It’s WIP Wednesday! What’re you working on right now?
Any creative hobby is welcome, I’d love to see or hear a description of what you have in progress.
Edit: You're welcome to keep using this thread even if it's not wednesday, lol
View original on beehaw.org
I am also currently engrossed in cross stitching! Got a page finish on this full coverage project a few days ago, I've been on with this for...er.. about a year and a half I think?... and I'm just coming up on 25% complete 😅 You can't really make out much here because I've been stuck on beige island for the last however long, but you can see the full image on the pattern page: Autumn Stories.
As well as that I've been very slowly knitting away at the sleeve on a jumper that this is apparently the best pic I can find of. You get the general idea. This one is probably getting packed away through because we're going on a cruise at the start of August and I need to make some non-Wintery stuff asap. Pattern is Justyna Jumper.
And last but not least someone over on Mastodon sewed a cool skirt and enabled me with the shop link, so now I own not only a new skirt pattern but one for a bralette to go with it too. Planning to get both of those out of this quilt cover that I picked up from a charity shop for 50p! It's got big leaves on it and it screams "flouncing around on a cruise ship". Shop link for the easily enabled.
Love the knitting. Stick with the project! I'm currently trying to teach myself Tunisian Crochet, but I'm making the jump from traditional crochet, so the transition is pretty easy. Doing it using a book, no less. I'm finding it very fun and old-school to learn from a book instead of a YouTube video.
Ah yes Tunisian crochet looks like a lot of fun, it's on my list but just never quite got around to it yet. Good to know that already crocheting bodes well for me, though!
Are you using it to make anything in particular yet, or still in that awkward "making random squares" phase most new crafts go through?
I make a baby blanket every time one of the people in my shop has a baby, and just decided out of the blue to start. So basically one really big awkward square, all out of Tunisian Simple Stitch.
I figure I'll make one blankie out of each stitch, and by then I should be ready for a more complex project.
Sounds like a plan! Looking forward to some pics when they're done 😄
I find Tunisian crochet to be easy to learn if you know how to crochet already. I never could get my head around knitting but crochet has always been my jam. The hardest part for me was finding the right needles. I think if you can knit, you've definitely the brain power to tackle Tunisian crochet, haha!
I completely agree with you on the book part. I feel it's easier to use a book for crochet. With a video, I'm having to pause it frequently which means moving my fingers from their "spot" on the project and then having to reconfigure them to do what I just watched. My brain can't hold instructions for that long, better for me to have a book open to the spot and re-read than pause and rewind a video.
Which Tunisian crochet book are you using? I learned from a book that had Excellent instructions and so many different stitch types. I can't remember the name of it and it's probably hiding deep in my craft closet ATM.
This one right here:
https://www.amazon.com/Tunisian-Crochet-Beginners-Step-step/dp/0811770184/ref=asc_df_0811770184/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=533377859038&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=15571622234947222258&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9031342&hvtargid=pla-1432293223123&psc=1
Sorry for throwing late reply, Jerboa isn't pushing notifications for me properly for some reason.
I love these! I think I would slowly go insane stitching that much beige at once though, lmao.
Ah but you see it's ok because every 100 stitches or so there's one in a colour that might be better described as "light brown" 😂
I have 3 cross stitch projects I’m working on right now.
This first one is actually finished, but I need to get around to washing and framing it. It was a Christmas present for my father, so hopefully I can get it done soon 😅 It’s of Zion National Park which is in Utah, and is one of his favorites. The pattern is by Awesome Pattern Studio
This next one is a silly one that I started last pride month and has been sitting at about 80% done for a year, so I intend to finish this pride month - the bi pride opossum. Just need to finish the foliage. The pattern is by Studio Ansitru
Finally my monster WIP, the 2021 stitchalong from Modern Folk Embroidery. Hoping to get this one done within this year. Since it’s only 2 colors it actually works up pretty quickly. Pattern is by Modern Folk Embroidery
Those are all of my WIPs for now. I have the materials for another project on order and possibly arriving on Friday.
Those are awesome, especially the anarchist possum.
That Zion pattern is 100% exactly the sort of style I most love to stitch! It's absolutely gorgeous, great work! Kinda hesitant to click the shop link but we all know I'm gonna give in.
Love the pride pattern too, I've seen that one around and it never fails to make me smile :D
(I see what you're doing with that "another project" plan 👀)
Yes, I couldn't help myself 😂
So much fun! I love your third, mono(duo?)chromatic one. I just picked up needlepoint again after a decade. Once I'm done with my little project, I think some crossstitch is in order. I've been eyeballing the ones on longdogsampler.com
They have such great patterns, but they're such a commitment! I still have the "Pandemic" freebie they gave out during lockdown sitting there glaring at me from the "to be stitched" pile. One day, one day!
