Bistitchual MxRemy • Now • 100%

Some nålbinding practice, my own weird little way.

I don't know how common this might be, but I do my nalbinding (nålbinding/naalbinding/etc) quite a bit differently than any instructions show. I keep my working loops on a long long knitting needle, and hold that the way an English cottage knitter does. I use a small tapestry needle for my naal, and I mostly work with thinner cotton yarns. Since you can't wet splice those, I Russian join the segments together. The whole thumb-hold thing never really worked well for me; even when it went right, my fabric would be all loose. That's probably just a skill issue that I could overcome with time, but my way works now, so I stick to it lol. Also, it helps me keep track of which loop is which. If I'm doing it correctly, this ought to be Mammen stitch. I hope. That said, the traditional way clearly works very well for most people! Look at [this person's](https://nalbinding.blog/finnish-22-hand-warmers-part-one-stitch-close-ups/) beautiful stitches.

Bistitchual MxRemy • Now • 100%

Check in on your local guilds/societies etc! They do cool stuff, here's an example near me.

Chances are, there's a chapter near you of some group dedicated to a specific niche textile. Many of these arts are a little neglected these days, so groups dedicated to them are usually really happy to get new members. Plus, they'll usually have something cool like "Guild" or "Society" in the name, which just feels neat to be a part of lol. This group linked here is having a Lace Weekend on 11/2-11/4, with lots of different crafts present. If I make it out there I'll report back, with pics. At some point, we should probably add a page to the wiki linking to all the official needlecraft Guilds and Societies out there. Or at least all of them that we can find, they can be pretty obscure!

Fuck AI MxRemy • Now • 92%

NaNoWriMo gets AI sponsor, says not writing your novel with AI is ‘classist and ableist’

pivot-to-ai.com

If the only reason people care about NaNoWriMo is for the name and hashtag, somebody already pitched Writevember as a replacement. Honestly sounds better to me anyway. I've heard other people say the tools/gamification/etc on the NaNoWriMo platform were really helpful though. For those people, how difficult would it be to potentially patch that stuff into the [WriteFreely](https://github.com/writefreely/writefreely) platform? As one of the only long-form Fediverse-native platforms still being actively developed, maybe they'd appreciate the boost in code contributions.

Bistitchual MxRemy • Now • 100%

Experimentations in Tunisian crochet

A weird thing about Tunisian crochet is that the flat and in-the-round variants are quite different from each other! Flat uses a singed ended hook, and round uses a double ended hook. Flat builds up stitches on the hook in one direction, and removes them from the hook in the *opposite* direction. Round builds up stitches in one direction, and removes them in the *same* direction, but off the other side of the hook. There are patterns you can produce in round that seem impossible to do in the other, and vice versa. Here, I'm trying to guess at one possible flat method to mimic this traditional in-the-round pattern. So, intuitively it seems doable the standard way, at first. The beginning goes easy enough. You work forward in yarn color A, then tie in yarn color B and do your return pass in that. Now, you go to do the next forward pass, but *gasp!* The working end of yarn color A is still over on the other side of the work! You left it there when you tied on yarn color B. One attempt I've seen done is to carry the unused yarn along the back of the work, but it's messy and makes for a loose fabric. I went another method:  How this goes is, you use the double ended hook you'd usually use for in-the-round. You pick up and remove stitches with the two ends as you would in the round, until you get to the other side. This is where it gets weird. Now, you do that *exact same thing* over again, except you do everything in reverse! The side of the hook you were using to remove stitches, now you're using it to pick them up. And the side you were using to pick up stitches will remove them. It doesn't feel great or intuitive, it's basically like switching from left handed to right handed or vice versa. It works, but as you can see there's one more problem. The vertical ribs in TSS always tilt slightly to one side, but now the tilt direction changes each row! There is a way to fix that using *twisted* TSS stitches on alternate rows, but to make it more complicated, I also wanted to have a solid color border at the left and right. This is roughly how I thought it could go, combining this new method with the float method mentioned earlier for the sides:  So, incorporating all this, I tried it again. Here's the comparison, with LOTS of mistakes. It was eally hard to get the hang of lol. Check it out: 

