An author's collection of thoughts and stories
I finished this a couple weeks ago, but I’m absolutely terrible at getting photos in a timely manner.
The finished yarn that I talked about in this post.
At this point, I’m undecided about whether I feel like using knitting or crochet to make socks. I should probably make little sample squares out of both to see which suits the yarn better, but I’m also keeping my eye out for anything that sings to me.
Wow oh wow do the pictures add up fast.
AI art is harder to make than you would think.
You go to Stable Diffusion for the first time, type in a random prompt like, “A horse galloping through the woods,” and get back a picture that actually looks pretty cool.
So you play around a lot more, until your confidence is bolstered enough that you start to think that you can create something specific — to approximate a solid idea that you have in mind.
And that’s where the trouble starts.
I decided that I wanted to create a character portrait of Carol, from The Scion Suit/The Scions.
My first attempt, anime style:
… Okay, I’ll give it a few more tries …
By which point, I realized that simply describing the woman I wanted a picture of wasn’t going to be enough. AI doesn’t have the same intrinsic grasp of human anatomy and faces that we do.
I joined a Discord server and did a lot of reading.
A LOT of reading.
And I quadrupled the number of keywords I was using, to include things like, “Normal face,” and “Not disfigured.”
Highlights include:
Waaaaay better, but not even close to my end goal. Too glamorous and sunkissed for Carol.
Anatomy is still off. Also seems a little vampirish.
Hair is too short.
Now we’re starting to get it.
I liked the picture, but I decided to change art styles to see if I could better grasp the essence of Carol. And I like anime, so, you know … 😀
I’m still amazed that the face isn’t horribly wrong. But it’s not quite there — the woman is too doll-like to really be Carol.
AH-HA I’VE GOT IT!
All told, it probably would have been easier and faster to draw a character portrait if I had the art skillz — but I don’t. I generated dozens of pictures, most of which I didn’t save, and probably spent more time on it than it would have taken to paint it in photoshop.
But, truth be told, I enjoyed the process quite a bit. I think very strongly in words, and my brain turned it into a puzzle game of figuring out which words in which order would produce the best results. My final change was to swap out the keyword, “Shy,” for “Demure,” which gave the right tilt to the eyebrows and mouth for her expression.
And thus, I give you, Carol.
I tried to get an AI generated picture of Lambert from The Scion Suit, and this is what it spat out at me. 😀
https://stablediffusionweb.com/#demo
My husband has been telling me about AI generated art for awhile now. Stuff along the lines of, “It’s getting really good,” and also, “It’s getting really scary.”
As a reclusive author sort, it’s a topic that’s really intrigued me — there’s something extremely appealing about working with an AI to generate art for my books.
I tried out a free “trial version”, and with absolutely no clue what I was doing or why, I typed in a descriptive sentence to get the pictures below. The first obvious glare is that the people came out weird, particularly with the faces. But otherwise, it’s pretty cool.
This is Carol, but feeling “meh” about how she was generated. The Suit is about twice as big as it’s supposed to be, but looks fantastic.
This was supposed to be Hartmann. IDK.
This one is of The Black Magus. Doesn’t actually come close to fitting the story, but still cool.
I received the supplies for this project with Paradise Fiber’s fiber of the month club, back in May 2022, and I’ve been sloooooowly working on it since August.
The wool is the Walkin’ On Sunshine blend, which is 75% cheviot and 25% faux cashmere.
I’m only partway done. I decided that I would pause the spinning process to dye the singles before plying them, and as of this moment, the other half is still in the dye pot. I plan on using my spinning wheel to ply, so I handwound the finished portion onto a bobbin.
I used a drop spindle, which is part of why it’s been taking me so long. The other part is my tiny humans providing plenty of interruptions.
Instagrammers be crazy jealous of my breathtakingly beautiful yarn turtles.
Actually, despite how it looks, those little yarn balls are easy to hold in the palm of my hand and wind up into a proper skein. They’re quite handy.
With any luck, I’ll have the yarn completed before too much longer. Who knows, maybe I’ll even get it made into socks for my birthday this month.
After I inflamed the tendons in my foot with sloppy treadling, I decided that I should mix up my yarn spinning by using a drop spindle every now and then. Eventually, I got a turkish drop spindle set.
Naturally I made a quick reference of video tutorials to ensure that I was winding the yarn on correctly to create a center-pull ball. I very quickly noticed that everyone was neatly lining up their yarn to make very neat “turtles” that visually look very neat. (Turtles are what they call the yarn balls that are woven around the cross sticks)
Context:
I’m an INTP. When I saw this video by Frank James about how the different personality types kill their relationships, my initial reaction was, “I would never go out in public wearing pajamas … but yeah, he’s spot on.” I’m not all that big on social presentation. I can’t remember the last time I wore makeup, and while I do clean house every day, I’m terrible at organization. I figure that I don’t have any room in my life for people who are going to be pissy about my house being full of children. There are toys everywhere. Deal with it.
