the world has been horrifying recently but i have personally witnessed something that brought me joy
Every year, California’s largest sheep and fiber festival, Lambtown, takes place in Dixon, CA. On the second day of Lambtown, teams of eight compete in a “sheep to shawl” competition, where the teams must start the day with un-spun wool and end the day with a 72” woven shawl. Teams may “warp” a loom ahead of time (where you thread the loom with its foundation of parallel threads), but on the day of competition they must spin their wool into yarn and weave it into a complete shawl.
This year competition was stiff, and very very close, and the winning team finished their shawl with two and a half minutes to spare.
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I frequently hear about “needing to keep “politics” out of fiber arts, but art is inherently political.
These were beautiful, masterfully spun, woven, and finished shawls and that in itself is worthy of note.
But watching this team of eight would fight for hours, and pour their love for their community into their art was deeply moving and I am still reveling in the opportunity to have seen this win.
There are few things to rejoice in today, but they do exist. The horrors may persist, but so do we.
Being an avid DnD player, for my sins, I was thinking about how to translate Murderbot and ART into DnD.
One of my main thoughts right now is Murderbot as a Warforged (obviously) and an Oath of Devotion Paladin. I feel like it would have Feelings about being described like that but listen, the constant intense drive to save people doesn’t make you NOT a Paladin even if you got it from a fucked up source. I could see maybe it being a Conquest Paladin with the company (or the DND equivalent of such) who swaps to Devotion after leaving.
ART I think is a Celestial. I have a vague thought about ART maybe being in some way an artificial Celestial created by the university who is currently hiding its eldritch Celestial status because 1. It doesn’t want to have to deal with the politics of the Celestial plane, which it absolutely would if it was known as a Celestial 2. It doesn’t want to be a religious figure to anyone, regardless of how it teases Iris 3. The Nine Hells will take notice of a rogue Celestial running around and like, that sounds like a lot of irritation and stress and danger to deal with
Debating Murderbot possibly multi classing so ART is its patron
It comes back from its travels and conspicuously has Celestial Warlock spells now and Mensah is like. Excuse me. How when and why did you learn that what did you DO
everyone who interacts with a post on my blog is entered into a secret lottery wherein a winner is randomly chosen for me to go thru their blog for a minute or two. thanks for playing, everyone
Yet another post where the ambiguity of whether the poster actually got censored or chose to upload the “you got censored” image makes it significantly funnier.
tendril perversion this, tentacle erotica that, in my day we just called these “kinks”
This isn’t Greta Thunberg’s fault, she couldn’t have been a better ally, but it’s so disheartening how her kidnapping and mistreatment for five days have rallied so many people, when what she went through is only a fraction of a fraction of what thousands of Palestinian men, women, girls, and boys — who have been routinely kidnapped, tortured, and raped to unimaginably evil lengths for months or even years, often to the point of death, — have endured and are still enduring as we speak.
And I know that’s the whole point of why she did what she did. She knew that, as a young high-profile White European girl, her mistreatment would result in more uproar and she intended to use that privilege to raise awareness of what is happening to Palestinians. That’s why the first thing she did after her release, when the press asked her to speak in detail about her own mistreatment, was to shift the conversation instead to how Israel continues to escalate its genocide against Palestinians.
I just wish people understood her message and gave the same energy toward helping Palestinians without waiting for a White Westerner to risk their life first.
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Find a protest near you here (UPDATED):X, X, X, X, X, X, X,
Yesterday my daughter got her first ever library card
She choose her own books, took them to the counter all by herself, asked to check them out in a clear voice, listened as the girl talked her through what was happening, she even got to stamp the date on her books herself. Then she carried her borrowed books (some of the way) home herself and we read them all at bedtime
Today, she called her gran to tell her all about her very own library card and then set up a living room library, checked out our books and held story time for all the babies (a collection of stuffed animals)
Libraries will never stop being magical
Lovely library story!
#librarycards
#public librries
My 5 year old nephew video called me a few weeks ago, urgently, to tell me he’d gotten his library card. He had barely walked in the door, hadn’t taken off his shoes, but he NEEDED to show it to me, and the books he’d taken out on his OWN library card.
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