I have so many long dog samplers on my wishlist! I'll probably pick one up after I finish with the Modern Folk Embroidery project.
I love the possum one.
Is music allowed here? Or only visual arts?
I'm working on an arrangement of the Super Mario Bros theme song on the guitar. I wanted to try composing, and thought using an existing melody as a base would be easier for a first song.
The lead guitar part is coming along nicely, the rythm guitar part isn't fully formed, and I have no bass or drums yet.
Yes, music! I keep posting ukulele stuff here: if we build it, they will come!
Hell yeah! You'll have to let us hear it when you're through.
Any plans on how you'll do the bass and drums? Live as opposed to electronically.
I can borrow a bass but I don't have easy access to drums.
My band played a calypso version. So fun! We played it a ton on tour in the '90s. Always a crowd favorite.
Awesome project! Made me think of this arrangement for solo guitar I hope to play someday! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hASvFH3w1Ik
I'm working on my story-driven farming game! The gameplay involves growing a bunch of magical crops to incrementally transform each biome from a "bad" to "good" state. I've had a ton of fun developing it over the last few years! Here's the steam page (if curious): https://store.steampowered.com/app/2381040/Cirrus_Business/
This is so heckin' cute!
Thanks so much!!
That sounds and looks adorable! I really like the theme.
I'm so happy to hear that, it's exactly what I'm going for :D
Bit of a different vibe but I've been slowly working on making a game prototype in a new-to-me engine. As you can see, the UI is giving me some trouble!
What engine?
Godot (specifically Godot 4). I'd always used Unity up until now but it's just getting far too slow and frustrating to use.
It's funny. I'm a hobbyist game tinkerer and moving from Unity to Godot. I started using Unity 11 years ago, and today I just find it bloated and invasive. Godot 4 is easier and more powerful than the old Unity I fell in love with.
Yeah it honestly makes me sad, I remember Unity seeming like a world of opportunity when I first started but it's just ridiculous these days. Godot gang high five!
(also come and chat with us in [email protected], yes I know I'm a shill but how else are people gonna find communities :D)
Yeah, UI containers are a little weird in Godot. Maybe a center-container (https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/classes/class_centercontainer.html) as parent node would help?
I'll give it a go, thanks! Am still very much at the stage where I don't even know what my options are so I'm just browsing through the node list and trying things at random. This is how we learn! 😆
(p.s. if you're a fellow gamedev, come join us at [email protected])
Trying things at random with a healthy amount of 'git reset' is my go-to learning strategy. And, thanks for link! (just joined)
I'm working on a motion comic! I'm trying to convert a comic that I drew a few years ago into a video format. I've never done this before, so we'll see how it goes.
What software are you using for the animation?
Kdenlive. And Krita to work with the images.
Not a lot at the moment. I'm helping my son make a plaster diarama of the Lost Woods from Tears of the Kingdom, painting Star Wars miniatures with a friend who is getting into the Legion tabletop game, and building a Gunpla that I repainted to look like Samus' Varia Suit from Metroid Dread. Also hoping to find time to jump back into teaching myself Blender after a 3 month break and probably losing 90% of what I've learned.
Blender is such a versatile program, but also insanely complicated. I always feel like any time I use it I have to consult a bunch of Youtube tutorials.
Yeah, same
I had the same issue with Blender recently, it's amazing how quickly it all seems to fade. But I binge watched a load of Grant Abbitt videos over a couple of days and was immediately back in the swing of things. Might be worth a try if you've not already seen his stuff, he's great at explaining things clearly.
Thanks. Yeah, I am subscribed to him and enjoy his work.
Knitting a cabled turtleneck sweater called “Orosi” by Carol Feller. I’m fussing over the armsceye and short rows for the bust dart, so I’ve set it aside for a while until I get it figured out. https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/orosi
For the last month or two I've been building a set of cabinets/room dividers to hide my TV in (There's a TV lift under there!). Construction has gone well, and I got a lot of the doors built this week (hooray! I was pretty nervous about them). But now I'm starting to butt my head up against learning how to stain wood, which I have very little exposure to... so... that's been challenging. Hopefully I'll figure something out... it's turns out maple is pretty tough to stain.
I'm working on painting up some things for Oathsworn (boardgame). I'm painting a huge monster, and I just finished painting some terrain pieces that my partner 3d printed, like a ruined building and some walls overgrown with moss. Haven't had much time for painting lately so I'm happy to make some progress again. (now I just gotta figure out how to add pictures to a post!)
Edit: I think this should work?