So, when it comes to spending extra time making a temporary ball of yarn look pretty, I’m skeptical.
If there’s some other purpose, then I’m open to the idea. Does it tangle less when being unwound? Fits more yarn? I’m genuinely curious. I don’t mind spending the extra time if it somehow benefits me later — I’m just not going to do it purely for aesthetic. I’m waaay too INTP for that.
I almost asked about possible other benefits on one of the youtube tutorials, but was overcome with anxiety instead. Would my question be taken as an insult, and get me attacked and ridiculed? I daren’t say anything.
Which paints a depressing picture of how I’ve experienced socializing with other women.
Personality wise, I strongly prefer spinning wheels anyway. I’m only doing this to avoid aggravating the tendons in my foot again.
So I’ll just quietly do my own thing, and stay far away from those pretty little “turtles”.
When I’m too fried to do anything, I’ve been playing Rune Factory 5.
My husband and I have played through most of the Rune Factory games — the exception being Frontiers, because the pacing was agonizingly slow, and it reused all the characters from the first game anyway. #nerds
With RF5, I told the kids that my character was going to marry Lucas, because he’s the most like daddy. 🙂
Fun moments include:
…
This is what he said after I gave him a love potion.
Oh, but that’s what I do, Lucas. Tee hee.
BHWAHAHA me and my filthy mind. I guess it’s not going to take long for babies to come along? (and Reinhard is in the background, pretending like he’s not there) LOL
As I was posting these, I realized that my character is wearing a different outfit in every single screenshot. Gosh I’m such a girl.
I confess that there’s an element of emotional indulgence with playing these games. The idea of finding a tight-knit community full of weirdos who could accept someone like me is, well, nice. I’m a pagan stay-at-home mom, so most people don’t like me.
I also tend to go pretty far into headcannon. I could write fanfiction with all the stuff I come up with while playing.
#nerds
Halloween went very well, and the majority of the 6-month-old’s trick-or-treat candy was generously donated to me, the hardworking mother who made it all happen (aww, so thoughtful!)
And I’ve been working on crocheting socks ever since. I came to the conclusion that if I want to be serious as a yarn arteest, I need to reorient my hand movements so that I wrap the yarn around the hook, instead of holding the yarn still and hooking it. Some guy on youtube did it that way, lmao.
I also learned how to make hush puppies. Yum!
Anyway, at some point in the past, I came to the conclusion that youtube crochet tutorials were a blight on the craft. I have a reputation as someone who crochets — it’s pretty obvious when everyone in my family is running around with handmade items — so I occasionally get people asking me for help.
Cue phrase, “I was following a tutorial on youtube, and I don’t know where I went wrong.”
Which is how I got to learn how to troubleshoot without a written pattern or any sort of clue about what the designer’s original intent was.
So.
The reason why I hate youtube tutorials so much is because the video creator is posturing as a teacher, but then they aren’t available to help their students with their problems. A huge part of properly teaching a skill is learning how to navigate beginner’s mistakes and misunderstandings, so you can explain everything more clearly and concisely in the future. These “teachers” however, care more about showing off their manicures than they do about actually helping someone learn a craft. They don’t reply to comments.
Unfortunately I’m a softie, and I have a hard time dismissing someone who invested time and money into a project — I know how emotionally involved people get with their crafting, and how frustrating it is when something goes wrong and you can’t figure it out. So, I help. I stare hard at what they’ve done thus far, figure out the basic stitch pattern, and ask some questions about what it’s supposed to be at the end. Then I make up something that will get them from here to there, and carefully explain the changes and why they fix the problem. I like to think that I’m helping them learn how to overcome problems in the future.
I mentioned that I’ve been crocheting socks (three pairs so far). I actually really like designing crocheted socks, especially with how pretty some of the stitches are, but there’s one thing stopping me from typing up a pattern: I’m still troubleshooting my own work on the fly.
Until I can properly explain every single last nitpicky detail, I’m going to refrain from writing any books on the topic.
What can I say, I have a conscience.
Now that my rant is out of the way, the one thing that limits the time I spend crocheting is fatigue in my hands. I’m curious if reorienting my movements so they are more evenly distributed will help. My feet get cold easily, and all the socks I made in the past are getting old and holey. It’s time to recharge my sock drawer.
Not to mention, I need something to do while that six-month-old is nursing.
I taught my 8-year-old how to spin yarn with a drop spindle. She fell in love with the process and quickly used up the 8oz of corriedale that I gave her, so we dyed it together, and I got her set up on my rigid heddle loom to weave with the yarn she made.
However, after all the stress of what happened to our cat, I commandeered her project — I needed something more potent than crochet for stress relief, and weaving really hits the spot for me.
The thick-thin texture of the yarn my daughter spun was wonderful to work with, and enormously fun to watch it come together. I definitely need her to spin more yarn for me.
By Autumn Rain 