avatar time 😎

the train and the drill

avatar: frontiers of pandora / alice: the madness returns

"men always lie" yeah, lie on their back and hold their legs up and moan

really love dynamics that are like 'it honestly doesn't matter if you view them as romantic or platonic, the point is that they love each other. the type of love is inconsequential, all that matters is that it's there'. gotta be one of my favorite genders.

it's definitely my predisposition to extreme frugality+redneck engineering, but i'm now obsessed with creating things literally without buying Anything. no supplies no tools no nothing, only the stuff you can just find outside, like Plants, Sticks, and Rocks.

I'm making textiles with nothing but foraged plant materials using no tools except sticks. Nature allows you to do this! There's no rules! I mean okay well maybe there might be some rules sometimes but they're just weak human rules! The plants themselves? They're like "Why sure! You can make yarn with nothing but fibers from the dead stem I don't need anymore, a couple sticks from that tree over there, and your own body and mind! Why not?"

Plants like to give us gifts! And nobody has the power to stop them!

Once you know the ways of the plants, the ways of our capitalist society become silly and hard to understand, sometimes even instilling you with a sense of dread.

I was looking at the textile books in the library to try to learn about plants you can make textiles from. I was shocked to discover how incurious most books are about the origin of the very matter from which textiles are made!

For one thing, there were whole shelves of books on how to weave, how to knit, and how to quilt, but barely a single complete volume on how to create yarn or thread to begin with.

Of the books that did cover how the yarn is created, many of them discussed only wool, and those books didn't concern themselves with how to get the wool off the sheep, or how to find such an organism and enter a mutualistic partnership with it in the first place...

If you know the ways of the plants, you will be almost offended when a book about how to make a thing, starting from the beginning of that thing, tells you immediately to buy something. You don't mean "one or two steps further back in the process of a thing being assembled"—you mean the BEGINNING beginning. You seek to learn how the thing is born from the living Earth, not where to buy a Product in a less assembled form.

Where do Products come from...?...According to the capitalist, consumerist way, they come from other, simpler Products of course, which ultimately are born from Industries. I found a book or two which made some attempt to give a more exhaustive list of possible textile materials, with sub-section for plants, which included: Flax, Cotton, Hemp, Jute, Ramie, and some allusion to other possibilities such as Nettle. This of course is a list of plant fibers for which a Huge Industry exists. Regarding plant fibers for which there is no huge industry, the books either said nothing or said something like "...but sadly, there is no huge industry based upon these plants (so they are not worth talking about any more)"

I found a few cryptic statements saying that the range of plants that could be used for textile purposes is theoretically limitless...but none of the books were interested at all in those theoretically limitless plants.

It's not that only those few plants are really good for textiles and the other ones are inferior, either. I have learned from my delves into the Internet, that many plants now considered totally useless to humans and not investigated for their potential applications at all...have actually been used by some human culture on Earth for thousands of years as a fundamental part of everyday life.

Native Americans for thousands of years utilized plants native to this region for textiles. These ones are among the plants I have been gathering; they are plants that naturally grow here and can be harvested sustainably, in fact in many cases they benefit from being harvested.

Apocyonum cannabinum, also known as Dogbane, is essentially a North American analog to hemp or flax; you extract the bast fiber from the stem by beating it until the woody part breaks into pieces and falls out and the outer bark flakes off. This plant is native to all U.S. states except Alaska and Hawaii and I reckon that's because of its importance as a textile plant.

I've collected big bundles of the stuff by picking over fields that have been mowed already by a brush cutter; it's so easy, because the fibers are so strong that they are not broken by the brush cutter. Instead, I find mats and bundles of fiber 1-2 feet long stretched out over the ground or trailing from the stubs of stems, often with the woody parts and outer bark already beaten out by the mowing. Simply mowing a field where dogbane grows essentially pre-processes the fiber so your work is half done for you.

It is amazing to me that a person can see how the fibers do that if you mow the plants in the fall, and not immediately think, "We should be making string or rope out of that." Early colonial texts call this plant "Indian hemp" and say it is superior to actual hemp. Likewise what few resources I can find on Native American textile plants, list dogbane as one of the main ones.

So I gather the dogbane. It is astonishingly strong, fragrant when you handle it, and beating the fibers is loads of fun, just a great way to blow off steam. The fibers range in color from almost pearly white to cream to peach to beautiful shades of orange and copper, and have a lovely sheen to them.

After I've beaten the fibers and gotten them to mostly separate I tease them out with my fingers and scrape out all the remaining little bits of bark, and pull them through a plastic comb until the soft and lustrous fibers are separated and all that's left is some nubby bits of lint.

The last picture is what it looks like after combing and cleaning. The color looks more washed-out than it is for real because of my white lamp.

These fibers weren't quite as well-processed so the end result was kind of rough and scraggly, but I experimented by making some string:

All I used to spin it was a stick with a notch in the top so I could twist with my fingers, holding the other end of the stick steady and pulling the strand back towards myself. Whenever I finished a little more I would just loop it over the bend in the top of the stick and keep going.

