So my sister wants to start sewing more, because

a. She’s 5′ 11″ and can never find pants long enough for her legs or shirts long enough for her arms.

b. She hates synthetic fibers as much as I do and it’s difficult to find natural fiber clothes that aren’t made of cotton

c. She’s a biologist and would physically fistfight microplastics if given half a chance

So her gift from mom and dad for her birthday was a sewing machine. Not a super expensive one but a good solid serviceable one.

And recently she asked “So where do I GET wool or linen and thread that isn’t polyester” and mom was like ‘go ask your sister’

And I, of course, crashed into the group text like “GET A PEN I HAVE WEBSITES FOR U” and honestly I’m thrilled about this

“Where did u get all this”

“Bets, u know I’m a 15th degree blackbelt of buying shit on the internet”

“oh yeah tru”

Op can may we inquire about the website list

Linen; https://www.graylinelinen.com/

cotton and Silk thread; https://redrockthreads.com/

Linen thread and wool fabric; https://burnleyandtrowbridge.com/ (they’ve got wool stuffs and worsted wool fabric for $15 a yard! I just got three yards of navy worsted wool I’m making a constellation winter skirt from)

More linen thread and wool; https://wmboothdraper.com/ (just ordered wool broadcloth to make a coat)

Silk fabric (THE best place to get silk lining fabrics and raw silk fabric):https://www.dharmatrading.com/

A varying assortment of wool and silk and cotton and even some leather, use coupon code  spring2020 for 50% off your full order, worked yesterday when I bought some stuff there; https://metrotextilesnyc.com/

Wool. You want wool coating for under $20 a yard? Sure you do. It’s here. Not a huge variety of colors, most are black or brown, but hey https://www.fashionfabricsclub.com/Catalog?refinementIds=4096748&Keyword=wool&pageSize=16

I don’t know a lot about sewing, but I want to make or have my mom make some linen pants & shirts for when I’m watering, because it gets to 105 here and we have mosquitos so I need to be covered. What type of linen do I buy? Also, linen pajama shorts, yes/no?

(I’ve been wearing my renfaire pants which are a linen mix, I think. But the frikking mosquitos that hide in the tomatoes get my arms)

Medium weight is what I’d go with.

And linen pajama shorts is a HARD yes.

Renaissance Fabrics is good for all sorts of things

Mood doesn’t specialize in natural fabrics but they do have basically every fabric ever made so

For wools, I cannot recommend Woolsome enough! They’re a bit more expensive then the above links, but they have a spectacular range of colours and weights, as well as diamond pattern and herringbone weaves. They also have a range of linens, though not as extensive.

Tiedtohistory.com has sheer voile linen

The Linen Lab has a variety of weaves, weights, and colors available

Period Fabric has a variety of wools, but switch to the full website if you’re on mobile

adding, look for fabric thrift stores either near you, or on the internet. for instance, Swansons has both a store (the stash house) and a website, and adds new stuff to the web site each week. you have to be ready to jump on the thing you want, but they get some amazing stuff (any and all fibers, including linen and wool) and it's all like $5/yard. follow on IG, become a member for first dibs, etc.

also adding this podcast, threads of sustainability, because she talks to people in all aspects of fiber production, use, and reuse (including Swansons!) so you begin to get more sense of what is out there, what the challenges are, etc.

congrats on the sewing machine, you can now make anything you want to wear, and ditch fast fashion forever.

Changing people's minds on major things is actually a very long and difficult process for both parties. I didn't actually believe that pedestrian-centric city design would be better for people that drive cars until I spent almost a year living without a car and watched hours of youtube videos explaining the issue to me. Turns out that traffic actually does go down and driving does become more pleasant if you make it harder to drive a car and easier to walk. I just straight-up refused to believe that for years. Because people just talked about it like it was obvious. But it wasn't. Because I had spent my whole life in a car-centric city going around in a car and also I was an English major in college who did not study urban planning. You can't expect me to change my entire mindset around transportation all at once. I did reach a eureka moment like two weeks ago but that was after like three years of getting exposed to these ideas periodically and living without a car for 11 months.

And yeah this post is about my big dumb animal brain accepting the science behind narrow roads and the evils of certain types of zoning laws, but it's also about stuff in general. If you don't know why someone isn't changing their mind on something, it's probably because the information they're getting hasn't reached a critical mass in their monkey brain yet. Whenever you hear stories about people changing their minds on things or leaving a certain ideology the story never goes "A person on the internet did a slam dunk on me and then I changed my mind."

