don’t ever treat me as an authority on anything, I’m living in a hell house

Unbridled Rage

Brought coffee and coffee cake to class this morning and once the adults had partaken I let the kids have some of the coffee cake.

Child: Study, why doesn’t it taste like coffee?

Me: Coffee cake isn’t usually made of coffee, it is a cake adults eat with their coffee, that’s why it’s named that.

Child: Interesting…my mom claims cake is not for breakfast. And now I discover adults have been having cake that is specifically meant for breakfast this whole time… fascinating.

Today's bird is this little cutie!! So much to say

I was thinking through what else I’m looking forward to this holiday season and I realized I haven’t mentioned it on here, just on discord, but— MY MOMS BEEN MAKING ME A REALLY COOL ART THING??

I think I’ve talked about it before, but my mom has been a quilter for most of my life and in the last few years started doing these really cool fabric collages, and it was my turn to request one so I asked for a phoenix cause I’m obsessed with this one art piece I did in art therapy ages ago

Anyway, my mom has been working on it and THIS was the last update I got???

I’m so excited for it?? Can’t wait to see where it’s at by the time I get there this weekend

dude holy fucking shit???? this is. beyond insane. i also quilt, though i've never tried paper piecing - though this doesnt even look like that. this has surpassed any and every sort of traditional quilt work. i can't even imagine how this is put together. im just staring at it in absolute wonder. youve short circuited my brain with how beautiful that is, and 'beautiful' isnt a strong enough word for what this is

So, as far as I can tell, this is a technique involving cutting tiny pieces of fabric with the colors/patterns you want and pinning and using fabric glue, and then sometimes sewing over top depending on the size of the pieces (this is what I’ve gathered from listening to my mom talk about it, but I know she learned the technique from a specific artist I can’t remember the name of who sells books and classes). My mom also frequently uses tulle over areas with lots of small piecing, usually as a way to adjust color but also I think cause it’s easier to sew the tulle piece than try and quilt aaaaalll of the little bits and pieces.

Here’s some pics from the workroom when I visited in November, and some pics from in-progress pieces before they were finished, if that gives you a better idea of how it works ^^

And here’s some finished pieces!

Update! I asked my mom for the name of the artist who she learned the technique from! If you’re curious about this style, you can find more info on her website! https://susancarlson.com/

Apparently she’s very generous with free tutorials as well as having books and workshops

Update! Re:technique, it’s mostly glued at first, with extra glue as well as some free motion quilting on top over areas that don’t have tulle over them, and tulle stitched over some areas.

Also updates on the phoenix!

You can kinda see the metallic details on some of the fabrics chosen! I love them. Also a glimpse at some of the bits cut out to use in the tail!

I’ll sneak into the quilting room for more closeups of this and other pieces before I leave ^^

Updates! (First, oops I forgot to get more pics of the work room when I was home; family visits are always busier than expected)

I was given two options for background as my mom was finishing up the bird part—

I ended up picking the greener one cause I love all the gold stuff, and my mom added even more gold details for that mythical feel

So this is the current most recent form!

I'm going out of my fucking mind.

I am a little frustrated. And it's a little more frustrated than is warranted, probably.

You see, I got permission from one of my local parks department to start removing invasive Himalayan blackberry, Scotch broom, English Ivy, etc, and to start planting natives in their place. I am focusing on plants that are good for pollinators, and particularly native rubus species, since the Himalayan blackberry & Scotch broom are good for creating lots of flowers (while crowding literally everything else out) . I cleared out a spot, planted blackcap raspberry, thimbleberry, salmon berry, elderberry, spring beauty and a few others, including some native asters and golden rods. All natives, all carefully placed where they'll get the amount of light they need, all of which are going to thrive with the moisture levels and soil conditions of the site.

I go out there today and some well-intentioned individual has stuck a freaking ponderosa pine at the edge of where I've been working. Which is annoying, because ponderosas like drier, hotter conditions and more sun- which is why they're mostly on the EAST side of the cascades, not adjacent to a wetland and receiving half a day of sun on the westside. They are found in the Puget Sound region- but almost entirely on gravelly soils that are very well drained and in full sun.

If it lives, it'll get really tall and shade out the actually-native-to-specifically-this-place plants, and it's just really annoying because a) they planted it in the wrong place for the tree itself and b) they planted it in the area that I had just planted carefully chosen species that are actually very well suited to the area & local conditions.

And the ponderosa is an unhealthy shade of yellow on top of it all.

If you're going to guerrilla garden, at least do enough research to a) make sure they're native to the specific habitat you're planting them into, and b) are giving them the conditions they need to thrive. And maybe don't mess with other people's carefully considered work while you do it!

Reminds me of the year the summer camp gave me permission for a prairie/butterfly garden. Coneflowers, coreopsis, milkweed, etc. Told the caretaker to stay away from it.

The caretaker sprayed it. Killed the whole thing as it was coming up from seed. Claimed he thought I just meant insecticide, not weedkiller, and it was all full of weeds coming up...

