Pinned
Hello! Welcome to my side blog. Home to “whatever” doesn’t fit, or simply would clutter up, my main blog. It only took about ten years for me to get around to making it.
I don’t have any idea what will end up here, but it won’t be my photos or sculpting. If you were looking for that you better head back to @brokenmusicboxwolfe !
I feel confident enough to post these now. A collection of all the existing posters after some edits from the other post that got 13k notes! These are full size/quality. Go nuts.
You may use them for wallpapers, tabletop campaigns, whatever. Consider tipping me or buying a print or sticker on ko-fi here! If you do use them, let me know what for, or send pictures!
Just a short video of my card weaving in progress
What kind of sorcery is this?! I can never turn more than 10 cards in sequence because they just refuse to cooperate and you have like, what, 35? 40?! HOW?!?!
40 in the tree strap above! The most I ever tried was 44 for this ramshorn strap below - that was tough, but also ok because the groups turned separately? I think my hands would murder me if I tried to go any higher on my backstrap setup though ;) I think the trick is maintaining appropriate tension!
Yeah, that one looks real nice. What did you use it for?
@diamondot speaking for myself, i just decided to learn it one day a few years ago (i had a viking phase ok) and simply started with it. It's surprisingly easy since all the info is available on the net. Honestly, i don't remember where i started since it has been so long ago and now i just browse pinterest for patterns alone. Google tablet weaving or card weaving (same thing, different names) patterns and some basic explanations and yt vids for how to turn and weave the stuff. Things like
S and Z threading are there for a reason, so mind your card orientation. Start with some easy pattern like simple wave or diamonds above, 6 - 10 cards are good for your first project. Don't lose hope in initial stage. Streching and threading all that yarn can take anything between 20 minutes and 3 hours depending on how big is the pattern and how skilled you are. Since you need some lenghts to secure ends and to turn cards, use about 40 cm more than wished lenght of your final product. Secure lose ends after threading through cards so you won't end with a bundled mess. Streching/knotting them to something is one way. Taping each card threads together or using weights (check pictures below) is another way (good only for shorter stuff though). Cards could be made out of anything as long as they have smooth edges and rounded corners. Cardboard, thicker plastic sheet, literal cards cut into squares with holes punched through them, whatever. These are mine 2 decks, minus cards i am using atm.
When you start weaving and pattern looks like a total mess, try turning cards in opposite directions. It usualy solves the problem (all that forward/backward can be a bit tricky and mirroring motions/patterns/card orientation can be confusing at first seemingly messing all your work even though you are doing everything right technicaly, just in opposite order/direction). Don't lose your hope. I still manage to mess up like first 5cm of every other work i start. It's not an issue as that start usualy gets cut off anyway (the tension is not right for at least first 4 rows, aka 1 full card rotation, until all threads go up and down at least once no matter what you do. Don't sweat it). You don't need any fancy startup either. Historicaly, people used to weave like this and this and this:
I just strech the thing between 2 chairs myself. Door knobs work as well and so does staircase railing. Wherever you have some space. Long hair clips are your friend, especialy when you are done with weaving for the day and you don't want stuff to tangle
And that's about it. Have fun 😊
Some of my favorite tablet weaving resources are :
This website is where I learned, twenty years ago while u was intending on Sturtevant Wi.
These books are both great, Collingwood is more comprehensive, but harder to just pick up and weave from.
I love when people post things like this, then say, “ah ha ha, it’s not that complicated! 🤗”
It is complicated. You’re just really good at it!
Hi. I may be late to reply but i'm in a weaving mood so here we are.
The thing is that the technique looks complicated due to the fact that there is 100 something and that number alone is scary. But. Actually several buts.
