Hejsa!
It’s March tomorrow! The days are already feeling longer and I’m really enjoying that. The sun is shining, although it is quite cold, and I can hear the birds singing outside. At the weekend I cleared the weeds from the flower bed in front of our house and now I can actually see the tulips and other bulb flowers starting to come through. I love tulips! :-)
I wasn’t going to do the 100 Day Project this year, but then I changed my mind so now I am doing it. Because I, usually, enjoy it and it’s nice to see a project gradually taking shape. (If you’re considering doing the 100 Day Project, I have a lot of tips for that in this ebook I wrote a couple of years ago.)
The project I’m doing is stitching this quote by Toni Morrison:
This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.
Each day I’m filling a letter with stitching. So it’s less of a time management challenge (each letter one won’t take long) and more of a challenge to see how many different stitches I can use. The quote is a bit longer than 100 letters, so some days I’ll do two letters. The letters are quite small so I’ll have to get creative if I want to avoid relying too much on satin stitch or chain stitch, for example.
I have no plan/idea for how I’m going to fill these letters, but I do have a selection of about 15 thread colours that I’m going to stick with. I may use a sort of rainbow layout of the colours, then it’s one less decision I have to make each day…
Are you doing the 100 Day Project?
I have thought about this for quite a while, not sure what to think or do about it, so now I'm just going to share it with you:
I have been using Substack, the platform that I'm using to send this newsletter, for about four years. For the most part I like it. I like that it's fairly minimal, although I would like more control over the look of it, but that's a minor inconvenience. I like that it has a comment feature so it's kind of like a blog.
What I don't like is that the people behind the platform are happy to let neo N*zis also use the platform and spew their hateful ideologies from it. And not only that, the N*zis can make money from doing so on Substack. They probably can on some other platforms that I also use but the Substack owners are open about being happy to let them stay... And one of them is saying that Musk has been a great proponent for free speech. Yeah, ok. :-/
It feels pretty gross to be using the same platform as people like that. So why am I still using it? Because Substack is free for me to use (apart from Substack's cut from paid subscribers) and most other newsletter platforms aren't. So if I change platforms, I'd be losing money, and that is just not an option for me.
Why am I telling you all this? Well, I want you to know that I know about the neo N*zis on Substack and that I would GTFO if I could. Some people use Substack for lots of things besides a plain ol' newsletter but I don't. So those sort of 'social' features on Substack are not important to me. Or to most of you, I think?
So, I just wanted to be upfront about my hypocrisy (I guess?): that I'm absolutely 100% anti neo N*zi but I'm also choosing (albeit against my will) to be on the same platform as them.
If at some point this newsletter does have enough paid subscribers that it pays for itself, I'll move it off the Substack platform.
Here are couple of other links if you want to read more about Substack's N*zi problem:
On Substack’s Nazi Problem, and Ours - Substack Has a Nazi Problem (The Atlantic)
I am not telling you about all this to drum up more paid subscribers by the way!
But if you are wondering what's in it for you as a paid subscriber to Stitches & Sketches, this is it: first of all, hopefully a sense of enormous wellbeing1 from knowing that you are supporting independent creative work. :-)
You also get a weekly email about stuff that I'm thinking about, this can be something to do with embroidery, sewing, creativity, life in general, and other nonsense. You also get greater discounts on various things in my shop. And now that my hand is doing better and I will hopefully soon have new embroidery patterns ready, you will get some of those patterns at no extra cost.
What do you think about this? If you are a fellow Substack-newsletter-sender, are you happy to be sharing this platform with N*zis?
Phew, that was a lot of words about something not fun at all. Let’s lighten the mood with a wee YouTube video: Oops, I started another scrap quilt..! It’s me, I started another quilt. :-)
Thank you for reading. I hope you have a lovely weekend!
x Carina
Some Things I Am Enjoying
Book: Consumed: The need for collective change; colonialism, climate change & consumerism* by Aja Barber.
Watching: An t-Eilean. “Set in the Outer Hebrides, four siblings return to their family home after the death of their mother with their father being questioned by police.” And most of it is in Scottish Gaelic so I get to practice that. Not that I am terribly proficient and it’s difficult to follow when they are speaking at a non-learning-environment speed. :-)
Music: Solid Gold Hits by Beastie Boys.
*bookshop.org affiliate link.
Some Interesting Things on The Internet
YouTube: How Crafting Became A Form Of Public Activism And Protest.
Authoritarianism is the Bailout.
dei.watch “Your Guide to Corporate DEI Actions and Political Spending.”
A how-to guide for making you less valuable to the Meta corporation.
Pinterest Is Being Strangled by AI Slop. I’ve never been a big fan of Pinterest. I know some people love it and can spend hours on there but I just never got the appeal of it… I don’t know if Pinterest have any kind of quality control or mechanisms for flagging AI content. But to be honest, I’m not surprised. Some people don’t seem to notice (or care?!) if an image is AI generated. I think it is really worrying. Not just that people are sharing AI generated grannies in knitted Batman outfits or too good to be true reading nooks. The bigger problem is that it can be used for nefarious purposes, to spread political lies etc. Generative AI is just gross, but trying to stop it is like trying to stem a bore tide with a teaspoon… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