Saturday

[clevermanka]

A Guardian gifset with Cong Bo crossed my dash recently and it only then occurred to me that the seeming critique of whistleblowers is totally undermined by Zhao Yunlan's use of him to, you know, whistleblow on the Ministry. I feel kinda dense for just now figuring out the tidy way the writers managed to get a "whistleblowers aren't actually bad" message in there.

While I'm advertising my ineptness on the internet, could someone help me with a word problem? Say I want to make a queen-sized yo-yo quilt. A standard queen bedspread is 84"x92" (~7x7.5 feet). It takes 25 of my yo-yos to fill one square foot. How many total yo-yos do I need? A hair over 1,300? (52.5 x 25 = 1,312). Is this right? When I spread out the 250-some yo-yos I already have, they seem to take up... a bit of space? I'm not opposed to making that many, but I don't want to make thirteen hundred of them only to realize I could've stopped two hundred yo-yos sooner.

Had a pronunciation lesson (and lovely chat) with doctorskuld this morning. I was relieved to be told that my pronunciations for Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan aren't terrible! 🎉 Some of the other names need work, but the story I'm looking to record only has our two main guys. Other names are A Problem For Future Me.

Also, my worktable in the studio is assembled! I can start making art cards!

It's nice to have options to keep me occupied when my wrist hurts too much for computer work. I'm ready to resume work on Good Intentions soon, though, which feels really good. There's a lot of creative energy happening! It's nice.

Returning to The Questions, minoanmiss asked: The Minoans?

Here's where I admit I don't know much about them except for the minimal bits I picked up when I was a kid, in love with Greek mythology, then later in art history classes and my fleeting (and undoubtedly highly suspect) reading about goddess cultures back when I was baby-witching it up in the early 90s. What I do know, though, is that their artistic aesthetic was *chef's kiss*

I'm not always a fan of heavily stylized art (looking at you, Mannerism), but I love the look of Minoan frescoes and sculpture. That sorta-stiff two-dimensional look we also see in Egyptian art, but imo Minoan art is softer--like the people in the painting are actually in their world, not pasted in. Also the women's outfits remind me of my favorite style of historical Middle-Eastern dress.

My user icon, a pretty famous bit of a fresco, was sent to me by someone (honestly a reprehensible human with whom I have thankfully lost all contact) who said "hey I saw this and it looks just like you." He wasn't wrong (hello good nose, pale skin, and wavy black hair with heavy sideburns!). I do wish my hair was fluffy on top like hers but that's what you get with waves instead of curls I guess. I've used a cleaned-up version of her as my main avatar/icon on every social media platform for well over a decade. I like how recognizable she is, even tiny, and I've become attached to her.

Comments

[trobadora]

Cong Bo! Yeah, I really like how that went. It starts out looking like a critique of whistleblowing, moves through a critique of jumping to conclusions based on insufficient facts, and then turns right around into "actually, yay whistleblowing!" *g*

Yay for your creative energy!

[clevermanka]

turns right around into "actually, yay whistleblowing!"
Just gotta do it for the right reasons! 😆

[plingo_kat]

Your math seems right to me (52.5 sq ft * 25 yoyos / 1 sq ft) but maybe you could make enough for like... a certain amount of square feet and check if seems like the right amount?

Yay for pronunciation and creativity! <3

[clevermanka]

Making a test square, maybe 3x3, is probably a good idea--maybe assemble it in stages. I'll start varying the fabrics a bit more with that in mind, thank you!

[nnozomi]

a queen-sized yo-yo quilt
okay, I learned a new thing today! I was picturing actual yo-yo yo-yos and thinking how uncomfortable they would be to sleep under. So glad you have all these promising activities going on!
(I feel a little bad because the thing that interests me most about Cong Bo is "he and Lin Jing absolutely went to bed together at some point, didn't they," but he really does have a great arc and the show is extremely clever with it.)

[clevermanka]

Ha! I thought about including a link for yo-yos--guess I should've. Whoops! Glad you looked it up and aren't worried about my trying to sleep under 20lbs of plastic toys.

[xparrot]

Having made a bunch of motif afgans, for a large blanket you need a surprising number of motifs! Areas expand quickly, like, a blanket 7' long, if you wanted to make it one yoyo wider, you'd need 35 yoyos to do it.

I'd second plingo's suggestion, lay out what you have and measure to see if it fits the expected dimensions (250 yoyos should make a blanket a bit over 3'x3'; with 300 you should make a blanket 3'x4')

I am always unsure of my math so I tend to do checking like this constantly when working on a project. And good luck, yay quilting!

[clevermanka]

Yes, very similar design/math issues with those! Thank you for the reassurance, and I'm gonna run with plingo's suggestion. Gotta get some more variety in the fabrics so they're evenly distributed, but if I double what I've got with that in mind, I should be good for a 4x4 square.

