10 Things: Dust From Space
All My Recommendations for What To Read, Listen To, Think About, Ponder, Look At, and Sigh Over This Week
My Loves,
Happy Sunday! It’s very much autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. I am not sure what I think about all the pumpkin things, and I’ve never been sure what to think about it, but I definitely do love the color of pumpkins. I think squash-wise, there are better squashes. This week I roasted delicata; a joy with tahini sauce on top. Top three are always free! The last seven for the paid tier include a secret about pie. That’s right. I’ve said what I said.
SUBSCRIBE TO: The Substack
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I learned about this Substack because Cara messaged me on Instagram and told me that they wrote about me in it, and my ego is nice and healthy, so I went over there to check it out, and realized that their Substack is ENTIRELY COMICS:
Which I have to say, I deeply, deeply respect. Comics are HARD. They take such a long time to make! I also strongly recommend (if you missed my recommendations the first time around)
, , and , who all make outstanding, comics-only newsletters that I thirst over and love top-to-bottom. Cara’s is new, and it’s lovely; it examines science, process, art — all the things we love. I can’t wait to keep reading it!EXPERIENCE: Felt.
I had kind of forgotten about felt. Did you forget, too?
Well, so, first of all, I’m a STRONG believer that anyone can sew. If you’re sitting there thinking, “Nope, not me, I can’t sew,” I’m here to say you’re wrong. You can sew. Sewing is intuitive. Even using a sewing machine, once it’s set up, is intuitive. The trouble is that you can be so afraid you’re going to get it wrong that you might be afraid to try. There are a lot of ways to complicate sewing, and that’s cool! But it makes me mad that sometimes people who have spent a lot of time learning how to do something in a way that is complicated decide to make people who DON’T know how to do the thing feel incompetent. I’ve been on both sides of this, to be fair.
Felt makes beginning sewers feel great! It is easy to cut, and it holds its shape when you stitch it. I have made quite a few costumes entirely out of felt, and have never felt (ha) disappointed with how they turned out.
May I suggest buying a pile of felt and making something out of it? A pencil? A sandwich? It’s construction paper, only it’s soft. You can hand-stitch felt and it will be pretty generous with you. If that frustrates you, you can hot-glue felt, too! I believe that hot-gluing is sewing. Your goal should be to experiment with a three-dimensional, soft material, in an effort to make something that you didn’t know for sure that you could make.
READ: “Good Inside” by Dr. Becky Kennedy
This is the first parenting book I’ve read, and I read it because it felt like the internet was thrusting it upon me. It kept popping up everywhere I looked, as a recommendation every time I was looking for anything, ever. Like, I’d be searching for leggings and the internet would say, “We’re plum out of leggings, but can we interest you in ‘Good Inside’ by Dr. Becky Kennedy?”
I’ve realized since beginning this sentence that my sister was probably the first person to recommend this to me, and I’m glad that she did. If you haven’t read this, and you’re a parent (I mean, even if you’re not!?), it’s a must-read. It’s gentle and kind and gets to the heart of why behavior intervention really doesn’t work in the long term. It made me think a lot about my own childhood, too (hence the “Even non-parents should check it out” point), and I cried four times. Validating, optimistic, warm.
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