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Just dropped today!

Server at work was down for 2 hours so I rigged & animated this little medieval bat friend. I couldn't do any fun texture work this time around but

@werewolf-transgenderism

The top 5 best bits of the 2024 special: -Sayarni and Dylan playing Minecraft together in lieu of English lessons (and Sayarni's husband relocating from Bangledesh as a farm rescue expert for the struggling rural farm) -Alex's catchy echolalia and the vast disparity between there's-a-full-thing-of-fishfingers-in-the-freezer and and-all-at-once-the-trees-were-full-of-silvery-marmosets -Sonny Jim's writing 'what's a meth lab?' in his Busy Book -Lindsay eating Kipling's Country Slices while making and decorating her high-end cakes, avoiding either the 'she eats her own stock!' cliche and any performative 'yes she's plus sized but she doesn't eat junk food!': instead, Lindsay eats all the cheap-not-that-nice cake she wants while also making exceedingly good cakes herself -The ending song, in which no one knows why they're singing the catchy jingle/catchy echolalia song, they just are

friends that understand your anti-social phases and don’t take it personally are important.

In honour of Terry Pratchett Day, here is my crochet Discworld.

@terrypratchettestate

A Treasured Treasury of Beloved Characters (2024).

Wool felt, cotton lawn, strawboard, embroidery & poly cotton thread, recycled PET stuffing, armature wire, plastic eyes.

Here is a collection of characters I met when I was small, all of whom have stayed with me every day since. They are housed, stitched and squished in this felt book, akin to their arrangement in my brain.

Posters available here.

--Terry Pratchett, "A Hat Full of Sky"

Why Cabin Pressure’s John Finnemore is the funniest man on the radio

The comedian talks the return of his Radio 4 sketch show, why audio is cool again and solving the world’s hardest literary puzzle.

*sighs and rewires my neural pathways yet again*

BEAST MELON INDULGENCE

oh to be a tiny creature finding one of nature's most juicy, delicious treats, which is also several times the size of your whole body, and you have it all to yourself

We’ve bought a new house. And our new next door neighbours (two delightful gentlemen) will not stop being nice. 

- bought us a seagull proof refuse bag (yes, they are actual things)

- loaned us garden tools when we didn’t have any

- invited us around for Friday night drinks so we could meet the other people on the lane

- one of them brought me a bunch of sweetpea flowers that he’d picked from his garden

- and tomorrow he’s coming to cut our hedge for us with his electric hedge trimmer thing idk, and all I have to do is hold the ladder.

Basically, I am UNSETTLED and am now having to enter into an arms race of niceness and I am already so behind oh god.

Long story short - I just baked a lemon drizzle cake, and it looks great but I can’t even eat it because MR AND MR NICE MUST RECEIVE AN OFFERING.

ABSOLUTE CRISIS I GAVE THEM THE LEMON DRIZZLE AND THEN THEY INVITED ME IN TO HAVE A SLICE AND A COFFEE WITH THEM AND GAVE ME A TOUR OF THEIR HOUSE AND LET ME HOLD THEIR PUPPY. AND THEN THEY CAME AROUND TO HELP ME BAG UP THE HEDGE CLIPPINGS. THESE MEN ARE NICENESS PROS AND I CANNOT WIN.

HELP WE HAD AN HOUR LONG POWER CUT ON THE STREET AND IN THAT TIME THE OTHER MR NICE CAME AROUND WITH MATCHES AND CANDLES ‘JUST IN CASE YOU DIDN’T HAVE ANY’. IT WAS BARELY DARK.

BASTARDS - I’M GOING TO HAVE TO HOST A DINNER PARTY AREN’T I?

The Gay Agenda, everyone. 

this is fucking i n c r e d i b l e

This actually makes me really sad - because assuming these two gentlemen are a couple, it’s possible that they feel they have to be super nice to every new person who comes into the neighbourhood just to be accepted by them

Hi! Interesting and entirely plausible thought, but don’t panic; myself and my wife are also a gay couple, so I think the niceness was merely a joyful welcome to the village gay club

Windowbox

I turn 30 next month so here’s what I learned in my 20s:

—don’t work for startups, they’re always one ‘innovative idea’ away adding ‘sell your kidneys on the black market’ to your job description.

—keeping a collection of basic OTC medicine on you will save your life one day. I recommend Advil, Imodium, and TUMS.