Yes you do! It should be the 4th icon along from the "select language" thing under the text box :D
Thanks! I found the button, though it appears that it rotated my images somehow... Looked normal on my end! Oh well. Baby steps.
I don't think that's anything you did, think it's a bug, I've seen it happen to a couple other people too.
Wow, when I scroll on jerboa the images flicker, it's really bizarre...
Your work looks great! Thank you for sharing it!
I have the same issue with the flickering, really trippy!
Thank you for the compliment 😊 It's a bit of a side project with low pressure, which I really enjoy because I can just play around with effects and try some new things, without worrying how it's gonna turn out. So it's nice to hear that my little experiments are appreciated!
I'm still quilting up the scraps for my bellbottoms and I have a corset I'm still stitching some binding onto but I have to finish my crafty garden book by next month so that takes priority 🥲
Nice I keep thinking about trying to get into quilting. Then I look at all the pending projects I have....
The tedious cutting sucks up so much time. If I ever win lotto I'm buying one of those little fabric cutting quilting block machines.
I'm currently sewing a skirt. I have 2 panels hemmed and ready, but I still need to cut and hem the two side panels. I picked out this lovely woven cotton fabric, and I'm very excited to see it come together.
You must show us when it's finished. That's the LAW 👀
Yes ma'am! Its an a-line maxi skirt that I plan on using to make more cottagecore/edwardian-inspired/hippy outfits.
Oh well that sounds just about perfect in every way!
I've been practicing watercolor painting as a new hobby. I'm honestly surprised at how things are turning out as someone who really doesn't do many creative things. It's been fun. I'm mainly painting landscapes and simpler scenes at the moment.
Nice one! I dapple with landscape painting every now and then – mostly following Angry Mikko’s tutorials on YouTube – and it’s super satisfying.
A novella/novellete: https://beehaw.org/post/458403
The pitch is essentially: Breaking Bad + Magipunk Fantasy.
I am working on making a shader for a concrete barrier with moss growing on it for blender. I can do it in other software owned by Adobe, but I'd like to figure out how to do it using blender's shader nodes.
I am building a budgeting webapp akin to Ynab and LunchMoney, mostly to learn Microsoft Blazor. If I can get something functional out of it, all the better.
Very cool. I've used YNAB for the past couple years and love it. Wish you the best luck in your learning.
Thank you!
Been taking a break on painting lately so I can Finnish up my indie surf album. I’m almost done. But now I’m focusing on studying more web art history so I have a more clear vision of where I want to take my work when I’m ready.
I started sketching and drawing again. I am pleasantly surprised with what I have made. I'm also obsessed with flowers.
Edit: Leaves and I have a love-hate relationship. Let's pretend they're not there.
Those leaves look perfect for a cosmos flower. I relly like your style, it almost looks like a lino print
Thank you so much. I love line work and the style really speaks to me. Thank you for the kind words, I really doubted the leaves.
I love this! This might be a bit weird lol, but it kind of reminds me of the illustrations you'd find next to a poem in a poetry collection.
This makes me so happy to see. That's such an amazing compliment, thank you sm! x
I tried my hand at linoleum etching this week. Almost done with my first attempt and I really like it
This looks great! I've always wanted to try lino cutting.
It's no longer wednesday, but I've been working on getting my office set up. I've rented some space from a friend in the town I live in to run my IT business out of. It's getting pretty cozy.
Two things actually, im a basic bitch writer but im currently trying to create a 40k of an ork growing on a rune priest grave and thusly forming a new kind of ork and what havoc that may bring, im also a very amateur 3d "artist", currently trying to create a prompt from my wafu "a medieval riot shield"
Working on a dungeon for my Pathfinder 1e game. Hidden in the sewers underneath the city is an underground complex of insane Derro (little halfling sized purple-skinned insane humanoids) who have been capturing people for their experiments. I have some fun encounters planned, and I intend to make them really weird and alien. Derro alchemists with sentient tumors, psychic malformed derro babies held aloft in golden cages and used as living war banners, mutated and mind controlled humans from the city above used as muscle and servants, fungus monsters, suicide-bomber homonculi, etc etc. I plan for the big reveal to be that a character they met previously (an elven alchemist who runs a free clinic in the city) to be the mastermind behind the derro lair. He's been buying slaves and experimenting on them for centuries (a la Nazi experiments during ww2) to further his medical knowledge which he uses to help people (and eventually cure death but thats mostly for him). He brought the Derro from the deep underground closer to the surface so he could guide their research towards something more productive (the Derros racial insanity makes it difficult for them to make any lasting progress). Oh also the Derro use their alchemical knowledge to wipe the memories of the people they experiment on before sending them back to the surface. Who knows how many hidden mutants are running around aboveground, and if the nightmares of the seemingly insane are actually resurfacing memories...
