except for when it popped off the morning of PAX, and I was out of town so I didn't have access to my workshop, and we had to swing by Tandy with me in my Anders costume to buy a new bag of snaps and beg use of their tools to set it. It took like fifteen minutes of swearing, because snaps are assholes, but I did make some kid's morning ("IT'S A WIZARD!!!") so there's that.)

Snaps:

Bias tape, looking less awful once the O-rings are added:

Here is a picture that better demonstrates how the rings are attached:

You’ll need medium-length posts for the rivets holding the O-rings on.

There are also a couple tabs lower down that are purely decorative. Initially I was going to skip those, but the other story of this costume is me going, "Eh, good enough. .........NO, NOT GOOD ENOUGH, MUST BE PERFECT" so I added them later. I'm glad I did, because anything to break up that line of stupid bias tape is a plus:

And more random rings on the sides:

Technically those should be O-rings, not D-rings, but I have a gratuitous number of brass D-rings just kicking around, so I used them instead of buying more O-rings.

The rings you can buy from Tandy -- solid brass, they look and feel great. The top three are 1.5" interior diameter, the rings on the belt are 2".

And I think that's it. Happy Anders'ing!

(And the glamour shot)

#cosplay #anders #da2 #dragon age #tutorial #leatherworking #brigandine #instructional #gremble's face

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diddlesanddoodles · 7 years

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DUMPLING

CHAPTER 5

The little girl was bewildered and confused in the best way.

She was surrounded by lady giants, all of them cooing at her, wiping away her frightened tears and petting her hair. Someone was braiding her freshly washed hair while another was taking measurements of her feet for new shoes as her own were deemed unacceptable.

Lolly had brought her to a room somewhere in the servants’ quarters reserved for the female servant and had called all her friends to help her. They brought out a small wash bin and filled it with warm water and allowed the little girl clean herself, giving her a little space, and collect her scattered thoughts. Though Lolly did step in when she felt the little girl did not quite scrub all the dirt from behind her ears and neck. Then she washed the little girl’s hair for her with real soap.

“Oh look! There was a little human under all that dirt!” Lolly teased with a laugh, wrapping a soft towel around the now clean human. “You have red hair as well! And here I was thinking that it was brown.”

Indeed, it was a sight to look into the water to see the once clear water had turned a murky brown.

The little girl was beginning to feel a lot better and even spared Lolly a smile at the woman’s kind words. The lady giants were all nice and very gentle with her as they took her measurements for new clothes. An idea that was beyond the girl’s scope of thought for the moment. Just a little while ago, she had been so certain she was going to die and now she was not entirely sure what to think. But she dared to hope it would be alright. If the ladies were so nice and the King so merciful, maybe there was real reason to hope.

But she recalled that she was going to be given to the Kitchen master. He was large and he scared her.

“I suppose if you’re going to be in the kitchens, you’ll need some clothes you can get about in,’ Lolly was saying, writing down the little girl’s measurements. “A few sets so you’ll have a clean one ready each morning.”

“Is Farris...is he really mean?” The little girl asked, feeling nervous. The kitchen giants were for the most part tall and menacing looking. Male and gruff and looking just as she imagined ferocious giants to look. Farris and the butcher, Bart, were tallest and most muscular with personalities to match. The giant who had caught her, Yale, was lean and tall but his eyes belied a sharp intelligence.

They scared her.

“Farris? I wouldn’t call him mean. He’s certainly not as cruel as he acts. Just loud. And bossy and he has a temper. But he is a good man. Even if I could throttle him for deciding the kitchen was an appropriate place for you. Though I doubt he’ll be having you doing anything. He runs a tight kitchen and I can’t imagine he’d have the patience to try and have you do any real work.”

“Why would he want me? I thought he was mad at me for stealing and…”

“I’m sure I haven’t the faintest idea, my dear,” Lolly replied stiffly, rifling through a sewing box.

“Did you not say that you had caught the Red Reap, dearie?” one of the ladies asked. When the girl answered to the affirmative, she nodded knowingly. “That must be it.”

Lolly seemed to ponder that for a moment. “I supposed. Yes, that could be it.”

Lolly hummed quietly to herself for a moment and looking a little more sympathetic.

“Why would that be it?” asked the little girl.

“Farris lost a dear friend a few years ago to the Red Reap.”

“It was very sad,” said another lady.

“I heard he didn’t speak for a whole week,” added another. “He took it really hard.”

