A thread for me to show off my stress-crafting. I've been doing embroidery, mostly fairly small embroidery pieces. These are all freehand, I'm not using patterns. Inspired by some photos I've seen online of landscape embroidery that are really WAY more impressive, tbh.
The first piece I did, in September. Looking at this now, the thing I'm probably happiest with is the texture of the French knots for the "vague suggestion of flowers" near the bottom.
My next piece: Mount Fuji.
I was much happier with this one.
From the beginning of October, a tree with autumn leaves. The best part of this are the falling leaves. Otherwise, I like this while also feeling like I was going for more realism than I hit.
A week later, sunset over water. I should probably get myself a pen that can draw on black fabric, because I would be able to do nice circular suns that actually came out right in my sunrise and sunset images. Also unsatisfying: the reflection lines in the water.
Northern Lights. I am still very happy with this one, even if you probably need the title to know what it's of.
Another autumn tree. This one looks like a brain, unfortunately.
Another sunrise, or maybe sunset. I like doing sunrises/sunsets because they give me an excuse to use a wide range of colors, and trying out different techniques is fun.
This is supposed to be another sunset. I love how this one came out -- in particular the textures of the different parts of the lanscape.
And my current work-in-progress. Yet another sunset. Really happy with this one. The water isn't done yet.
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I've said for years that as far as I was concerned, Collin Peterson could keep his seat forever, and if anyone wanted an illustration of why it matters whether an extremely red district has a conservative Dem or a Republican as Rep, Fishbach's got you:
(This loss was entirely inevitable, that district went OVERWHELMINGLY for Trump four years ago and eventually Peterson was going to retire or die and at that point it was going red and probably never coming back.)
I say "probably" because, well, look at Georgia, for one thing. But also, Amy Klobuchar's popularity extends well outside the metro. Minnesota is kind of a weird state and I don't pretend to be an expert on anything outside the cities themselves.
I want to talk about that bullshit "Bob and Sally" cartoon because I also have thoughts about staying friends with people while disagreeing with them politically.
I have MANY friends with whom I disagree about one or more of the following:
* municipal trash pickup
* parking minimums
* appropriate housing density
* snow plowing schedules
* school funding models
* speed limits
* bike lane design
* funding for public art
* park priorities
There are A LOT of questions in politics where reasonable people can disagree:
* How do we balance all the competing needs for money, from inspections to permits to filling potholes?
* In what ratio should we tax income, property, purchases? When do we raise $ with fees?
I forgot to add a description to the gif. It's a guy skateboarding up to a barrier, trying to jump over it to land on the skateboard again, and fucking it up.
Oh man I really should have searched for "Wile E Coyote" when I was trying to find an appropriate gif.
I am literally begging everyone in Minnesota to flip their ballot over and vote for Paul Thissen. Michelle MacDonald is a far-right Bible-prop-using drunk-driving frivolous-lawsuit-filing disaster of a candidate.
Her past shenanigans involve a non-profit that spent years mostly appearing to exist as a PR wing for a woman who kidnapped and hid her children as part of a child custody dispute while pretending they were missing.
Here's what I wrote about her in 2014, when she got banned from the Republican Booth at the State Fair: