Notices by Sini Tuulia (sinituulia@eldritch.cafe)

@FiddleSix I'm genuinely glad you asked! It's most to do with the water temperature and the amount of agitation needed.

Cotton in general washes better when the water is hot and when there's a bunch of agitation, so a longer program. (On my machine the suggested program is 2h 20min at 60C, for example.) This is fine. Spin cycle it as harsh as you want to, too, as a plant fibre it soaks up a lot of liquid and dries slowly.

But when you wash synthetics, often containing elasthane and spandex etc, those do degrade very fast when the water is hot and there is a lot of agitation. Hot and long also leads to more microplastic shedding, I'm fairly sure! You may also want to use a different detergent for the two, or different amounts. They also dry faster, so less spinning required, less wear on the clothing and washing machine, and less energy expended.

Laundry tips and opinions which were requested:

Using fabric softener will make cotton feel clammy and greasy, and give it a mildewy smell. Fabric conditioning helps with staticky plastic fibres but isn't necessary for natural fibres! Just wash without. Never put it on towels, it stops their absorption powers. You can use a little bit of vinegar instead of fabric softener, it will have a mild smell when wet, dries odourless.

Line drying is less wear on clothes than dryer but live your life if you have no place to dry them!

Bedding needs to be washed super hot occasionally! Towels, too!

If your shirts smell terrible because you've been sweating into them, soak them in the sink with a cup of vinegar in room temperature water, rinse, wash normally. This kills a lot of mildew and helps break apart organic residue.

Liquid laundry detergent is silly! Just get detergent in powder form, you're spared the plastic bottles and no heavy liquids are ferried around.
Soap nuts are great if you're allergic to everything but soap nuts. They're not even nuts and are compostable!

A lot of the washing instructions are LIES. You can literally boil 100% cotton and it's fine! You'd be amazed how much dry clean only is not! Polyester and cotton will be just dandy in 60 Celsius - the manufacturers play it safe because some dyes fade in hotter temps. Cheaply made clothes may shrink, but if it's stinky, take the risk!

Here’s goth icon Bianca The Closet Historian telling you about pattern drafting for sewing but also just life: “Dare to be terrible."

“The difference in almost any success is perseverance. You have to be willing to be terrible. And then you have to be willing to keep going.”
About 8 minutes long!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHAyi79Dd28

#PatternDrafting #Sewing

Due to the postal fuck-up I still don't have my thread to finish the waist, and thus am reduced to making a little needle case just because. Am attempting some roses. I don't have any green thread for the leaves of course, but that's a problem for Sini of Tomorrow!

#Embroidery

All I want in life is to put some beads on some embroidery, but this should also occupy me for a while in general.

I don't think it's resembling a rose very much, but it's got colours and shapes and that is pleasing to me. :blob_cat_flower:

I am most certainly still learning things actively as I go, we'll see where this one ends up. I figure the threads will also squish and spread out quite a bit as I inevitably press the heck out of it once I sew it onto the actual fabric where the needles go, this is just the cover!

Continued with the keeping hands busy project, and finished the big flower apart from the beads and whatever I may still want to still put on there... Half finished the little one apart from the edge finish. The little flower looks a bit too different, but I'm telling myself not to unpick and redo it, since it's just a needle case. 😄 Today I might attempt some leaves and vines.

#Embroidery

It feels like it's been eleven million years, but I've finally gotten to the actual beading, and shall continue to add random shit until it feels right! Need to put on the narrow binding on at some point also. Wish I had pale gold beads but alas, those are also lost in transit!

#Embroidery #Sewing

Dear tabletop role playing comrades and strangers of the Fediverse, help my friend find a new game to run! This is what they want:
"Looking for recommendations for TTRPGs where the player's character is slowly revealed/built as the game goes on. Ideally a system that works for a solo player and a DM, is heavily narrative/story focused, and works with a sci-fi setting."

I humbly request your boost and your suggestions should you be aware of nice, probably indie games, for them to try!

#TTRPG #TTRPGCommunity #IndieRPG

"Paint me like one of your French men..."

Oh middlest sir! You're perfect, don't mind me giggling at you!

#Cats

A long but very very good talk about fibre & textile manufacturing, the history of both, and the reality of it now in the US. Workers' rights, the whole wool production chain, the use of immigrant labour, indie yarn, and quite importantly lessons from the past, empathy and sympathy are touched upon, with eloquence and patience.
Bonus points for the small but visible rainbow pin! 🌈

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qALHS-QJ28

#FiberArts #FibreArts #History

You know how in fiction and myth you can curse someone with the knowledge of how they will die, just not the when?

Well. It's a bit wild and interesting to me that for me, I got given that information at 25, with my diagnosis. Medication but no cure, and if everything goes perfectly, I stick to the routine, and the medication works and keeps on working, and nothing else kills me first... It's going to kill me a lot lot later as opposed to a handful to a dozen years, nobody knows for sure. But it is going to kill me.

#ChronicIllness

Finnish lesson of the day: Duct tape is colloquially known as jeesusteippi. Because Jesus saves you, duct tape saves you, makes perfect sense. All small not capitalised because it's a general item and not a name, and also casually blasphemous for fun, which is extremely on brand for Finnish!

It's also shortened to the diminutives jesse and jesari. Used in a sentence:
"Laita vähän jesaria, kyllä se siitä." Apply some duct tape, it'll be fine.
"Jessellähän minä." Well, I did in fact repair it with some duct tape, actually.

#Finnish #Language #SuomenKieli

No but: A context appropriate platonic escort service. You could hire a historian to keep you company at a museum, take an artist for a nature walk. Or a biologist on a nature walk. Somebody extremely into tomatoes with you for a garden centre run. A carpenter to come drool at tools with you in a museum and/or hardware store? Just somebody to enrich and liven up an experience you'd not enjoy quite so much alone. 🤔

I have photographed the things I made! Join me for a brief thread!
Remember the #CinnamonLinenJacket and the #CinnamonLinenSkirt? Here they are, also with new slimmer petticoat and Second Largest Hat, which I never previously took any good photos of.

#HistoryBounding #HistoricalFashion #Edwardian #Sewing #Tailoring

Fascists Have No Drip, a video about fashion under Fascism (Italy brand) - by a drag artist in a stunning look, which dragged me in... But I stayed for the sources! 19 minutes.

Quotes: "The Italian Fascist Party didn't have to invent misogyny. The anti-feminist backlash in Italy was well underway before the fascists came to power."

"But as the previous quote suggests, Italian Fascism was a cult of male sexuality, one that wanted to ignore women as much as it wanted to subjugate them. When the Fascist Party did give attention to women, it was often to parade them as objects of propaganda."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAfiCV-7QEw

#Fascism #Fashion #History

Checking whether I want to use ton or tonne because I have the vaguest memory that it's different in UK and US English, can't remember which is which, and have learned yet another ridiculous thing I didn't know:
"Ton is an American unit of 2,000 pounds, while tonne is a metric unit of 1,000 kilograms."

😐 What the fuck is wrong with you people? Two thousand?! In what world is that a reasonable amount?? It's not even a thousand pounds, which is already a fucking mess of an unit? Fuck

Does the visiting sir have any idea that he's quite photogenic, and that I spent some ten minutes vacuuming cat hair off that quilt so I could take nice pictures of him the other day? Probably not.

#VisitingSir #Cats

Also another double orange. The other cats do hang out in the same room as visiting sir, too, but Karvinen has the least concept of personal space and thus is easiest to fit into frame with Rudolf. 😆