“The whole kitchen did, but Farris especially. Poor man.”

“And a depressed kitchen makes the most bland food.”

“Wendy!”

“What? It’s true! The food was awful for almost a month before Farris got some sense knocked into him.”

The little girl was silent as she thought about what the ladies were saying. She was still apprehensive about living in the kitchens of a literal giant castle, but now that she knew she was not destined to end up as someone’s dinner, she was less frightened. If only a bit. And she still could not place where or why Farris’s sharp green eyes seemed familiar. She was certain she had never met a giant before coming to Vhasshal. Surely she would recall such a meeting.

Wouldn’t she?

The lady giants put a bright blue ribbon in her hair and fussed over the fittings of the first piece piece of clothing they had finished. It was a gray dress made of very soft material, though it was a little big on her.

“Hm,” Lolly considered the fit, pulling on the hem lightly and instructing the girl to turn. “We could take it in a bit more, but I think we’ll leave it, so there’s room for you to grow into it.”

“It’s very pretty,” the little girl said with a bright smile, noticing the blue flowers embroidered on each cuff. “Thank you.”

The lady giant responded by leaning down and pressing her lips to the girl’s head in a light kiss. The little girl blushed a fierce scarlet and the other ladies all giggled.

“We’ll make you a coat too. It can get mighty cold up here, even in the kitchens, and fall’s nearly over. Ginger’s wants to make you a proper quilt as well. The rest of your clothes will take a bit more time, but I think this shall keep for the moment.”

Bathed and dressed, the lady giants all gathered around to inspect their work.

“You look very pretty, my dear,” said Lolly with a warm smile.

“Thank you,” the little girl said, twirling a little so her skirt swirled around. “And for being so nice to me. I was so scared I was gonna get eaten, but...”

That only seemed to set the ladies off and they spent the next half hour assuring the little girl that she was perfectly safe and that all the talk of eating her was just the kitchen boys playing tricks on her. One of the ladies scooped her up and cradled her like a baby. The little girl was surprised to find that she did not mind it so much. It felt nice to have someone care. Even if that someone was taller than a house.

“Don’t let those boys get away with any of that nonsense,” Lolly told her firmly. “Tell them what’s what next time they pull that hooey.”

“But they’re so much bigger than me! I don’t wanna make anyone mad at me...”

“Never stopped me,” said Ginger, who was the youngest and shortest of the ladies. “I popped Gjerk over the head once for pulling my skirt. Nothing drops their bravado quicker than their mates laughing at ‘em for getting throttled by a girl.”

The little girl was not sure she would be heeding that particular piece of advice.

She ate lunch with the ladies, much to her delight as she had missed breakfast entirely. Lolly took it as a chance to teach their new little guest proper table manners. It was a lot more complicated than it first sounded and took an entire hour. Not much eating was actually done much to the little girl’s displeasure and she retained very little of the lesson.

“I know we have some human sized plates and cutlery somewhere, but I cannot remember where. I tried to teach Jae proper manners when he was small, but his head is as hard as a rock. The little barbarian eats with his hands and the King doesn’t even say anything!”

“Who is Jae?” asked the little girl.

“Oh!” exclaimed Wendy. “Of course, you haven’t met him yet, have you? He’s the King’s pet human.”

The little girl frowned. “...‘pet’?”

She recalled the words the King used when telling her that he was giving her to Farris. Optimum word being ‘given’. Was that what her punishment was? To become a giant’s pet?

“Oh don’t fret, dearie,” said one of the ladies, seeing the worried expression she wore. “We just call him that because that’s how he acts. Lounges around like a cat and acts dumb and innocent to get out of everything. He’s the King’s ward.”

“And the King adores the little brat so he gets away with everything. He’s such a rascal.”

“He’s a scoundrel is what he is.”

“He’s a little mischievous is all.”

“Remember when we caught him spying on us in the dressing room?”

“Boys will be boys regardless of size, I suppose.”

“He’s lucky he’s too small to properly throttle.”

“Lolly might still give it a go, though, after last night.”

The ladies all broke out into fluttering laughter. Lolly was not so amused.

“What happened last night?” asked the little girl. She had heard Jae’s name so many times, she could not help but be curious about him.

“The King just married Lady-er, Queen Rosanna. It was a beautiful ceremony, her dress was spectacular! The bead work alone took months! She looked so regal, just as any young queen aught to. And the feast was magnificent! Farris really outdid himself. Last night was the last night of the celebration and...”