The other fiber I've been experimenting with is milkweed seed fluff. This one is an interesting one because it was the first material I became interested in spinning, and the first I experimented with to the point of making a yarn. It took a long time to figure it out, I have quite a bit of single-strand seed fluff yarn now, and intend to spin this into a three-ply yarn to make it strong.

I was so happy! My first yarn! Spun with nothing but a stick. It's delicate but it holds together and handles being unwound and rewound just fine, and I think making a 2 or 3 ply yarn would make it pretty workable.

So imagine my surprise when I begin reading about textile arts and the possible uses of the plants i'm working with, and learn that spinning milkweed seed fluff is impossible?

Milkweed bast fiber has been used, like the dogbane bast fiber, but according to the internet, spinning the seed fluffs into yarn is something that cannot be done, because they are too short, smooth, and fragile. Many have tried! It doesn't work!

That was news to me.

As I read more about spinning the more conventional plant fibers, though, I consider what a deep knowledge humankind has cultivated of the ways of wool and flax and cotton, and think...is my total lack of knowledge about spinning yarn, the reason I was able to spin the milkweed fluffs?

Normal people would have armed themselves with the proper tools for undertaking a new activity, but I didn't even bother to look up what I was doing, because MacGyvering cool stuff out of materials from nature you can find anywhere outside is basically half my personality at this point, and makes me feel unreasonably powerful. As a result, I made a technological approach to spinning yarn that was designed specially for the challenges of spinning milkweed seed fluffs, and only later realized that 1) this is not a normal way to spin yarn and 2) i'm not supposed to be able to spin this stuff at all.

And it's because I came at it backwards. Instead of trying to use existing technology to spin milkweed fluffs, I became determined to spin milkweed fluffs and developed my technique based on what would work to do that, without any knowledge of what I was "supposed" to be doing.

If I had been normal about it and thought "Hmm, I should buy the right tools to do this" or even thought "Hmm, I should start with fibers that are usually used to make clothes" this would not have happened.

I'm coming at everything backwards: instead of "Where can I purchase Thing I Want To Work With?" it's "What does Nature provide, and what cool stuff can I do with it?"

I didn't even set out to work with textile materials. It's just that the plants kept giving me textile materials. This hobby absolutely snuck up on me out of nowhere this was not my idea

People have had success blending milkweed fluffs with other stuff, so I'm going to try to blend it with the dogbane next! I am fully going to go all the way and make like clothes or bags or blankets out of this stuff. There is no turning back for me, the euphoria of creation and the profound wisdom of the plants have inflicted a fascination with my task.

What's the staple length of that milkweed please? I am fascinated by it.

You mean like the length of the individual fibers? They're like an inch on average, the biggest seed pods have fluffs a little longer.

Basically the reason it works, I think, is that I'm twisting the strand with my fingers, pulling back toward my body and using the other end of the stick as an anchor point/leverage. There is something about the warmth and moisture of touching the fibers so much that makes them want to bind together more.

There is a lot of twist to the yarn, but it's not a problem, in fact if you twist until it kinks up, you can just...mash the kinked part between your fingers really hard and it'll flatten out and you can keep going. The fiber is springy and pliable in a way that lets you do things like that with it.

Where a lot of people messed up was they tried to card it. All you need to do is spend some time gently pulling the fibers between your fingers to separate the individual fibers in each "tuft" that attaches to a single seed. If you're too rough with it, the fibers will just break and that's not good. But you do kinda have to play with it in your hands? I don't know if it's the oils in your hands or what, but touching it a lot makes them want to mold together to each other more.

I can really see how this material is totally different than anything else you could spin in many ways.

Top: Dogbane bast fiber

Bottom: Dogbane bast/Milkweed floss blend

On a different note I went thru mom and dads closet to find really old clothes to practice sewing and embroidery on, and I am so mad!!!!! at how much more sturdy and robust clothes from the 1990's are compared to today.

I am just staring in fascination at these clothes from a few decades ago like "Wow they are so strong and sturdy...the fabric is such high quality...." What HAPPENED?

Inner bark fibers of first-year grapevine twigs. They can be processed into incredibly fine strong soft strands with soaking, stripping off outer bark and gentle crushing by rolling a round rock over them

Thank you for this.

I have been on a personal quest (that is now in stand by due to life events) about flax. I live in a village that was famous for its flax, hemp and wool fabrics. Its name is literally related to the hemp-farming. And currently, nobody ever grows any of these plants and what I find surprising, with my very limited knowledge of botanics, is that... there are no rest of them either? Even in the first half of the 20th century some people still worked the flax in the traditional way, and now there aren't any carried-by the wind rests anywhere? no abandoned farms where it poorly grows anymore? no decorative reasoning to have them in your garden?

