This is gonna be the thread where we talk about stuff

Birds performing high fives would be interesting to watch, do they use wings or talons

Well they use their talons to walk so I don't think "foot-five" is a thing. WING-FIVE, that, that should be a thing.

Probs looks something like a turtlehighfive?

I'm a big fan of furniture and designing a living space, as it stands. I like considering what people see when they walk in the front door, and I like showing them how the place I live is laid out so that it pleases my sense of asthetics and efficiency. Also, I'm a sucker for virtual half-walls, or at the very least I like subdividing a space with couches and carpets and other low furniture, probably because I've lived all my life in places where a space had to either do double duty as lounge or dining room or be subdivided into both. As for stuff, I am extremely fond of bookshelves and how things look on bookshelves. I enjoy books. I enjoy having a lot of books. And I enjoy having miscellany collect on my bookshelves according to my own slightly obsessive organization.

Also I don't like TVs. They...seem to command attention in a room. Again, having lived in spaces where the TV can't be ignored. The most I've ever gotten out of them is as giant monitors.

And I will admit to like building collections of things. Books, mostly. I look at my Neal Stephenson collection next to my Space Odyssey collection and I am proud of trawling through those second-hand bookstores.

[really tired]

I like tiny house designs and follow some blogs about them because I find it neat how people manage to put everything in there, and how adapting your life to fit constricting circumstances can lead to organic develpments rather than just applying your design which always fascinates me, but I'm coming from a position where my bedroom is already stacked with boxes full of stuff because I don't have enough room for what I have already. :L

My sense of... space design is very similar to my sense of fashion, i.e. "it looks pretty nice on the days I actually put effort in."

So many boxes I'll get around to throwing away eventually.

Some people may think starving themselves of pretty things that they like and suggestions of leisure activities in their surroundings can bring them to some kind of enlightened state of being. That's fine I guess, at least it's not as unhealthy as fasting for enlightenment or isolation from human contact for enlightenment. n-n;; As for what this 'enlightenment' means to them, well, I don't see it, but if it makes them feel good about themselves, that's ok!

Personally, I like "things". A lot. I like to have a lot to fascinate the guests, a lot to give (I may hoard, but I also dispense gifts relatively frequently.) and a lot to engage them with such as having resources for a lot of different types of crafts and arts that I can whip out at any time we wanna do group arts. I also like things that are shiny, pretty and intricate. When I see some object with love and skillz put into its conception, it wows me, and I collect things as if I'm collecting precious little bits of soul from all over the world. I like things that have character, that show a little use, that have their own story to tell. And I surround myself with these things, probably to the frowny faces of many "live light, don't hoard junk" kinna people. xD

Thank goodness having lots doesn't mean SPENDING lots. I abhor spending. It's almost physically painful for me to lose even 25 cents. I just have a good eye for treasures being sold super cheap in flea markets, thrift shops, weird little trinket shops and garage sales... xD You don't need to pick stuff up often, but over a lifetime it accumulates. Not to mention I've always listed "cool trinkets" as things people can give me as gifts.

I wouldn't be embarrassed to invite a friend over if I lost all my stuff, but we would probably just kind of look at the house, nod and each other, and think something like "there is a lot of work to be done ;D" and the cycle of hoarding shall begin once again. xD

As for eating as a social activity, I think cooking together would count? And if you haven't seen each other for awhile, then catching-up-talk? Otherwise, like on forums, various conversations? Except if you find eating and talking at the same time to be difficult. xD

I do not throw anything away. I do not give things as gifts, nor lend them for the most part. I am not particularly organized, and as I long ago ran out of shelf space, many of my posessions live in piles on the floor. I would probably heap all my books and games and musics and other stuff in a huge pile and sleep on it if I thought I could do that without breaking things.

I don't like keeping things for the sake of keeping things, like, i wouldn't like to try and collect every NES game ever made because who cares. I'd just like to own the ones i enjoy or the ones i'd like to try.

I feel like my room is way bigger than i need it to be, and my king size bed (which is unnecessarily big) takes up half the space. I don't have a lot of things though *shrug*.

Wait wait wait back up, why do we still call them high fives for other animals?

I propose we use something more universal, like team claps.

Wait wait wait back up, why do we still call them high fives for other animals?

I propose we use something more universal, like team claps.

Slap me some fin!

"This is the fifth time one of you smartasses has called us about this."

Is that a different line of paint than "matte"?

It's true. Science says so.

Eggcorn database is amusing. Kunstformen der Natur is beautiful. >O Thank you for posting that.