“Someone gave Jae whiskey...”

“I don’t have to think very hard as to who that someone is...”

“...and...well, Jae is not permitted to drink anything like that.”

“For a very good reason.”

“He just can’t handle his drink. At all!”

“He got drunk...”

“...and he fell into the gravy boat and it splattered it all over the Queen!” cried Lolly, red in the face and furious. “My poor Lady Rosanna! She looked so embarrassed! And Jae didn’t even bother to apologize! He just passed out! Urgh, they should have just let him drown in that gravy.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Maybe in a week I won’t. But right now, I certainly do. It might be a few years for her Ladyship to get over it. She did not have very high opinion of him to begin with.”

After lunch, several of the ladies had to leave to tend to their own work, leaving the little girl with Lolly and Ginger. Ginger sat quietly in the corner, sewing little patches of brightly colored fabric together for a quilt. Lolly held the little girl in her lap as she read from a book of poetry. She had decided she would return the girl to Farris closer to their supper time when the kitchen would be quieter and the Spice Master a little less ornery. She rocked lightly in the chair, cradling the little girl against her and rubbing her arm affectionately.

“Farris can wait a few more hours,” Lolly said. “Besides. I haven’t quite gotten over the idea of stealing you away. You’re too sweet for the kitchens. They’ll have you cursing and acting unladylike like within a week!”

The little girl giggled, leaning against the giantess’s middle, a familiar sense of comfort coming over her. It reminded her of sitting with her mother. She use to recite poetry and sing songs too. Suddenly, Lolly jumped in her seat, jostling the little girl. “Oh my goodnes! I just realized! We haven’t even asked you your name!”

The little girl broke out into a giggle. She thought something had been wrong when Lolly suddenly jerked at nothing.

“My name is Nenani,” said the little girl. “Like the river.”

“Nenani,” repeated Lolly. “That’s a beautiful name.”

“Thank you. My Mama gave it to me.”

TO BE CONTINUED:

CHAPTERS:

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

#Dumpling #story #gt #g/t #gt story #giant #tiny #Nenani #Lolly #Wendy

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lydiaabroad · 5 years

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Journal #4: April Feelings

Hello there. As I said in my last blog, I have been having a tough time since returning from CRHP in Jamkhed. It was an incredible experience and place to be, I think I could see myself returning as an intern in the next few years. The experience also confirmed for me that I prefer rural India to urban India, as I have experienced them. The sense of community is so palpable in rural settings and the power of support really drew me in.

I have been feeling a bit trapped lately in the routines of going to class, doing work, and being at home. I love Indian food but if I eat another potato doused in oil I might cry. I would love to eat a vegetable other than a potato, which I do not consider to be much of a vegetable in the first place. I could maybe shift my thoughts around this small complaint though to see it as part of the thread sewing together a grander, more colorful quilt of this experience. Three servings of potatoes a day definitely create a thick thread.

The potatoes form part of the thread, as does the whistle of the neighborhood security watchman blowing a series of ferociously loud blows throughout the night, the bodies of people pushing through markets, the calls of rickshaw drivers trying to get a rider, the bright colors of women’s kurtas on the train, the strange smells of sewage that settle in the air at night, the laughter of children playing in the park, the constant honks of cars, the pressing of two hands together at the chest with a slight bow of the head, these passing moments and background noise weave the larger patches of my life here together. I feel I am in a unique position of outsider in which I am able to notice these bits of humdrum with a slight fascination, and at this point, appreciation. There is a style of embroidery I have been particularly drawn to in my time here that I believe is called Kantha, in which a running stitch spans the length of the garment, say a scarf, going over any prints or patterns on the fabric. The stitches often have a variety of colors throughout and pop out on top of the pattern of the garment. From first look, the combination of patterns doesn’t seem to make sense, to see so many stitches seems to distract from the beautiful pattern under it, but I have found it to feel incredibly organic and tangible. I like that the stitches and the pattern can clash, feel overly busy, they create a more interesting and detailed piece as a whole. My little experiences each day are the same.

It’s funny now as I reflect on my experience here how certain aspects of life I never considered before coming here are now the highlights of my days. I love taking the metro. I love to just sit and stare out the window at all the different types of apartments, at the clothes hanging from balconies and lines. On the metro I love seeing everyone’s outfits. On weekends especially, families are together and tend to dress up a lot, so women wear their saris, and the metro platform is a rainbow of color. I think I will miss this when I go home. Wearing color is such an intrinsic part of life here and it really does make everything seem more alive and beautiful.