People don't remember, they don't even know. Linen was an estimated fabric and this village had enough to dress its inhabitants and sell the left-overs around. Same with the wool. Only the old people remember because they still worked it. Other villages, with larger textile industries, also have lost this memory.

The moment you look at things the way op mentioned, with the "how do you get this done?" mind, things change. Its value change. I only wish I had more time and more health to really make myself a linen tshirt, from scratch. To make myself a woolen blanket, from scratch. Particularly, I have the wool because my parents have sheep. I could do so many things if I dedicated every bit of time off and energy to it, but alas I can't. I do it when I can, little by little. I envy you, op. Please, keep us posted of your progress.

FLORIDA BANS GENDER MARKER CHANGES ON DRIVERS LICENSES

From Esqueer_ on Twitter:

"BREAKING: Florida has taken unilateral administrative action and banned gender marker changes on drivers licenses. Any trans person who has had theirs changed is potentially subject to suspension. Anyone attempting to change it after could be criminally prosecuted for "fraud."

If the language used in this directive is taken at face value, any trans person driving with a changed gender marker on their drivers license could be criminally charged with fraud.

This interpretation could potentially apply to anyone driving in the state, including tourists.

Any out trans person could have their license revoked or suspended at any time under this policy and unlikely to be able to be renewed with the current gender marker.

This is a massive and intrusive change erasing legal recognition and criminalizing trans people in the state."

Source:

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It should be clear by now that those of us who are currently in "legal" limbo waiting for our birth certificate ammendments are SOL.

Trans Floridians and trans folks driving through Florida, please be very, very careful. Trans Floridians about to change your gender marker - unfortunately, I suggest cancelling your DMV appointment, in the event an overzealous clerk wants to charge you with fraud. Don't even bother with the birth certificate -- it will be a waste of time and money and potentially put you on some sort of List. :/

Again, I urge all trans Americans, regardless of state of residency, to get their passports asap. Not only to flee the country in an emergency, but as a form of ID that still has your proper gender on it.

Another article.

It's important to know this is being done in advance of the bill that would make it illegal to change the gender marker on licenses. The state just... decided to ban DMV changes on the grounds it is fraud, without waiting for a bill to be passed. Same as how they just stopped amending birth certificates.

Renewals will force amended licenses to revert under penalty of fraud, so if Florida later decides to explicitly revert all licenses, just know that would done to be deliberately cruel.

Most jobs in the state require a car, and this change, couple with the criminal bathroom bill for govt owned facilities (which includes the airport), is making it incredibly difficult to simply go about day-to-day as a trans person.

Unfortunately, it appears too last to squeeze in a last minute gender marker change on your license.

At this point, only passports and name changes are still on the table wrt legal documentation for trans people in Florida. If you are considering a name change, you may want to get sooner than later, as I would not be surprised if new guidelines for name changes are soon released with harsher restrictions if "fraud" is expected.

that post going around where op is like "I love having sex with my friends, a fine and normal thing to do" and the notes are filled with people going absolutely fucking nuclear melting into goo screaming about how "hookup culture" is disgusting... genuinely what's going on there

the replies do have some "what is this liberal degeneracy" (lmao) but it seems to be predominantly other queer people making what they clearly think are very enlightened leftist arguments about how sexualizing your friends is wrong and how they, personally, would never have sex with a friend and man it's exhausting. we are never getting free of anything if you can't even get a grip on you knee jerk disgust towards other people's completely harmless sexual practices.

I've seen a lot of sentiment across both the original post and now mine that boils down to people expressing support for having sex with friends in the ground that it's superior to having sex with someone you just met and have no pre-existing connection with and nope. uh uh. if that's your personal preference rock on but "better for you" is not the same as "better objectively." fucking a friend and fucking someone you barely know are both morally neutral acts. we can't support boning your friends in the grounds that it's better than xyz other types of sex that it's okay to dunk on; you should be supporting both on the grounds that other people's bodily autonomy and sexual choices are really none of your business.

you are what i made you

nothing will make you think "i have got to get weirder" more than finally feeling comfortable enough around other people to admit to interests of yours that you think make you a freak and a weirdo only to realize with a combination of embarrassment and relief that you're like a normie to them

"sicko feedback loop" is a warrior's bond stronger and more meaningful than marriage

—Ilan Pappé, from The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

Cross Arms, not Cross Dressing. So one of the things I’m trying to do with lingerie is to show that it doesn’t have to be seen as “dressing like a woman” or “wearing women’s clothing” - it can just be a man’s body looking good in whatever fabric he chooses to wear. Just like women wearing jeans - it’s just about finding the right cut and style to suit your physique.

Caught up on Hazbin and. Man. I haven't even seen anyone react to episode 6 but im already dreading it. How many people are going to Deliberately miss the point This time.....

It hasn't been as bad as i expected! Thank fuck. Anyway watch this clip.

A BABYYYYY

small little tiny sketch portrait of So'lek!!!!!!!!

love him sm our husband