It's usually a long process that happens over the course of months or years. Seeds planted here and there that coalesce eventually into a new thought or ideology over the course of years or snap together or send someone down a new path after a certain event. Same with me about pedestrian-centric cities. For me the tipping point was finding this video, which isn't necessarily super special or the best and the guy who runs the channel, in my opinion, isn't the most qualified or the most sympathetic towards every city in every situation, but it was the feather that tipped the scales in my brain to "Oh, wait. Maybe everything I thought I knew about how cities work is wrong actually." But that video alone didn't change my mind. With the amount of stuff and people that have gradually and gently been giving me information over the past couple years, something else was bound to eventually change my mind.

People on Tumblr yelling about abolishing the car, if anything, slowed down me changing my mind. Every time I saw a person saying that driving cars is stupid and that cars are bad I took a step back into my old way of thinking in defense. Because I grew up only ever using a car to get around. Rhetoric like that felt like a direct attack on my family, who I know to be loving people who care about other human beings and who drive cars literally everywhere.

And you might say, posts and videos like that aren't actually an attack on people that drive or have to drive. Okay then. Why are they phrased like that? Because that makes you feel good? Because you're angry? Alright, your anger at how it's currently impossible to get around if you don't own a car and how people who don't actually want to drive are being forced to drive is reasonable. And now I understand why it exists. I'm kind of angry too now that I get how this stuff works. However, is calling the people you're trying to convince stupid to their face and immediately bombarding them with your most radical ideas that might be completely detached from their reality and how they understand the world really the most productive way to channel your anger?

What about a guy with a knee problem that lives in rural Appalachia? Do you think he is gonna be convinced by your angry rants about bike lanes? No. He lives on a mountain that he can't climb or bike up because he's disabled and has only ever known getting around in a car. What about a person who overheats easily living in a suburb in the middle of the desert? Do you think she is inspired by your green lush pictures of trolleys running through parks in The Netherlands? No. If she leaves her house for too long without ice water she could literally die and you're going on about getting rid of, in her mind, the only thing that lets her go to the grocery store and not faint.

And again, this post is about my inability to comprehend walkable cities, but it's also about everything else you might ever want to convince someone of. The way you talk about things with your in-group that knows exactly what you're talking about should not be the same way you talk about that thing with people that you're genuinely trying to convince of something.

The way you talk about things with your in-group that knows exactly what you're talking about should not be the same way you talk about that thing with people that you're genuinely trying to convince of something.

hey, i've done a few courses in science communication, which basically just teaches you how to emotionally manipulate people into believing science, and OP is spot on here!! a few extra summary points i want to highlight because people tend to overlook them but they’re so, so important when you’re discussing things like this:

so how do you change a belief? here are a couple of tips! for proof of concept, i once used this method to convince my uncle climate change was real.

(terrifyingly, this is also exactly how QAnon works - they tell you to “do your own research” and then flood search engines with fake anecdotes. if someone’s trying to reset your beliefs, always check where the resources they’re giving you come from.)

that’s literally it. be kind to people, tell them stories, and give them a book or a video to go on with. don’t get impatient, and don’t get mad if it doesn’t work. the fact that  no one on the left knows how to do this is why we’re such a fucking trainwreck 99% of the time. also case in point why cancel culture literally creates bigots.

The International Phonetic Alphabet consonants found in English, with keywords and relevant parts of the mouth highlighted and colour-coded. (Source.) 

K so not to be dramatic or anything, but there's a free vintage French pattern book available on antiquepatternlibrary so if you like to crochet/weave/make pixel art/tie epic friendship bracelets don't walk- RUN.

It has scenes from aesop's fables! Cherubs doing things! Beheadings! Greek muses! Little farm people! Intricate floral pattern! Goth stained-glass window like patterns! Fun little corner pieces! Eeeeeeeeeeeeee

https://www.antiquepatternlibrary.org/html/warm/C-TT008-180.htm

@vinceaddams ?

@knottybliss patterns!

Oooooh I gotta check this site out

I can't believe more people don't know about the antique pattern library! All those public domain, vintage handiwork books and magazines are scanned in pdf format, and FREE TO DOWNLOAD! Languages include French, Italian, German, and English. It just does need to be mentioned that most of the earlier English publications are British, so American users need to make sure to convert the instructions as necessary. Especially crochet instructions, where a British double crochet is an American single. No, I don't know why 🤣

Publications include (for those who can't see the picture) :

Battenberg Lace, Beading, BerlinWork, Bobbin lace, Bookbinding (yes, bookbinding!!!)