Fermentation MxRemy • Now • 94%

First try at kōji

All in all, I think it came out really well! The finished kōji had this incredible, indescribable taste/smell. Maybe kind of, flowers and mangos and peaches? I used it to make a ton of miso. I used Modernist Pantry kōji kin and organic basmati white rice, and a makeshift immersion circulator/floating water bath incubator thingy. The rice was steamed in unbleached muslin cloth until just a little undercooked, then the same cloth was used to line a metal tray. The rice was spread into hills and valleys, covered with more muslin, then tented with some aluminum foil over the whole thing. The foil was mostly to keep condensation from dripping off the roof of the incubator onto the muslin cloth. I put it in the incubator with the circulator st to 90 F.I stirred it at 12 hours and again at 24. It got appropriately matted, and for the most part it wasn't too wet. However, there were a few spots where I think it was getting on towards sporulation already, as you can see here:  Could have been some extra humidity collecting in those darker spots? The tinfoil tent kept the incubator condensation from dripping on it, but I guess nothing prevented the *tinfoil* condensation from dripping lol... Anyway, the entire process seemed to go way faster than all the guides lead me to believe. I broke it all up as best I could and put it back in set at 84 F with the lid open for lower humidity. By 24 hours it was maintaining about 97 F on its own.

Bready MxRemy • Now • 97%

Salt Rising Bread

Or rather salt rising muffins, but still. For those unfamiliar, it's an obscure Appalachian bread. Rather than being risen by the CO2 produced from yeast or baking soda, it's risen by the hydrogen produced by Clostridium perfringens bacteria. This gives it a different texture and a funky/cheesy taste. Still fermented, so I hope it counts for the rules! Crumb shot:  Mine isn't great compared to anything you'd get from [Rising Creek Bakery](https://risingcreekbakery.com/), who literally wrote [the book](https://books.theunseen.city/book/486721/s/salt-rising-bread) on salt rising bread. As you can see, mine came out pretty dense, but that's definitely not because of the kind of bread it is. I think it's more because of the 100% whole wheat, and my own lack of skill. It took me like 6 tries to even get the starter right lol. But I thought, maybe people have never heard of this and would be interested. I used wheat berries from [Castle Valley Mill](https://castlevalleymill.com/), which is only a couple hours away from me, and ground them in a hand-crank mill.

Fermentation MxRemy • Now • 89%

Black-eyed pea nattō!

I'm a total amateur, but here's what I did: 1. Soak 1.5 lbs beans for 6 hours in water with a little baking soda 2. Change water halfway through 3. Preheat immersion circulator/sous vide chamber to 110 F 4. Pressure steam for 20 minutes 5. Spread into wide flat container 6. Stir old nattō into 1/2 cup water, mix evenly into beans 7. Lay plastic wrap snugly against beans, poke many holes 8. Cover tightly with tin foil, poke a couple holes around edges 9. Poke corded probe thermometer into center from edge 10. Float in immersion circulator chamber for approximately 20 hours The temperature in the beans generally kept about 2 degrees less than the chamber. I think we want the early fermentation to happen at 108 F and then cool to 100 F, so I tried to keep adjusting it based on that. Anyway, the result was pretty tasty!! The bacteria seem to take well to black-eyed peas. Might have been a *little* less stringy than "normal", but still delicious!

PieFed help MxRemy • Now • 100%

Ok to set up shop on piefed.social?

I should have thought to ask this earlier, sorry. This is only the beta test of the software, and I just recently noticed the instance isn't super active so far. It occurred to me that maybe y'all aren't ready for anyone to treat this as home just yet? Will we be overtaxing the system if we post/subscribe too much, or have to worry about all our stuff disappearing from breaking updates/migration/etc? It's such a nice platform I just started moving right in without thinking about it!

Forage Fellows 🍄🌱 MxRemy • Now • 100%

Choice violets of the Eastern U.S.?

