Front and back of the Ace of Wands from a hypothetical Sailor’s Tarot deck with scrimshaw inspired designs. It was created for the @publishinggoblin’s upcoming project the Alleyway Oracles.
EDIT: A full Sailor’s Tarot deck will be available for preorder on kickstarter in March, 2025! Check the Sailor’s Tarot tag on my blog for updates!
do you think insight can be gained about an author from the stories they write?
no. authors are like squids and can only be understood through spirited but ultimately futile combat
there should be more hours between 6 and 10pm. like even just two more hours. for my assorted hobbies & activities
New Christian heresy idea: Jesus was supposed to be the Messiah, but he fucked up and got executed. Everything since then has been cope.
"con artist" is maybe the profession with the biggest gap between How Cool They Are In Media and How Cool They Are In Real Life
fictional con artist: I've gathered you all here because you each have unique skills and specialties that will be required for the Ultimate Heist: psychologically destroying the richest man in the world, and taking his mansions, his yacht, and his wife in the process.
real life con artist: plan A is to scare an old lady who barely speaks English. plan B, is to trick unemployed people into giving us money, which they famously have a lot of, in exchange for broadly-defined Career Services. plan C is we try to make NFTs a thing again
ohh you think dante's inferno is "basically fanfic"? should we tell everybody? should we throw a party? should we call cassandra clare
girlhelpthespacebaronmykeyboardismalfunctioning
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Shearing half a sheep seemed a simple way to show a season's growth of wool, but photographer Cary Wolinsky was wrong. The half-shorn sheep tended to lose their balance and topple to wool-ward. It took many tries before merino sheep number 30 “became our hero," Wolinsky said.
Today I am thinking about weaving.
I can knit and crochet, but those crafts didn't exist in Roman times. Any historically accurate Roman cloth must be woven. So when a little potholder loom jumped into my shopping basket for 50 cents, it felt like a sign I should learn.
One potholder that was 50% yarn and 50% weird gaps later, I looked up a tutorial, and realized why the damn thing was 50 cents. I needed a better, more adaptable loom. And, because I am a cheapskate and slightly loony, I decided to make one instead of buying it.
So, how does this thing work?
First, you string the warp threads up and down, around the pegs. Here, I made a zigzag shape. Then, you use a needle or shuttle to weave more yarn over and under the warp, horizontally, back and forth. This produces woven fabric.
Some looms weave from the top, some from the bottom. This Greek urn shows two weavers working from the top. The left weaver uses a rod to compact the woven fabric upward, keeping it even and sturdy. The right weaver is passing an oval-shaped shuttle through the warp threads to form another row.
Most Roman looms would have looked like this, with the finished cloth at the top. Unlike my looms, these are warp-weighted. That means you keep the warp yarns taut by hanging weights at the bottom, rather than through a bottom row of pegs.
Warp-weighted looms also have a big advantage over my little potholder loom: you can easily create multiple sheds.
A "shed" is a temporary gap between lifted strands and non-lifted strands. Instead of having to go over and under each strand individually, you raise the entire shed, then pull the shuttle or needle straight through. This saves lots of time! Then, to weave the next row, you close the shed, lift up a different set of threads to create a new shed, and send the shuttle/needle through the other direction.
On a warp-weighted loom, the sheds are opened by loops called heddles (H), which are attached to a heddle rod (G). When the rod is down, shed (1) is open (middle diagram). When you pull the rod up, shed (1) closes and shed (2) opens instead (right diagram). Most warp-weighted looms also have a pair of forks you can rest the heddle rod on, to free your hands.
Here, there are three heddle rods and sets of forks, the heddles are white, and the warp thread is red. This gives you four different sheds, and the potential to weave very complex patterns indeed. Not bad for a device invented over 6500 years ago!
I liked the multiple heddle-rod design so much, I tried incorporating it into my DIY loom, too. I've tested both yarn and paperclips as heddles:
I actually got both sheds and heddle-rods working, too. Which is pretty cool for a lap loom - every other lap loom I found only has one shed, so you have to go over-under the individual threads on alternate rows.* More time-consuming. However, the sheds here are narrow, and I'll need a smaller and smoother shuttle to pass through them smoothly. This wouldn't be an issue on a warp-weighted loom, where the warp hangs freely downward, and can move more flexibly with the heddles.
Anyway. I may get a "real" loom at some point, but I wanted to build one first, and I think it gave me more appreciation for just how resourceful ancient weavers were. They created technology, clothing, and artwork out of very basic materials, and civilization depended on these skills.
Now, I need to go finish the...whatever the hell it will be. Big thanks to Wikipedia and to the lovely Youtubers who make this craft easier to learn. I think it'll be a lot of fun.
(*Edit - found out a rotating heddle bar can make two sheds on a lap loom! Exciting!!)
Many of you may be asking- what is rap? Well, to put it simply, rap is the part of the Gorillaz song that sounds- a little different.
dysphoria! in the changing room
Shah Mosque (1611-1619), Isfahan, Iran
Built during reign of Safavid dynasty
not now kitten, daddy's about to have a mental breakdown from seeing the prices at the grocery store
Loch Shin, Scotland by Roman Popelar