Calligraphy, Carpentry, Crochet, Cross Stitch, Cutwork

Drawing, Dressmaking

Embroidered Net, Embroidery

Filet, Filet Crochet, Flower Arranging

Glass

Hardanger

Irish Crochet

Knitting, Knotting

Lace (soooo many forms of lace making)

Macrame

Paper, Point Lace

Quilting

Ribbonwork

Sewing

Tatting, Tulle Embroidery

Various

Waxwork, Woodworking

Workbasket Magazine -- a publication that usually posted multiple different crafts in each issue.

It's a wonderful site, and I've loved it for nearly 20 years!

Antiquepatternlibrary.org

THE SITE

something my mum always taught us was to look for the resources we're entitled to, and use them. public land? know your access rights and responsibilities, go there and exercise them. libraries? go there and talk to librarians and read community notice boards, find out what other people are doing around you, ask questions, use the printers. public records offices? go in there, learn what they hold and what you can access, look at old maps, get your full birth certificate copied, check out the census from your neighbourhood a hundred years ago. are you entitled to social support? find out, take it, use it. does the local art college have facilities open to the public? go in, look around, check out their exhibit on ancient looms or whatever, shop in their campus art supply store. it applies online too, there is so much shit in the world that belongs to the public commons that you can access and use if you just take a minute to wonder what might exist!!!

A research tip from a friendly neighborhood librarian! 

I want to introduce you to the wonderful world of subject librarians and Libguides. 

I’m sure it’s common knowledge that scholars and writers have academic specialties. The same is true for subject librarians! Most libraries use a tool called Libguides to amass and describe resources on a given topic, course, work, person, etc. (I use them for everything. All hail Libguides.) These resources can include: print and ebooks, databases, journals, full-text collections, films/video, leading scholars, data visualizations, recommended search terms, archival collections, digital collections, reliable web resources, oral histories, and professional organizations. 

So, consider that somewhere out there in the world, there may be a librarian with a subject specialty on the topic you’re writing on, and this librarian may have made a libguide for it. 

Are you writing about vampires? 

How about poverty? 

Do you need particular details about how medicine or hygiene was practiced in early 20th century America?

You can learn about Japanese Imperial maps, the American West, controlled vocabularies, Crimes against art and art forgeries, anti-Catholicism, East European and Eurasian vernacular languages, geology, vaudeville, home improvement and repairs, big data, death and dying, and conspiracy theories.

Because you’re searching library collections, you won’t have access to all the content in the guides, and there will probably be some link rot (dead links), but you can still request resources through your own library with interlibrary loan, or even request that your library purchase the resources! Even without the possibility of full-text access, libguides can give you the words, works, people, sites, and collections to improve your research.

Search [your topic] + libguide and see what you get!

This is…amazing. I am angry that I didn’t know about this until now. Now I can ~academically~ indulge my fascination with the 1918 flu pandemic? When I have organic chem homework and a lab report due tomorrow? I both love this and hate this.

I have terrible news. 

At a quick glance, Christopher Newport University, Goodwin College, and Harford Community College all have libguides on the 1918 flu pandemic. 

LibGuides are magic.

(also let us know if you find dead links, we can fix them!)

An even better way to search for libguides?

https://community.libguides.com

Use the libguide community site and search by topic, institution, or even your friendly neighborhood librarian! (If you have a librarian or two who you trust to put you on the right path, you might be able to get that guidance even if you don’t have time to reach out directly!) If their site says “LibGuide” it’ll show up in THAT community somewhere!

Looking to see what books are being used in a particular class in a particular university? Course specific libguides usually have those!

Interested in browsing until you find something that catches your attention? Springshare (the vendor that manages LibGuides) curates lists of interesting, amusing, and innovative libguides! (Okay some of these are boring because they’re geared towards UX and data visualization for librarians, but still…)

Interested in seeing the stuff that YOUR local or institutional librarians are trying to promote? Looking for ways to make the most of the resources that are freely available to you just down the road? Libraries from Atlantic City to Saratoga Springs to South Australia are making guides for their various resources, which describe everything from how to search databases to how to read call numbers to how to access online resources like e-books and video subscriptions!

Even major institutions like the New York Public Library have guides, on everything from genealogy to the history of New York neighborhoods!

I feel like something that doesnt get talked about enough is how fast fashion is coming to hobbies as well. Sure, you can sew, knit, and crochet something better than youd buy in store, but good luck finding quality materials

Want a fabric that doesnt fray from being gently caressed? Want yarn thats not 100% plastic and splits if you touch it wrong? Good luck finding that if you dont have a genuinely good crafts store near you.

