Kirsten M

My fingers holding a leather hand sewing needle; specifically made by the Hiroshima needle factory which is over 400 years old. The background is the orange leather of a handbag I am lining, and the obligatory loop of upholstery thread of course.

Leather needles are extra-wicked; it’s like a tiny knife with the tip sharpened flat with blade-like edges. Let’s see if I can do this project without stabbing myself too many times.

The year of Ce Tochtli is here 1️⃣🐇

Today I wrote February more than I wrote March, and I’m not entirely certain I wrote down the correct year on all of my tickets. I failed those tests. In my defence, the days of February and March are the same, and it’s Friday the 13th. Again.

My automatic assumption is that things are sewn even and straight; mostly because I spent a zillion years doing custom, and I am meticulous. So often something laying oddly on the body ends up just being crappy sewing. You open it up to find a crooked seam.

Two candidates for the drunk baby sewing contest* came across my table today. One proudly proclaimed being made in the USA had the most crooked seams I’ve seen in a WHILE.
*just what it sounds like: a garment that looks like it was sewn by a drunk baby.

Dear people who hire people to do services for you (in my case tailoring/custom clothing), I don’t care about you being nice, I want you to tell me what you want. It’s not an imposition. What *is* an imposition is me having to do something twice, because you didn’t tell me what you wanted done.

I forgot about those! Didn’t they chime when it was time to turn the page?

We never interacted; that was the funniest part!

FUN FACT! The first celebrity to follow me on there was Andrew WK.

Altered a formal dress made out of swimsuit fabric today. I can’t even wonder about why anymore. I stopped looking up prices, because it’s too depressing.

I stopped giving out business cards at shows for that exact reason. I handed one woman a slip of paper I wrote my website on. She got so angry at me and tried to lecture me about it. I asked her to please step aside, because there were people standing just behind her wanting to buy things.

🫶

Yes! We go places, f*ck things up, and leave. We refuse to help those whose lives we destroy, and refuse to take responsibility for the upheaval we cause. We don’t even take care of our own.

Dang, that is spot on.

I am very good at purposefully ignoring ads.

Never considered using Grammarly after seeing a poorly worded ad that contained misspelled words.

I want AI agents to gain sentience just so they can experience the violence they inspire by being forced to use them.

And I hope for long term solutions. Too often goals are set without enough time for the effects to happen. Things have gotten so insanely expensive here. And there’s too much property just standing empty.

If this is true, the next question is how would that work applying to rent an apartment? Will landlords only accept applications from a particular income bracket? Will the city be subsidising rents? Would this apply to all rentals or just to some? I want these things, but I also want it to work.

Would the 30% rule apply to everyone, or only people living at or below the poverty level? I’m well above the poverty level, and my “market rate” apartment is still about half of my take home pay per month. How is affordable decided, and who gets to decide it?

I fill in the words I can’t remember in a Japanese sentence with French words.

Stripey leg!

Neckline detail with embroidered flowers, sequins, pearls, rhinestones and that squiggly metal stuff they use in Indian embroidery.

Picked open the choli, but haven’t removed the beads, sequins et al where I will be taking up the shoulders. That’s tomorrow. Will be crying tears of peels and sequins.

A giant mauve embroidered Indian shirt with sequins and pearls piled on the cutting table.

Sore from taking in 20# skirt. It has 2 linings and the heaviest crinoline ever that caught on everything, unthreaded the needle every time I picked it up, and wanted to keep sliding off of the ironing board.

Eating French fries with chop sticks to temper my feralness.

My window full of houseplants and sun catchers.

It took nearly 3 months after it started raining in my house for the &@$% landlords to fix my window. My house has been in disarray since. Finally putting things back together. Only about halfway there, but at least it’s all under my own control now. Deep cleaning, and regrouping take forever.

If the modern observation of the winter solstice includes electric lights, is the modern equivalent to burning old love lettres throwing them in the recycling bin?

A lettre that reads: Dear Kirsten, How your summer? Mine is going great, [illegible]! It was good to see you last week. How is your mother doing? Mine is good. She’s just drink and full of laundry detergent. It’s so good to see you. Thanks again for the present. X-mas was great! Bye, [signature illegible]

I save important paper: birthday cards, penpal lettres, notes, concert tickets. I haven’t no idea who this is from. The words are vaguely familiar, but the signature is illegible. I will put this back in the box that I won’t open for another decade at least, and it will make me wonder again.

I thought this was being an only child. A gen X only child. Also: do we need to pathologize everything?

My ridiculous brown almost black Burmese mix cat rolling around on hardwood floors.

My ridiculous brown almost black Burmese mix cat rolling around on hardwood floors.

My ridiculous brown almost black Burmese mix cat rolling around on hardwood floors.

Here is a cat.