MxRemy

I've been looking for a long time for a solution to not having a desk, or room for one. This tiny bedside table barely fits anything... I was using a regular mouse on the bed and dangling a regular keyboard half off the table, which didn't work so great as you can imagine lol. Now I've got this Ploopy Adept trackball and a FalbaTech Atreus62_FT keyboard. Switched to Colemak-dh layout just to make the transition as jarring as possible 😝

At least where I live anyway lol. That wondrous single week where we exclusively eat elm samaras before they all disappear. All the ones here are the invasive Siberian ones too so I don't even have to be careful or considerate about harvesting them! This whole big bowl came from a single small branch.

Hopefully memes are ok! The rules didn't say not to. A patron brought this into my library to get digitized and I just couldn't resist lol.

There's nothing super special about this print in particular compared to what people usually post here, just a simple Santa figurine requested by a makerspace patron. However, it's made from 100% pure PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoate), a natural polyester byproduct of common soil bacteria. Unlike PLA, it is fully home compostable. It can break down in any biome, in a very reasonable timeframe. Also unlike PLA, you can make it by feeding the bacteria stuff like old fast food fryer oil, and other waste products. The print settings are pretty similar to PLA, but it has some significant differences in material properties, like being less brittle.

There aren't a whole lot of people making 100% PHA filaments, but if you can find it, definitely give it a shot! It's our staple filament at the makerspace I work in. Hopefully this doesn't sound too much like an ad or something, I just really like this stuff and want it to catch on.

Oh also! The flexible version looks and feels really neat if you run it through a vibratory tumbler:

I'm pretty much a total novice to fighting games, but one of my BFs is super into them. We got talking about indie vs big studio games, and I did some digging for really niche ones just out of curiosity. That's how I stumbled onto Battle Craze, and now we're both super hooked on it!!

The art/animation is very quirky but don't let it put you off, it really grows on you, and the voice acting is amazing. The mechanics (according to my much more knowledgeable BF) are very advanced. It's just really fun in general.

The only thing is, the community is soooo small that everyone who isn't a beginner is some kind of super skilled veteran instead, so it can be hard to find a reasonable match. That's why I'm posting, hopefully more people will get into it 😝

If the only reason people care about NaNoWriMo is for the name and hashtag, somebody already pitched Writevember as a replacement. Honestly sounds better to me anyway.

I've heard other people say the tools/gamification/etc on the NaNoWriMo platform were really helpful though. For those people, how difficult would it be to potentially patch that stuff into the WriteFreely platform? As one of the only long-form Fediverse-native platforms still being actively developed, maybe they'd appreciate the boost in code contributions.

Or rather salt rising muffins, but still. For those unfamiliar, it's an obscure Appalachian bread. Rather than being risen by the CO2 produced from yeast or baking soda, it's risen by the hydrogen produced by Clostridium perfringens bacteria. This gives it a different texture and a funky/cheesy taste. Still fermented, so I hope it counts for the rules! Crumb shot:

Mine isn't great compared to anything you'd get from Rising Creek Bakery, who literally wrote the book on salt rising bread. As you can see, mine came out pretty dense, but that's definitely not because of the kind of bread it is. I think it's more because of the 100% whole wheat, and my own lack of skill. It took me like 6 tries to even get the starter right lol. But I thought, maybe people have never heard of this and would be interested. I used wheat berries from Castle Valley Mill, which is only a couple hours away from me, and ground them in a hand-crank mill.

The USDA's plant database shows something like 50-ish native viola species in Pennsylvania, where I live. As far as I can tell, they're all more or less edible, but what about the flavor? Are there any especially choice species that really stand out? Internet sleuthing doesn't seem to turn up much of anything. So far, I'm getting the vague sense that purple ones generally taste better than yellow or white ones, and that short species might be sweeter than tall species.

This seems like the sort of thing that somebody somewhere must have figured out by now, since violet used to be a pretty popular flavor. The classic liqueur Creme Yvette is very specifically flavored with these obscure Italian Parma violets, which implies that they must taste somehow unique. So what about the rest of them?

This is a little off the beaten track as far as usual foraging posts go, but I had a question. Has anyone tried spinning Eastern Tent Caterpillar webs into a usable thread/yarn? I'm definitely not one of those people who hates them and wants them gone; they're native here and relatively harmless, despite what naysayers would have you believe. However, they sure do make a ton of webs! I'm sure they could probably stand to part with a little here or there right? Like, after they're done with them?

Not sure if it would work, but if it is spinnable, seems like it might be a convenient local source for an ahimsa silk alternative.

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Bistitchual

c/bistitchual is a hobbyist textile community based on the popular subreddit of the same name. All needlecrafts are welcome, but it has a particular focus on:
- Utilizing multiple techniques in the same project (i.e. knitted sweater with tatted trim).
- Techniques too obscure to sustain their own dedicated community (i.e. nalbinding).

A bag made with interlaced sprang weaving, and a braided drawstring. Sprang weaving is amazing!! My brother abused the heck out of this thing for years and it held up really well. It's perfect for bags (and pants), because it's super stretchy width-wise and completely inflexible height-wise.

Hi stitchers! I have a question for you, but I'll provide some examples/context first. So, depending on your crafts of choice, hopefully you'll be familiar with some of these.

First, the structure we most commonly know from (usually accidental) twisted knitting stitches. This same structure can be created through a technique called cross-knit looping, from the larger field of looping in general. And once more, it can also be created through the method of knooking. While the work is in progress, none of these techniques look anything alike, but the resulting structure is exactly the same, as seen here:

Second, the structure we most commonly know from the simplest form of tablet weaving. Each card/tablet holding 4 threads is spun, and in that process those 4 threads are plied into 1 thicker yarn. But at the same time, a weft thread is being fed between these plies, and locking each card's yarn to the next:

Well, this exact same structure can be created in reverse through a form (darning) of ply-spit braiding! Yarns that are already plied have their plies separated by a special tool, and a weft thread is fed through, connecting one to the next:

So finally my question to you: What other examples of this phenomenon have you observed? Textile structures that are generally identical, but created in wildly different ways. I really enjoy these and I'd love to hear about ones you've encountered in your crafting adventures!