Thank you for the luck! I've made crib quilts before, but this is ... larger. 😅

[minoanmiss]

*beams* Thank you for writing about the Minoans for me. :) I wouldn't be surprised if they artificially curled their hair for effect -- it doesn't take that much tech to make small lightweight cylinders to fasten wet hair around and let it dry.

[clevermanka]

I'm glad you liked what little I had to say about them!

And my mother told me about sleeping on empty frozen orange juice cardboard tubes in the 60s. 😄

[mekare]

Yay for creative energy! Also thanks for explaining your icon.

[clevermanka]

YAY INDEED! I'm glad you liked the little story about how I started using it. I feel like I've adopted her as my brand!

[naye]

I love how YOU your in is. And the tiny bit of chatting I did was lovely. <3

[clevermanka]

It was wonderful to see you! I'm so happy you felt comfortable dropping in.

[wrote_and_writ]

Third-ing the advice on the yo-yo’s. I “did the math” for a hexagon afghan I was making for my mom and didn’t assemble along the way. When it came time to put it together (a few weeks before I moved, naturally), the finished piece was a good 3-4 rows short (too small for a bedspread). Luckily both Mom and I are pretty loosey-goosey when it comes to crafting, and it was big enough for a lap-quilt size. Pulse, I started making the hexagons when my dad was dying in the hospital (something to keep busy in the waiting room) and I couldn’t face making more. So yeah. Definitely measure/join along the way. Although if you DO end up with 200 more yo-yo’s, you could make pillow shams or a dresser scarf. Good luck! My great grandma made coverlets like that. I think my aunts got them, though. ❤️

[clevermanka]

Knowing me, if I wound up with 200 extra yo-yos I'd probably think "welp might as well make one for someone else now!" 😅

Did your great grandma use them as appliques or just use them as a single-layer? (I'm doing the latter)

[wrote_and_writ]

She made a single layer, so if you spread it out over the bed, you’d see what was underneath in the gaps. Sometimes, for pillows, she might back the yo-yo layer on fabric, but the coverlets were just decorative. I don’t have any photos, but I drew a diagram.

[clevermanka]

Yep! That's what I'm doing, too. I'm hoping it won't be too heavy. I really need a lightweight blanket for summer. Not that I anticipate having this done for this summer, but perhaps next year.

That's my style of optimism. 😄

[wrote_and_writ]

Nice! My goal is to make a small quilt this summer (stripes, not fiddly blocks) and just have the quilt top and back with no batting. My mom made one for me, and it’s a perfect summer blanket.

[clevermanka]

YES! I had a quilt like that when I was teenager. Such a good weight for summer. I lost it my first week at college (I lived in a small hall with two large sleeping porches--20 bunk beds in each room). Nobody ever claimed to have seen it and I never saw anyone using it. Remains a mystery to this day!

Do you quilt the sides together with traditional stitching or do you use, like, yarn ties (which is what I used to do with crib quilts)?

[wrote_and_writ]

I have never made a quilt before! My mom took the one she made for me to a quilt shop and paid for them to do fancy stitching with their big machines, and I really like that look. I will probably do the same if I can, especially since the stripey blocks aren’t very interesting.

[clevermanka]

We have a shop in town that offers that service, too. If I ever did a ~real~ quilt, I'd absolutely go that route.

[wrote_and_writ]

Yeah I saw some pretty options, like waves that go along the stripes or concentric circles that start on one corner and radiate out. Lots of fun modern stuff.

[doctorskuld]

Thanks for the chat, it was lovely to connect with you virtually in-person (about as in-person as we can get, separated by distance). One of the things I love about being fandom friends is that I don't feel nervous like I'm meeting you for the first time? It's so easy just to connect with fandom friends right off the bat. I haven't spoken to a lot of people socially one-on-one over video chat, so it was the highlight of my day to connect with you yesterday.

Your pronunciation is good, particularly of the consonants in Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan, which is 95% of the battle. The fact that you're a good mimic also means that you are good at listening to me and listening to yourself, and self-correcting. Please do give me a poke again when you need more help (and a chat), you're an absolute pleasure to hang out with!

[clevermanka]

Thank you for your help and company! Both are much appreciated. And yes, meeting fandom friends face-to-face is very much a "same hat! same hat!" experience.

I'll definitely take you up on the offer to do it again. I still feel awkward even during phone calls, but I can't deny it's helping my mood to connect with other people in more than text format. WHO KNEW?

[tinny]

I feel kinda dense for just now figuring out the tidy way the writers managed to get a "whistleblowers aren't actually bad" message in there.

I had to have people tell me things like this about Guardian all the time. I always miss those. (And Guardian is amazing in its subversiveness.)

There's a lot of creative energy happening! It's nice.

Yes! \O/

My user icon

Yes, she does look like you, and I've always thought this. She is a great choice of avatar.