—those little single-use glasses cleaning wipes are 1000% worth the money

—overly self-depreciating jokes just make people uncomfortable, wean yourself off of them

—you can buy dehydrated mini marshmallows in bulk online and they’re a godsend for hot cocoa

—people don’t care if you have fidget toys on your desk they just want to play with them

—try to go to bed BEFORE the existential ennui kicks in

Also drink water and eat a plant

This is all GREAT. I turned 40 last week, so permit me to add what I learned in my 30s:

I turn 50 this year. what I have learned in my 40s:

Just turned 60 and let me say:

cinderella marries the prince

and it’s… fine. The prince is great! They’re in love, he’s very sweet and passionate, writing her poems and songs, giving her anything she wants. The time she spends with her husband is great.

but cinderella is not royalty, her family was noble but she never spent time in those circles. She’s used to being busy, she’s used to cooking and cleaning and mending. There are hours, days, where she has nothing to do.

time passes. cinderella learns the fancy lady type of needlework. Learns to ride horses. Reads a lot.

as is normal for royalty at the time, they travel and are hosted by nobles or stay at castles owned by the king. But even that variety begins to become routine. The prince is distracted, there’s a lot of young women living and working on their route. Daughters of nobles. Younger and prettier with soft hands that have never done a day’s work.

cinderella needs something to spend her time on, and there’s a part of her thinking a couple-only trip might get her husband’s attention again, so she suggests making an old castle that’s fallen into disrepair their “project.” It was built in the time when castles were made to be defensible, so it’s quite sturdy, but it’s overgrown and secluded. The prince doesn’t know why his family stopped living there either. A hundred years ago it was their summer home.

so they go. And they work. And for a while it’s great! But when they leave for winter cinderella’s husband forgets her once again. cinderella resolves to make the best of her life and stop worrying about a man who has gotten what he wanted from her.

summer comes again and this time cinderella goes alone to the old castle (minus staff, of course, but cinderella manages to narrow it down to only repair workers and one maid). She can cook and clean and mend again, but this time it’s her own choice. She is happy.

this summer they make more progress on repairs. The workers say that most of it can be salvaged, except one tower that’s been completely overgrown with vines and briars. It will have to come down, eventually, but for now it can be safely ignored.

cinderella has more free time now. The old castle has a surprisingly untouched library, though time and moisture have damaged many of the books. Behind a collection of greek poetry cinderella finds an old diary. Very old, in fact, at least a hundred years. It’s rude to read a diary, of course, but whoever wrote this is long dead, and cinderella is bored, so…

from the description of activities the author looks to have been nobility. Maybe even a princess. She’s sensitive and sweet and smarter than she seems to realize. If circumstances had been different cinderella wishes they could have been friends…

after the summer ends cinderella returns to her husband. He’s spending a lot of time with a young musician and cinderella can’t even work up the energy to care. She does some research about the castle and the family she’s married into, finds out the name of the princess who wrote the diary.

aurora. Cursed and forgotten. She died young, they say, in a plague that also took out the castle staff and her own parents. Luckily they avoided a succession crisis, but not so lucky for the dead.

time passes. cinderella goes to the old castle again and again, even out of season. Soon enough all that remains to be done is the old tower, and the builders say they should tear it down and fill the gaps before it gets cold.

one night cinderella is restless. The princess from the diary had been fond of that tower, and cinderella is far more attached to a dead woman than she ought to be. She gets out of bed, reads by candlelight, and finally goes to walk the empty halls.

she finds herself going to the tower. Pushing past the vines that don’t seem so troublesome really. They almost part before her. The stairs are perfectly intact, the door at the top is already cracked open. As if she should have done this years ago, cinderella steps into aurora’s bedroom.

she’s as beautiful as the stories say. And sitting under her hands, crossed across her stomach as it rises and falls, is a book of greek poetry.

years later, people will tell the story of cinderella as a cautionary one. Don’t seek above your station. Don’t marry for prestige. After all, a girl who grew up as a servant once married the crown prince, and disappeared after only three years. She ran away, they say, she couldn’t handle the lifestyle.

two old women who run a bookshop together agree with the lesson. Marrying for the wrong reasons never ends well. It’s best to wait for someone you have things in common with, shared interests.

or, failing that, the more linguistic of the two says, wait a decade or ten for someone to fall in love with you from your diary.

her partner laughs and hits her with the socks she is mending.