Another unexpected joy is walking around. I have always enjoyed walking, but it’s very interesting to walk in different neighborhoods in Delhi. The Lodhi Colony area consists of huge boulevards with magnificent trees framing the road. Nearly no one walks on these sidewalks and they’re some of the biggest I have seen in Delhi. On a Saturday exploring alone I decided I would walk between my sightseeing spots since getting from one to another was always less than two miles. I enjoyed feeling alone for the first time in a while, but I also enjoyed coming to turn circles and playing a game with traffic as I tried to get across.

I especially enjoy walking in highly congested areas. I went with a friend to a grocery mart type of store that sold foods, cheap clothes, anything you could want, in a neighborhood called Gobind Puri. On the walk back to the metro it began to get dark and the sides of the road lit up with lights shining on clothing, vegetable carts, jewelry. On my right side was rushing traffic, rickshaws and motorcycles whizzing by often six inches away, on my left were the temporary tables filled with goods, and I was in a human tunnel, propelling forward from the sheer mass and density of people. I don’t know what it is about situations like this, but they have been some of my favorites on this trip. For a lot of people, foreigners especially, the idea of touching everyone around you in a crowd while walking down the street would probably feel overwhelming, but I felt incredibly calm, and so happy. I’ve been thinking a lot about these experiences and I think that perhaps I like them so much because I have to be there. I cannot be looking at my phone, even daydreaming feels too far off. I have to be there, in that crowd, feeling the people pushing me forward, seeing the colors of roadside goods, hearing the bikes passing me, and I am a part of it. These experiences make me feel like I am a part of something bigger than myself and like I am actually alive. I find myself now craving this sense of presence.

It’s interesting to reflect on the expectations I came into this experience (and the expectations others provided me) compared to the feelings and experiences I have actually had. With the crowds, for example, so many people told me I would feel overwhelmed. A lot of people said things to me about the number and density of people that implied some kind of wildness or out of controllness to life here. With closer look and I think maybe participating a little more in day to day life, it feels to me like there is in fact a rhythm and harmony to this chaos we assume at first look. There are indeed very chaotic things, things that do not make sense or seem efficient, but I have found a surprising number of things that do make a lot of sense to me. Driving hasn’t felt strange to me in a very long time. It makes sense that with so many cars we are going to pass as many people and swerve around cows as quickly as possible so that we can get ahead. It makes sense that if I am standing a foot behind someone in line, another person will step in front of me and claim that empty space. There are absolutely logics and methods to the way day to day life unfolds. I am feeling very happy that I am starting to understand these things. (Makes me think of one of my very first posts about culture and cultural adjustment and aiming to understand world view, the deeper culture. “Culture is the acquired understanding and values through which we know how to behave and interpret human interactions.” I am becoming able to interpret more.)

I listened to an Oprah podcast with Deepak Chopra, a notable Indian thinker, that touched on some of these exact ideas–– We see and assume chaos, which from our western perspective we might see as a lack of development, but there is indeed a harmony to it all. The podcast connected back to the idea of karma as a fundamental facet of Indian society, which was also very interesting because I have learned a lot about how ideas of karma impact people’s ideas about disease and caste (justify them), but I never considered the idea of karma in terms of just how day to day, public sphere interactions proceed. Essentially they asserted that the idea of karma, whether or not people believe in it, is embedded enough in Indian culture that people live slightly fearlessly and in the moment. Karma literally means action, so you might as well run into traffic to get across the street and put out the energy that you’ll get across, because for karma to come you have to do. This is super simplified and honestly not really an accurate explanation, it’s hard to wrap your head around, but it was interesting to be here and listen to this podcast that puts another explanation to the experiences I have been having.

If you would like to check it out it’s called Creating Harmony on Oprah’s Super Soul Podcasts. https://player.fm/series/series-2372201/deepak-chopra-creating-harmony Just a warning, Oprah is a very aggressive interviewer. I wouldn’t say it’s the best podcast I have ever listened to, but it was interesting.

So I’ve been thinking about life here and how I understand it from my little worldview. I feel like I am starting to understand more and become a little more connected to some cultural norms. I’ve been reflecting on the expectations I came here with, and I definitely, though I didn’t want to admit it to anyone, had this idea that my life would be changed and I would have all these personal breakthroughs in how I know myself. This secret desire feels a bit ridiculous now because I don’t feel different. Can you consciously tell when you feel different? How will I feel when I go home?