But number 1 - the technique is OLD. Meaning - while being somewhat tedious just like any other textile craft, it has been used and learned for a long long time and there's plenty of resources (check out links above or any youtube video explaining the process) of varying difficulty from complicated af to easy peasy lemon squeezy with closed eyes
But number 2 - there is only one core principle/step you need to understand and that is when some threads go from up to down or from down to up (aka when they cross), you need another thread going in between so they won't simply snap back again. That's it. That's the basic principle behind every weaving ever. What card weaving does compared to standard weave is that instead of a single thread going up and down in the single row, you get 2 or 3 or 4 or 6 or whatever number of threads your pattern calls for in the same row
But number 3 - the number of rows = number of cards. Simple as that. Cards turn around to make a cord like when you are twisting 2 or 4 or whatever numbers of threads to make a rope. If some of those threads have different colours, you get a repeating pattern.
But number 4 - card orientation or S/Z orientation or whatever other fancy name for the twisting direction simply means that if you turn all your card in the same way at the same time, which one of them will make the twisted rope in this / angle and which one will do that in this \ angle. That's it. That's the whole mystery between S/Z threading.
But number 5 - you can start with as little as 4 cards to make a custom set of shoe laces or a key strap or whatever and call yourself a weaver. Because you did that. And it was nice. And it was easy. You just turn and thread and turn and thread and then you keep repeating this while watching a movie or something. There's no need for the math finals level of concentration here.
But number 5 - no one, literally NO ONE starts with a pattern like this
No. Everybody starts with something like this
Keep it simple, keep it easy, make 10cm and be done if you want to. It's perfectly fine.
But number 6 - you don't need any fancy items for starting. No hooks, no needles, no loom, no anything. If you have 2 balls of yarn in different color or some remains of your old cross stitch project or whatever and some card-like stuff you won't be sad for making holes in it, you are all set. Back side of the sketch pad is good. Poker cards cut to squares are good. A sturdy enough sheet of plastic is also good. You remember that old pexeso pairs stack you didn't touch since you were 9? Guess what!
My point is that if this looks like something you may be interested in, then you can absolutely try doing it for literally zero cost other than your time.
This reminds me that I have my Thor’s Hammer tablet weaving project still sitting in the closet untouched for the last few (almost 3?) years... I need to get back to that eventually.
@cryptid-extremist found it for ya! Go wild!
@hauntedbyyarn you've talked about this for ages!
I need to show you guys my mum's card weaving.... She writes with it. She does incredibly incritate patterns. It's stunning and beautiful and I am in awe
A small selection of my mum's work! She got excited and says she has more to show you guys, and some of her best stuff has already been sold! But stay tuned for more. The blue/pink/black band is my favourite: loads of different knot-like patterns going all the way down!
I want to try this!
This gif is outrageous
■ The so-called “blood explosion” which punctuates the conclusion of Akira Kurosawa’s 1962 movie Sanjuro remains one of the most memorable and influential special effects in film history. Production designer Yoshiro Muraki would later recall this scene was filmed in a single take. No such effect had ever been attempted before, as movies of the time rarely showed violence with graphic detail. Filled with uncertainty, Muraki worried the blood spray he’d rigged up wouldn’t impress Kurosawa, so he added an extra 30 pounds of pressure to the fluid pump. At the moment the pump was activated, the additional pressure caused the compressor hose attached to actor Tatsuya Nakadai to blow a coupling which created a slight, unintentional delay before the fake blood began to spray, and caused a much larger gush of fluid than planned. It sprayed so powerfully Nakadai claimed it almost lifted him off the ground. His heart sinking, as he believed the delay and over-pressure had ruined the effect, Muraki nervously glanced at director Akira Kurosawa, but Kurosawa only nodded in approval.
“oh god i fucked this up”
“yoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOO”
And to think this is so iconic that “two dudes clash, there’s a beat, then one dies incredibly violently” is just a must-have for action in anime
Its crazy to think that this iconic visual that has been so ubiquitous in pop culture for so long despite that the source material barely being known by people all came from actors staying in character thru an FX malfunction.