I let him live, but I did not try it again.

Looking at Scandinavian interior design and thinking about how much cooler the world would be if the nordic countries took the South American approach to decor

Apparently white walls and light wood are good for reflecting light (true) and the intentionality and simplicity is partly a reflection of agrarian poverty. But I’m just saying. What if these guys used the extra darkness hours to go insane and paint indoor murals that they regretted in May

EXACTLY and they have perfect folklore for this! It should be a normal christmas tradition wake up at 1PM in the dark because you missed today’s 16 minutes of sun, and across from you is a pile of empty aquavit bottles and a living room wall about Fenrir’s top surgery or some shit

Ive got splendid news!

This used very much to be tradition (trademark for norway) and is called rosemaling (meaning “rose painting”, so mostly floral and not mythological, but still painted all over the interior!).

It’s very cool!

Why newer schools of interior design went away from it I don’t know, it’s too bad.

Throwback to the time I stood inside a reconstruction of Cappelenstugu, a house where every single surface was painted with rosemaling, and nearly burst into tears because it's so fucking beautiful. The pictures I can find on the museum website don't quite do it justice, but it's just. staggering. artist Olav Hanssen did this around 1800, in an enclosed space without reliable strong artificial light, and covered every single surface in gorgeous, intricate artwork (featuring Adam and Eve hiding after eating the apple, among other things).

I feel cheated. no one on Reddit told me that tumblr is a serotonin factory. Keep liking and reblogging my posts please thanks

Just don't fly too close to the sun.

Throw me to the sun and I’ll get it pregnant

he understands the website your honour

hello! i am crumb cat!

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PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:

Go for the bigger blanket.

Are you thinking of making or buying a blanket? There is no universe in which you will want a smaller blanket. Meanwhile, you have free will, and you can choose this universe to have a bigger blanket. Your potential to snuggle will unlimited by the boundaries of simple cloth.

Go for the bigger blanket.

I feel like I would have been diagnosed with OCD a lot earlier if the vast majority of screening questions (for mental illnesses in general) weren't based on the person's perception of their own behavior, in isolation. and what i mean by that is asking someone with OCD "do you wash your hands excessively?" is not a good question.

a person with OCD believes they are washing their hands the correct number of times. it's not excessive. we believe we're exhibiting best practices and helping to keep everything clean.

better questions might be, "does it seem like you wash your hands a lot more than your friends or family?" "do you get dry patches or cuts on your hands from washing your hands?" "do you find it deeply distressing, more so than how you've seen other people react, when you get something on your hands that you can't clean off right away?"

being asked "are you overly preoccupied with bugs, symmetry, and contamination?" also got "no" responses from me years ago in my life. what they didn't ask for, and didn't know, was what *exactly* I was doing in my day to day life that genuinely ate up my time and mental space to a concerning degree, but I *didn't know* that other people don't do this.

"do you spend a lot of time cleaning?" -> no, it's not a lot. it's a good amount. why?

"do you become frustrated because it seems like no one else meets your organizational and cleanliness standards - do you often 'take over' for other people because they can't do it right - do new friends seem surprised by how strict you can be about your living space?" -> oh. yeah. yeah I get it now.

if the screening questions on the mental illness test sound at all like "are you already aware you're mentally ill?" then, shocker, it's not going to work all that well!

Losing my mind at this poor girl in Argentina who found a kitten on the side of the road and adopted it only to find out it was a freaking jaguarundi. Look at that fucking thing. That's a whole ass kiddy cat

#WHAT DID SHE DO WITH IT.... please tell me she raised that thang

Better yet, she got in contact with a local wildlife reserve! She found him and his sister beside a dead animal on the side of the road, apparently quite thin, and assumed they were just abandoned kittens. The female passed shortly afterward but the male was fine- two months later she brought him to the vet and discovered "hey, thats a whole ass jungle cat." There's a good chance Tito will be back in the wild someday, even! IMHO, two kittens on the side of the road, and one didn't make it more than a couple days? they probably WERE abandoned. just dumb luck they got picked up!

LISTEN to those sweet cheeps. to me I hear that sound and immediately think wild cat, but I think its totally reasonable for a teenager to find a kitten this young and think it was a normal cat. Jaguarundi are also really small!

These are TINY little wildcats!

They have really distinct looking faces and especially ears, but

if a layman ran into one of these things where they werent expecting to see one, I think its pretty reasonable they might assume it was just a weird looking cat

Art Sled Rally at Powderhorn Park!

via Axios Twin Cities

#Minnesota #Minneapolis

having pet stick bugs is fun because every so often i will hear the distinct sound of several stick bug falling and ill go to check on them and find them all in a pile on the ground of their enclosure and i have to figure out if theyve just decided that its floor time now or if they kept mistaking each other for actual sticks again and bundled together the ceiling until gravity got the best of them.

yeah they love forming a faggot together its like their favourite thing to do

I'm amused at the ones which finally took him out