There are a few goals I had for myself coming here in terms of personal breakthroughs that I am proud of my progress towards. Part of the reason I wanted to study abroad was to become more comfortable being alone. I am one to surround myself with friends, family, and it’s great! I absolutely love and feel deeply fulfilled by time spent with people I feel comfortable with, but when I got to college I began to feel myself becoming a bit too dependent on the presence of other people. FOMO is real, and I was starting to become alarmed at the extent to which I was feeling it. Shipping myself alone to a different country seemed like a possible solution to this discomfort with myself, and yes, I would say I have gotten a lot better with it. I tried especially hard not to reach out too much to people at home to cope with the initial homesickness, shock, you name it I was feeling. I started taking walks, during some of which I would talk out loud to myself to have a conversation and work through whatever I was feeling. I journaled at ridiculously high rates for a while, which really helped me connect with my feelings and sort through them, but then even that felt a bit too dependent, and eventually I found myself able to spend time with myself as a form of soothing. Normally I would look to the people around me to express my feelings, then when I didn’t have them accessible I started using my journal, and now I am able to sit and think a little more. A big aspect of my FOMO I think actually comes from a fear of being alone with myself. Right?! Like how much time do you actually spend not interacting with another person but yourself. It is scary! I am not sure why, perhaps just more insecurity, or maybe out of ease? It’s so much easier to use and to need external sources to provide comfort, to feel loved and taken care of, so I tried to start doing that more for myself. I don’t think there was any particular action I took that helped me work towards this goal, but I think that being here and being relatively alone helped do it for itself. I think that what I have come to understand in feeling this shift is that I have to be comfortable being in discomfort. Instead of finding a distraction such as a person to listen to my woes or hold me, I had to sit with my discomfort, acknowledge it, and somehow find a way to be comfortable in it. This felt really brave and really new to me, and it felt uncomfortable! Vulnerable! But those feelings always ended up passing, so I think it was a good exercise. I am hoping to carry this forward with me.

I’ve been reading this book called “The Places That Scare You” by Pema Chodron, an American Tibetan Monk (?), that is allllllllll about the practice I just described. So in Buddhism there are three main principles of human existence: impermanence, egolessness, and suffering/dissatisfaction. Impermanence and dissatisfaction easily make sense: life is hard, nothing is permanent, and this sucks! Everything is constantly changing, right? Trees are growing, air is moving, the cells in your body are doing things, the thoughts you think are never exactly the same, you are never exactly the same. BUT, we resist! We do not like change! I absolutely am horrible with change! So what if I begin to consider that everything is in constant process? I am always in transition? If I know this, that even in the moments I feel most still and stable, I am changing and the world around me is changing, then perhaps the bigger feelings of transition I feel will be less scary. My uneasiness of not knowing what’s going on can be met with the acknowledgement of the constant waves of transition that are moving in me. I am learning each day, I am getting a wrinkle line on my forehead, I am becoming more comfortable being alone with myself. I have to open myself up to notice these small changes because even if they are small, they carry feeling! I must acknowledge the little feelings of joy, love, but also the rawness of pain, embarrassment, loneliness, gratitude. And when I acknowledge the feelings, I can see how they come and go. I can see that they are not permanent. I can see how I change. Flexibility and openness comes from getting to know our fears well, such as those of change, and ultimately bring us strength and peace.

So maybe feeling all these feelings I am having alone, the little changes, letting the emotions I feel exist and acknowledging how they feel, is a part of the grand fantasy of change I envisioned for myself. The more I tune in to the subtle shifts within me the more I feel a tenderness towards myself that I did not expect. To feel this tenderness is scary, I feel open, but I feel awake. I especially enjoy walking in highly congested areas.

#journal

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lvaartebella · 6 years

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Q&A With Penny Sisto

Penny Sisto learned to sew at the age of 3, growing up on the remote Orkney Islands off the northern tip of Scotland. Her unique, narrative quilts have brought her international recognition because of the estimable craft, but also for the colorful, humanist quality of the characters and stories she discovers. The social consciousness that is an important aspect of her work is brought to the fore in her latest work, to be exhibited at The Carnegie Center for Art and History in New Albany Indiana beginning February 16, 2018.