Sanjuro and its predecessor, Yojimbo, are both available FOR FREE on The Internet Archive! They’re KICK ASS movies and you should watch them!! You have no reason not to!!!
If you like anime, if you like Westerns, if you like samurai or cowboy tropes at all, you should really really watch some of Akira Kurosawa’s films! Rashomon is also very good and has had a really profound impact on modern film and storytelling!!
Animals that blend into their environment.
UGH. I have already had very full days, desperately trying to keep everything repaired and maintained with my extremely limited resources, while not neglecting all the basic chores and, of course, the animals.
So what do I do? Add more!
Now I have to carve out time each day to work on the job hunt, figure out the various things that need doing to meet all the requirements since Mom died, root out any way to connect with people that might have a any interests at all in common with me, try to work out some way to make my voice heard in the face of the crashing of my country, find a way I might possibly be able to make at least a little money off my photos or sculpting (fuck off scammers! That’s not an invitation!), and write a book….
Yeah, write a book. Stupid, isn’t it?
I have wanted to write most my life, but always life has gotten in the way. I need uninterrupted time alone to think when I write, and I have never had that. Always demands, responsibilities, emergencies, things I “should” be working on. Heck, even when my father was trying so hard to be encouraging he expected me to write during ten minute breaks from fiberglassing or doing office work for him…while he would read over my shoulder! But one day, I told myself, one day I will have time alone….
Well, I have been alone for a while now, but that actually made it worse! Now I had EVERYTHING to do. There were no breaks anymore. Knowing that anything I didn’t do wouldn’t be taken care of by anyone else, meant I would feel overwhelmed with guilt every time I so much as sat down a moment to rest my feet and drink some coffee. I should be DOING something, and writing doesn’t count.
When I say “writing doesn’t count”, I do not mean it isn’t work! I mean that for me it’s like a hobby or an indulgence. There is no benefit to bank account or survival. Basically I don’t need to do it.
It’s no different in that respect from my photos or sculpting, but the key reason writing gets neglected as something to do for fun actually IS because it takes work. Two minutes pause in something I’m already doing and I have six photos, because photos take no time at all. Sculpting while I watch or listen to something, or even during the pauses while waiting for photos to upload to Tumblr, works because my brain doesn’t have to focus. Writing takes time and focus, two things I never have enough of.
So why now? Simple. I realize not only is life short and rapidly running out of it, but I am also becoming acutely aware that the things I’ll need to do to postpone my doom will devour the little time and focus I do have. When I finally manage to get a job I’ll have to give up anything that isn’t life support level urgent. Writing won’t even be the half of it!
It’s now or never.
Oh please don’t let it be “never”!
Too much to do, too little me. And now I have to also write to a schedule of half an hour a day with a looming, but unspecified, deadline that will take even that half hour away from me….
Okay, so even if I get this done the writing will inevitably be an inept disaster. Still, I will be able to lie on my death bed saying “I once wrote a whole book….please, never read it!” That’s better than never writing one.
I guess.
Seven Samurai (1954)
(glancing around in mild bemusement)
Seriously, people. Where do you think we even got the word "sponsor" from?
In its original usage it meant a guarantor: someone who promised you that you were going to get something out of what they were doing.
Throwing a ludus / game or a series of games was expensive. Local (or national) Roman politicians put down good money to pay for the rental of the event space (you think the Colosseum was cheap to rent? Think again. The Imperials who built it liked to make their money back...), the wages (and overtime!) of the hundreds of venue support staff, the fees required by the fighting talent and the schools that owned them (or their own management, if they were free), and so forth.
Whoever was footing the bill for a given Game (or sequence of Games) was formally known by the title sponsor, and got to parade around the arena at the beginning of the game to remind people in the stands just who was fulfilling their civic duty by throwing this entertainment for them. The message was, "I'm doing something for you. Next election, don't forget to do something for me!"
And it was always political. Never lose sight of that. (Especially when a local political party promises to build you a nice new stadium if you elect them. The more some things change, the more they stay the same...)