Amazing stuff! How do you find Pathfinder mechanically from a DM perspective? I played a bit of 1e as a player yeaaaaars ago but have only DM’d in D&D 5e (and this has reminded me I need to figure out the next session).
I started out playing DnD 5e years ago (almost a decade now I think) and I was quickly given the title of Forever DM. As I got deeper and deeper into the game and my understanding grew I heard some people online talk about 3.5e and how much better it was. I had started to get a bit dissatisfied with 5e and after reading the 3.5e Core Rulebook it was all over. Character creation was more in depth, way more content for players and DMs, every aspect of the game was better. I played 3.5e for several years until I heard about Pathfinder and things got even better. Pathfinder 1e is my absolute favorite ttrpg system. Its everything I want out of an rpg, especially as a DM. In 5e, whenever you try to make new monsters or adjust stats the DMG just tells you to guesstimate. In Pathfinder, everything is supported by math and easy to understand forumulas to help ensure balance. I can increase a monsters hit dice to make them more powerful, give them class levels, add a template (of which there are many), or change their stats around. I love Pathfinder, and if you're still playing 5e I suggest you get out now. Wizards of the Coast is a terrible company that abuses their customers (see OneDnD fiasco and the MtG Pinkerton Incident) and Paizo, the creators of Pathfinder, create more content for the game in one year than WoTC makes for 5e's entire lifetime. IDK if you can PM me, but if you can please do and ill provide you with all the basic Pathfinder books as pdfs. If you like it, then go buy the actual books. Oh also Paizos books dont cost 60 dollars each.
That sounds really cool! Are you designing it all from scratch?
Ive had a lot of help lol. Kobold Press' Midgard setting had a few new Derro monsters (Fetal Savant and Dogmoles) and Pathfinder's Golarion setting has a lot of good Derro lore to work with. The most time consuming part is gonna be building all the Derro npc stats and balancing all the encounters. Pathfinder's Derros are also the closest to what their actually based on, which was a fascinating rabbit hole. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sharpe_Shaver
That was a very interesting read, thanks for sharing! I play d&d 5e myself, but I had no idea what the origin on the Duergar and all the psionic creatures dwelling in the Underdark was.. Really cool to find out, thanks!
Its one of those stories you read about and wonder why it hasnt been made into a movie. A down on his luck writer finds this schizophrenic guy who wrote this absolutely bizarre piece on his journey to an underground civilization. So the writer takes it, spruces it up, and publishes a really popular science fiction story. You could make it about the ethics of this writer using the paranoid delusions of this poor man to create award winning books. Like Rainman but for science fiction.
I made a song on beepbox? It's kinda dungeon synth sounding.
Trying to get my AHK based virtual desktop management setup at work up and running. I have added numpad controls so it feels like the desktops are in a square pattern and it is working fine. Next up is making a small gui manager that pops up where it lets me rename the desktop I am at easily and I can see all the desktops arranged in a grid with their names. GUI is done more or less, now just to add some functionality. Then probably I need to get arrow key switching to work aaaand... I guess that' pretty much all I need mostly.
I'm knitting a sweater! Taking my time with it, trying to get away from throwing myself at huge projects like I tend to do when I crochet.
This looks so tidy so far! I love cable knit sweaters.
I've been trying to get Midjourney to output vector graphics that I could trace to actual vector but it's really inconsistent no matter what prompts I try. It just keeps adding details that don't translate to vector graphics that I need to remove manually which essentially saves me no time in my workflow. There's something here though!
I feel like AI is sucking the soul out of creative.
I disagree. I never felt creatively empowered as I am now. Removing the barrier of entry to creativity is amazing and AI didn't change the ceiling just lowered the floor. I still spend a lot of time refining AI art to the final product just less time drafting and bootstrapping.
That's great... I just feel something intangible behind it that is digressive or corrupting or fucked up, somehow. I can't articulate it better than that. It's a potent tool, though. Glad you're able to use it in a positive way.
I totally get what you mean but I'm staying positive :)
If we fuck up handling such an amazing tool then I honestly don't want to be a part of this society anyway.
I started a newsletter called Unzen a little while ago. It’s about building loving relationships with yourself and others (through the lens of psychology + zen buddhism). Mostly working on new articles and a distribution plan that doesn’t feel too much like my day job.
I got into algorithmic/generative music with Pure Data. That’s also the community I’m missing the most from Reddit since I just discovered it
I'm crocheting my grandma a shawl for Christmas! It's green blue red. My first time ever using colorwork, and although it's pretty I am dreading all the ends I will need to weave in.
My own Lemmy instance, of course! :D Looking at what limits should be set to ensure uptime and keeping the registration open.