I think it's okay for them to be selling their knit/crochet patterns online, as long as it's not subscription-based or "nobody is allowed to come up with the same thing" like for copyright/patent stuff? Kind of like buying a cookbook [which is information] just once, and not losing the right to use the recipes under any circumstance. Maybe the patterns come with a really nicely written step-by-step guide and stuff, or a promise from the author to answer any questions about it. They're not paying for mere information, they're also paying for a service!
edit: included in the service is 'not having to go to a store and browse through physical things at the risk of not finding what you need anyways'

I guess they are marketing only to accomplished yarnsmiths, then. I don't know how well their business model works, and it certainly does involve less work than selling a physical product, but I don't see anything wrong with that. ...As long as they don't sue people over selling products made using the pattern that was bought, I guess. I feel like (at the risk of making another very loose analogy) at that point it'd be like buying stock photography and not being allowed to sell paintings made based off of it.

Never said you ever said there was anything wrong with it: Neversaidception. xD (I really ought to quit using old memes already oh gob) But yeah I see where you're coming from and share the same internetculture-type ideas about freedom of information. o3o Luckily for us the world of business is gradually evolving to catch up with how consumers have changed. Like with netflix and stuff. They offer a lot more services with their site than what simply downloading files would do, and are more reliable than streaming from other sites.

I'm sure that those who offer more help with the patterns they sell- so that it leans more on the service side- do reel in more profit from their craft, too.

Hello I am a person that has bought patterns before (all those octopi, squid, and cuttlefish I made? Someone else's patterns that I purchased) and it's basically the same as any other trade or sale of a non-tangible good. The value's only what the maker and seller agree to. If I look at an Etsy page for a pattern and what the seller's offering and all of that is worth the asking price, then sure I'll buy it. That'd be metrics like:

• whether the content's relevant to my interests (would buy a cute little nudibranch pattern, would not buy a vest-making pattern because big projects bore me eventually)
  
• content I didn't know how to make myself in a satisfying way (the octopus "shape" without it just being a ball with eight legs)
  
• how good/useful/helpful the pattern is beyond the simple notation (photos of each step, recommended yarns and hook sizes and possible adaptations, detailed explanations for unusual techniques)
  
• all at the right price

Selling patterns is also valid when you consider how damn long it can take to make something. You probably think one hundred bucks for a hand-knitted/crocheted sweater or whatever is egregious, but pure wool and other materials are surprisingly expensive. There's a reason the stereotyped knitter/crocheter is an old/retired lady; a sweater can take months.

A crocheted octopus might not use pure merino and I might have demonstrated you can knock one out in two evenings if you're really bored, sure. But I did want to move onto trying something new after making half a dozen of them, and I imagine the pattern-maker felt the same way. It's not very fun to make the same pattern after the twelfth time, and they're still probably not making a huge profit per cephalopod. Enough to fun their hobby, maybe, but not enough to warrant spending ten hours a day on it.

Intellectual property is totally a thing with value - it's not much different from music. An artist could earn their keep through nothing but live performances, but realistically they should sell their music in a hard copy as well, and it's a more sensible way for the fan to financially support the creator. Much like the fact I (mostly) won't upload/distribute music I like online for simple respect of the creator's wishes*, I'm respecting Rubysubmarine's request by only giving my squids away or trading them for other art/craft pieces. I don't have to, she can't find me if I wanted to sell squids. I thought she made neat things, and supporting her continuation of making a living by making neat things was worthwhile - the same way you'd feel about a musical artist.

Wheat, I agree with you so much it hurts.

it isn't that hard to make digital files into physical ones... printers exist, and writable CDs also exist.

i buy patterns all the time, and whether digital or physical, they all end up on the same kind of pattern paper eventually. but then again, it's sewing, not knitting, so i really do have to print it out to actually be able to use the thing.

i have also asked people to mail me physical copies of a pdf before when i did not have printer access and they actually did it, so that is possibly also an option if the seller is willing

Hard-coded DRM and honor-system intellectual property management aren't, in modern applications of rights management, waterproof seals against piracy. Instead, they're more like psychological turbines. It makes it a little more inconvenient or difficult to pirate intellectual property, encouraging purchases and generating profit from people who, for whatever reason, find the price a worthy cost for avoiding the inconvenience or unbearably guilt-wracked sleepless nights of piracy.

That said, I pirate music like the dickens because I really don't music enough to justify purchasing it to myself.

Haha, goddamn I am already sick of these heels; a half-dozen overheard compliments is barely worth 'em

The only time I wore heels was at a funeral because nobody told me there was going to be a fancy shoes requirement. And those were the only fancy shoes any of my relatives had for the lending. I felt like it was going to be my feet's funeral, too. I was one of those assigned to carry the casket for the entire slow ceremony, even up stairs, wearing heels for the first time in my life. The pain was intolerable even just standing.

The fact that you have worn them for days makes you out to be some kind of pain-tolerance godly warrior to my eyes. xD

I haven't actually ever worn heels for more than an hour at a time.

But I'm also 6' so I tower over people enough anyway

Please share some of that height with me sob I want to be big QuQ
That's it I'm just going to stand on other objects and windowsill outcroppings and sidewalk bump things and fences whenever I can now
MY BODY MAY BE SHORTAVERAGE BUT MY SPIRIT WILL BE TALL