The USDA's plant database shows something like 50-ish native viola species in Pennsylvania, where I live. As far as I can tell, they're all more or less edible, but what about the flavor? Are there any especially choice species that really stand out? Internet sleuthing doesn't seem to turn up much of anything. So far, I'm getting the vague sense that purple ones generally taste better than yellow or white ones, and that short species might be sweeter than tall species. This seems like the sort of thing that somebody somewhere must have figured out by now, since violet used to be a pretty popular flavor. The classic liqueur Creme Yvette is very specifically flavored with these obscure Italian Parma violets, which implies that they must taste somehow unique. So what about the rest of them?

Bistitchual MxRemy • Now • 100%

Two color Tunisian crochet in-the-round purse

I made this mostly as a way to practice as many Tunisian in-the-round stitches as possible. It is a pretty comfy purse though! The yarn is interesting, I found these *enormous* spools of it at Goodwill. It's very fine, maybe lace weight, except it's slightly fuzzy? It's not very strong but once it's worked up into a reasonably dense fabric, it'll hold up. Gives the finished object a soft and fuzzy feel. There's no pattern, but it's very simple. Just work the body of the purse in-the-round as one big cylinder, switching types of Tunisian every few rows for coolness. Then separately make a thin, lonnnggg band of flat Tunisian simple stitch. Slip-stitch the band to the bottom of the cylinder to close it off at one end, and then continue stitching it up the sides of the cylinder. The excess band at the top becomes the purse strap. Overlap and stitch together the ends of the band to form a nice thick padding for your shoulder. Tunisian in-the-round hooks are little harder to find than hooks for working flat. I *really* love [the set](https://assets.pxlmo.com/public/m/_v2/576144498109009876/0e43b1202-69768b/Jd3ElyZluNtr/R63CQzdbMwi45Bk483wy6gCtMdqsLgm8pGOk9kQ7.jpg) I used to make this purse, but the company discontinued it! I've lost a few of them since then too...

Fermentation MxRemy • Now • 100%

Tepache Bubbling Away

This was delicious when it finished. Just pineapple rinds, sugar and wild yeast, mostly. Sorry there's not really much to see here, I just enjoy watching the bubbles go by, and figured others might too. Also, fingers crossed this video works right! File hosted on a Pixelfed instance, direct-linked to from a PieFed instance, and posted to a Lemmy instance... That's pretty convoluted lol.

Forage Fellows 🍄🌱 MxRemy • Now • 88%

Eastern Tent Caterpillar "Silk"

This is a little off the beaten track as far as usual foraging posts go, but I had a question. Has anyone tried spinning [Eastern Tent Caterpillar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_tent_caterpillar) webs into a usable thread/yarn? I'm definitely not one of those people who hates them and wants them gone; they're native here and relatively harmless, despite what naysayers would have you believe. However, they sure do make a *ton* of webs! I'm sure they could probably stand to part with a little here or there right? Like, after they're done with them?  Not sure if it would work, but if it is spinnable, seems like it might be a convenient local source for an ahimsa silk alternative.

New Communities MxRemy • Now • 100%

Bistitchual - A community for mixed and obscure textiles/needlecrafts

!bistitchual@piefed.social [Bistitchual](https://piefed.social/c/bistitchual) c/bistitchual is a hobbyist textile community based on the popular subreddit of the same name. All needlecrafts are welcome, but it has a particular focus on: \- Utilizing multiple techniques in the same project (i.e. knitted sweater with tatted trim). \- Techniques too obscure to sustain their own dedicated community (i.e. nalbinding).

Bistitchual MxRemy • Now • 0%

Welcome to Bistitchual!

As in bi-stitch-ual. I didn't come up with it though, there's a [very popular subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/bistitchual/) by that name, and one whose presence I've sorely missed since moving away. While there are already a bunch of needlecraft communities in the fediverse, as far as I could tell, most of them are dedicated to specific popular crafts ([knitting](https://lemmy.world/c/knitting)/ [crochet](https://lemmy.ca/c/crochet)/ [cross-stitch](https://lemmit.online/c/crossstitch)/etc). That leaves a void for folks interested in, say, ply-split braiding. Or combinations of crafts, like knitted garments with tatted trim. Also, since PieFed isn't exactly a 1-for-1 Lemmy clone, I figured it could use some of it's own versions of communities anyway.