Go on any thread where people are trying to figure out where to buy fabric. 50% of it is people saying big stores are servicable, online stores work, or the like, and the other 50% are talking about how bad the quality is or how the quality of a website dropped because it was bought out

Were running into a problem where fast fashiob is so integrated into society that even the ability to make your own, comfortable and long lasting, clothes is being threatened by capitalism

Oh yes this

Also it begs the question: if your fabric, trimmings, beads, trinkets, yarns are all made in the same factories as fast fashion, can we really talk about it being "handmade" and "sustainable"?

I went to the Craft market, where people sell their own craftwork, and there were some beautiful earrings, but I could tell they bought the parts on aliexpress, such as wires, beads, pendants, then put them together into a product. Is this custom work?

No shade on anyone, just an observation and food for thought

I Have Thoughts about all of this, but these two posters summed them up.

there are fabric thrift stores that you can get your materials from that are often older materials of better quality at much lower prices. Here are some online ones off the top of my head:

yay swansons! <3<3<3

also there is fabscrap in nyc, which rescues "waste" textiles from the garment industry, they now have a second organization in philly. there is a similar organization on the west coast, i forget the name but it should be easy to look up.

Do you like vintage scientific illustrations?

Do you like not spending huge amounts of money on them?

This website has a huge collection of high quality vintage illustrations that you can download FOR FREE

They got pretty much everything!! Vintage maps, mushrooms, flowers, trees, bugs, birds, corals, fish, palm trees, feathers, tropical fruits, you name it!!

They even got some works of my dude Ernst Haeckel on there!!!!

I could go on and on but I suggest you check it out yourself. Personally, I will be covering my entire apartment with these once copyshops are open again. But even if you don’t want to do that, just browsing all these beautiful illustrations is a great way to spend your time. 

Have fun and stay save!

Neat! I’m currently printing holiday cards with the circular poinsettia cuts from this set!

Crowdsourcing question for the BBC Sherlock fandom oldies –

When TAB came out in January 2016, it was shown in select theatres with exclusive bonus behind-the-scenes content. This bonus content included Moffat giving a tour of the Victorian 221b set, and – what I’m looking for specifically – Moffat pointing out the cases that were meant to be referenced on the custom stained glass window Arwel made for the 221b entry door.

I already know which cases he named – they’re listed here (x), and multiple other sources corroborate these, so I’m not worried about that. But if it’s possible, if it exists, I would still like to have the original video of this, for Reasons. It was meant to be exclusive content so I don’t think it’s in any DVD extras – if it does exist, I imagine it would be in some bootlegged form?

This feels like a very long shot, but if anyone has any leads or memory of where to find this, I would be extremely grateful!

@garkgatiss Thanks for asking about this - I’m interested too, since I didn’t get to see the TAB screening. I did get to see the TFP screening (the regular cinema one, not the BFI preview), and would also love to see the featurette The Adventures of Mary Watson again, if anyone has that.

hmm, also signal boosting. i have the dvd, but it has been a long time since i watched it, and at the moment i don't have a way of playing it. the list of extras on the back of the case is :

mark gatiss: a study in sherlock

mark gatiss production diary

writer's interview

creating the look-8 inside looks at how this unique special was crafted

sherlockology q&a- the creators of sherlock answer questions from sherlock's #1 fan site

not sure if this helps. i *think* i dimly recall seeing it on the big screen that time, so i probably *dimly* recall that special bit from then, unless someone took phone video in the theater and posted it here. in which case, yikes, a lot of folks noped out after s4 :( So, in case this reaches any golden oldies who stuck around, boosting.

Skip Google for Research

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse.  It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms 

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable.  As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

⁂

Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free

Remember 2013 huh bc ask me questions

I was just browsing my shite (100% clean christian tiddy-less educational content for your children to scroll through at the church playgroup 😇) and thought that man, I sure know lots of interesting meta. And man, in those rare times when I do get a question, it’s an interesting fucking question and I enjoy answering it and whoever asked it (hopefully) enjoys the actual answer, so why not make another possibly fruitless attempt to make the stars meet? Remember when you used to put a question mark at the end of the sentence and that thing would pop up at the bottom of the post like DO YOU WANT TO MAKE IT A QUESTION??? and you click it and the post would become this weird Q&A shit lmao bad times. 