(cc: @petermorwood) 😏
The individual gladiators and charioteers also had sponsorship, in the modern product-placement sense.
Ads were written on blank gable-ends often painted white for the purpose...
...and while the ones in that pic are political slogans, this one is an ad for the wines available at that shop...
...including prices ranging from two to four Asses.
The As was a Roman coin, so you lot at the back can stop giggling.
Other ads were outright endorsements (with appropriate payment, of course) and included stuff like "Felix the Thracian, five-time winner at the Saturnalia Games, says 'Tiburnian Olive Oil Keeps My Sword-Hand Swift!' "
Or "Diocles, Top Driver for the Green Team, uses Scaurus-brand garum at every meal!"
Ridley Scott was told about this during the making of "Gladiator", but ignored it as "unrealistic" - then went on to double the size of the Colosseum "for artistic reasons".
Considering how he's treated historical accuracy in later films, my response to his dismissal of graffiti and ads is this:
I made up Tiburnian olive oil, so it's (probably) fictional, but Scaurus-brand garum was real, and famous enough to appear by name in Pompeii mosaics.
Evidently the name carried weight, just like "Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce".
There are other Worcester sauces, but L & P is THE Worcester sauce - or so they would like you to think - and used to be advertised as "not genuine without this signature".
Whether this was suggesting that all non- L & P Worcester sauces were in some way fake, or because there was a rash of Worcester-style sauces packaged to resemble L & P as closely as possible, I don't know,
However, as regards overly similar packaging (deceptive rather than outright deceitful, relying on accident or inattention more than fakery) take a look at this row of Ancient to Modern L & P...
...compared to another sauce called Henderson's Relish, and note that one label, AFAIK for US sale, refers to it as Worcestershire Sauce.
It's from a different county - Yorkshire not Worcestershire - and is made to a recipe so different it can be marketed as vegan, which real Worcester isn't because of anchovies, so it most emphatically isn't any kind of Worcester sauce at all.
And yet there's that bottle shape, also the label design and colour, so I wonder if, way back when, it was someone's deliberate choice.
The other sauce from Yorkshire is "Yorkshire Relish", made both in the usual thin style and also a thick version like HP Sauce (aka Brown Sauce or Steak Sauce).
Although the label isn't orange, both versions have easy-identification bottle shapes (long-neck cylindrical for thin, short-neck square for thick) characteristic for their contents.
It was apparently like that 2000 years ago, because archaeological finds...
...suggest that the one-handled, high-necked "footed" amphora shown on those mosaics was THE standard shape for garum-jars, thus an instantly recognisable form of product packaging.
Zoom in on each photo, and you'll see writing on the jars. Whether either or both read "Scauri" I can't tell, but if they're from Pompeii I'd make a small wager (maybe even, ahem, bet my As) that Aulus Umbricis Scaurus did indeed put his name - "not genuine without this signature" - on any jars which left his factory.
This one is ours. The shape isn't exact (too short) but pretty familiar...
...but though @dduane and I have racked our brains for what was originally in it (not garum!) we've come up blank. Currently it's full of lemon-infused olive oil, but if we ever buy some modern garum, we'll have somewhere obvious to put it. :->
*****
That short-lived but excellent series "Rome" got it just right. This ad for free wine and cakes is both commercial and political, so covers all bases - and ends with a hint that he gets to read that bloody Guild of Millers bloody slogan Every Bloody Time... :->
It cannot be overstated how much insight A. Umbricius Scaurus' obsession with branding has given us into Roman advertising.
In Pompeii, where he lived and had his factory, there are literally stones and small mosaics IN THE ROAD with his ads on them. The level of dedication the Condiment King of Pompeii put into his advertising, putting it into permanent and quasi-permanent forms, speaks to how much money and effort in Roman society went into advertising. Makes me wonder just how many wooden signs might have been about that were lost in the eruption.