The Sixties – Turn on, Tune in, Drop Out! continues to follow many of the themes that has been at the center of Sisto’s work over the years — exploring people, politics, art, music, and spirituality — but presents them looking through the prism of the 1960s.” - Carnegie Center for Art & History website.

Keith Waits: The new exhibit reaches back to the 1960’s. Why is that period important to you now?

Penny Sisto: The Sixties were the years in which I escaped - leaving the Islands for the Highlands of Scotland.

I worked some really low level jobs: a chambermaid in a seedy hotel - I was fired for being late! We were expected to be there at 4:00 am and I had no funds for the bus and in snowy weather I would roll in an hour later. Then I was a seamstress in a factory setting. I was fired for bad, inaccurate sewing. I got an even lower paying job as an alteration sewer in a big store. I was fired again, this time for leading a walkout in protest after a fellow seamstress got electrocuted by old wiring on her steam iron. I sewed hats as a piece worker and was fired for bad and sloppy sewing.

Then my pregnancy began to show, which was a bad situation back then! It was December, and Anna was born at home in January. Life could go nowhere but up.

I began to become aware of music - the Beatles of course, then came the Art. I started making art and clothing, and selling them successfully.

I continued practicing my midwifery skills, and it was hard to keep up with the demand - I did more and more babies, went to Africa, and helped women safely deliver more babies. It was there I met my first American friends. They were all Peace Corps members. I got pregnant with Tulsi, AKA baby #4, married her Dad, came to the USA and after 6 months of working as Janitor for the Armenian Church just off Harvard Square we saved enough to buy an old VW bus and drive across the country to a commune in the Sierra Foothills in Northern California. When I got there the first person to greet us was Richard Sisto! I guess it was Kismet!

Having grown up in an area where everything was circular, including the old underground houses that in those days were still left wide open for us to play in and explore, growing up in an area and an era when Freedom was yours unless there were chores to be done on the farm and school was in one room and was discontinued at harvest time or times of big storms. My life was lived with few boundaries. If I milked and did my farm chores I was unsupervised, wild. I wore feathers in my hair, went to school only if forced, could edge so close to the seals and puffins that they learned to ignore me, stayed out all the light-filled nights of midsummer - that far north you can read a book at midnight outside.

KW: When did you first begin to reference Native American culture in your work?

PS: The myths of Northern Scotland and my islands are so akin to Native American as to become one quilt. Even the hats worn by Scottish soldiers are called Bonnets - War Bonnets. Our villages are called Clans. All Clans become one in my heart and mind.

The eagle and hawks are sacred magical creatures of our myths, and the salmon is known as the oldest Teacher on this earth, so when I came to America the only society that resonated within me and felt safe was the easy cross-over to Native American ways of looking at this Earth, our Great Mother. I worship in a raggedy old tipi, or the yurt if the tipi is too cold.

KW: You seem to exhibit in two-year cycles. How soon do you know what will be the focus of the next body of work?

PS: As for showing quilts in 2 year cycles, I would show more if I had more galleries available or willing to take me.

I am a Drone, a mindless worker. The quilts arrive even if I don't pay attention; they literally pour into my mind and my clumsy fingers butcher them into being. They are never what I want nor what I envision, they are pale shadows, and as I age they become even less like my initial vision. Such is the way when one’s fingertips are 76!

KW: The narratives are always built around characters. Do you know who the characters are before you start a piece?

PS: The characters on them arrive fully formed. Sometimes I portray living people, but usually they come like cloud people, unknown cloud beings who insist on being seen.

KW: You have been known to incorporate some unexpected things in your work - you once told me a story about pubic hair; did you use any unorthodox materials in these quilts?

PS: Nothing like that here. In this series there are less unorthodox findings and fabrics just because my pantry of bones, beads, and baubles is a wee bit bare.

THE SIXTIES – TURN ON, TUNE IN, DROP OUT! NEW WORK BY PENNY SISTO

February 16 – April 21, 2018 Opening Reception February 16, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

In addition to Sisto’s art quilts, the Carnegie Center will also be displaying a series of whimsical and joyful wooden benches created by Pierce Whites.

Carnegie Center for Art & History 201 E. Spring Street New Albany, In. http://www.carnegiecenter.org/ 812-944-7336.

Tuesday - Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Admission is always free.

Are you interested in being on Artebella? Click here to learn more

#quilts #Scotland #1960's #yurt #tipi #Dick Sisto #Abbie Hoffman #John Lennon #Native American #bird imagery

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