So, to make it less fruitless, lemme remember on top of my head the shit I can possibly answer:

Russian Holmes, any adaptation (which are over like 5): 

Actors, obvs Soviet/Russian, and can be not even SH related in the slightest:

Cinematography and theater in the USSR/Russia, in general or any film:

Deep Soviet/Russian lore, harder with the Soviet:

Misc:

I did cover or brush over a few things already there, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t go deeper on them anyway and still try To Deliver. So let’s see how this goes.

SURPRISE this particular post will always be in force for as long as this blog is alive, if you’re still itching for more undiscovered meta, feel free to ask more and check out for whatever was already answered

them: you don’t watch game of thrones?? really? how come?

me: 

@scarcity-of-cats @annajanes

It’s called Unconsenting Media 

Oh my god, this is going on my list along with doesthedogdie.com

Holy shit that’s useful

I probably won’t find myself using this but for my followers: if you can’t handle this shit, USE THIS. If you think a movie or tv show may be hard to watch, do your homework.

1 - the very reason why I don’t watch GoT

2 - This and rotten apples are some of the best sites ever

3 - Does the dog die have a TON of subcategories, such as jumpscares, strobe effects, does a kid die, does an LGBT person dies and many, many others (they actually link to unconsenting media under “someone is sexually assaulted”). Please save it to tour favorites is really freaking usefull

Useful info. But… (and I sort of doubt it) is there a database like this for car and/or motorcycle accidents? I end up having to give up on lots of movies and shows because there’s often too much for me to handle still. Don’t really like playing the guessing game of “how traumatized is this gonna make me”

Does the Dog Die has car crashes, and if someone gets hit by a car

Seriously, they have a ton of things, and if they don’t, you can reach out to them and they’ll add a category

Hey y’all I know I haven’t posted in literal ages but here’s a bunch of sites who do this way better than I do!

I have epilepsy (among other things) and use these sites. When friends haven’t seen a show/movie and can’t inform me if it’s safe, I browse these sites. Saved me from having seizures.

Celebrating 40,000 Fandoms on the AO3

Afrikaans • العربية • Bahasa Indonesia • català • dansk • Deutsch • Ελληνικά • English • español • français • 한국어 • हिंदी • hrvatski • italiano • עברית • lietuvių kalba • magyar • Malay • मराठी • Nederlands • norsk • polski • português europeu • Română • Русский • српски • suomi • svenska • Tiếng Việt • Türkçe • Українська • 中文

The AO3 is now home to works in over 40,000 fandoms! We’re celebrating with a post from the Tag Wrangling committee which is full of tips and tricks for tagging your fanworks effectively. https://otw.news/celebrating-96ce8

To celebrate 40,000 Fandoms on AO3, our Tag Wrangling Committee offers helpful tips for fanwork creators, including where to enter your tags in the correct tag categories when posting, using the Additional Tags field for minor roles or references & how your tags can be filtered to your fandom so that people can find your characters and works!

also, @weeesi has read and written about several books on queer history in victorian times, well worth checking out. The @astudyincanon book club is working our way through the canon stories, with an eye toward the queer subtext. And i try never to miss an opportunity to direct new people toward @heimishtheidealhusband 's excellent treatise on gothic lit and how it relates to sherlock, "ghost stories are gay stories"

http://heimishtheidealhusband.tumblr.com/post/132151884578/ghost-stories-are-gay-stories

i know there are a bunch of fans with academic and historic expertise.

Today I learned

Free Audiobooks and Ebooks on OVERDRIVE.

Free Graphic Novels (DC, Marvel, Image, etc), Music, TV shows, and music on HOOPLA.

Free music that you can KEEP on FREEGAL

You are PAYING for all this with your tax money - USE THEM. Most likely systems will have all 3 or 2 out of 3, so if you aren’t sure call your local library’s reference/information desk and how you can get set-up or started.

Helpful links to all of the above:

Overdrive: https://www.overdrive.com/

Hoopla: https://www.hoopladigital.com/

Freegal: https://www.freegalmusic.com/home

–

More places to find FREE EBOOKS:

Standard eBooks (basically stuff off of Project Gutenberg, but prettified)

Baen Free Library

Book Bub - Free eBooks and Free Kindle books

Bubblin Books

-

Useful if you’re an ebook power user: Calibre

many libraries also give you access to KANOPY which has free movies (mostly documentaries but last i checked Moonlight was on there!)

I think another person said this upstream, but I strongly recommend the Libby app, which is by the Overdrive people (and works via the Overdrive mechanism), but IMO is WAY easier to navigate and use than the official Overdrive app. It has great features like:

My consumption of digital library books has skyrocketed since we moved to the Bay, thanks to Libby and reduced driving time. 

nifty!