lordcephalopod
Squids and Things
I'm
cranky, trans, and too old for this nonsense.
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As with the horse poll, please regard these options as sliders. The extent to which each one deviates from 1/6th of the total will determine the amount that canine aspect deviates from the "average."
I will draw the dog we make. :)
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The default length of pasta is designed to fit on a supermarket shelf, not to be the best length for cooking/eating.
Feel free to break it to any length you want (don't let the Italians know I said this)
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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!!)
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much in like the way a single dorito could kill a medieval peasant, a single episode of torchwood (2006) could kill a tiktok teen
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"objectively physically attractive but in possession of negative rizz" is one of my favorite character concepts. i think it's so great when there's an absurdly hot person who's just a complete fucking loser. the mood is unsalvageable the moment they open their mouth kind of deal. you get no bitches because you're so sucks.
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I was bored so I took a mental age test, twice
Taking an avg., I’m 11
Accurate
#many questions date this quiz#the one that made me laugh is 'the current prime minister/president looks...'#with the options 'too young' 'ok' and 'old'#ah yes#young spring chicken joe biden lmao#with that in mind i altered some answers accordingly and got fuking 47 lmaooo#0 good answers for the twitter question omfg
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THEY MAKE PRINTABLE TEMPORARY TATTOOS
THIS IS HUGE FOR KINK REASONS
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When I was younger and researching the autism diagnosis criteria and symptoms, I thought “oh I couldn’t POSSIBLY be autistic.” Because when I read “takes everything literally” I thought it literally meant EVERYTHING and I was like “I don’t take EVERYTHING literally, just most things!” And I just realized the other day that it didn’t actually mean EVERYTHING and that was an overstatement.
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they used to make smackable technology. you used to be able to hit your tv when it didn't work good.
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