picked a handful of violets in my name

• All in a Name: New Software Benefits Transgender Students

  The new software, created as an adjunct to the Banner student information system, allows students to fill out a form specifying their preferred name and pronoun. The information appears on all paperwork seen by faculty, so petitioning professors individually, a process that gave students no choice but to out themselves, is a thing of the past.

• via naraht: The Dunbar Number as a Limit to Group Sizes

  My anecdotal evidence generally seems to support the idea that group sizes will usually plateau at a number lower than 150 participants. This comes from 20 years of doing facilitation both on and offline, running several software companies, and running various forums at America Online. In particular, many online communities provide good evidence for Dunbar's Number actually being an upper limit (either due to reduced efficiency or due to increased dispersion).

• dw_news: Weekly Update: 30 Sept

  * Development
  * Code Push
  * More DW Creativity
  * RIP, Vox
  * DW Advocacy
  * Icon Renames

• Dreamwidth Wiki: Advocacy


• denise: DW artisans


• via wordweaverlynn: Kink Aware Professionals

... was on Saturday. Posting this on Tuesday. I have done worse.

Ellie and I left the house late and picked up shadesong late as a result, but traffic was very light and we still made it to Wyrding Studios a bit early.

The morning activity was spinning, first from combed top and then from a batt. I seem to spin faster from combed top (easier to manage the fiber) but more consistently from batts (I find drafting easier). Although, as you can probably tell, I'm not very good at it yet. But between how satisfying it was and how many of Kythryne's art batts I've purchased already, I will continue spinning and, I hope, improving.

After lunch, we went up to the studio and picked out things for either a pendant or a pair of earrings. I made these earrings. We also got to pick out things for a take-home project, although I wound up with some spare time and made this before and after the fused glass portion of the day.

Fused glass! No photos of that yet. But now I have learned how to cut glass, and that dichroic glass looks different before and after it's fused. I did wind up with a small scrap of silver dichroic glass that had gone through the kiln all by its lonesome, so I made this pendant for fun.

The last portion of the day was a demonstration of making jewelry from found objects. I brought a set of dice, a silk flower that fell off Cameryn's set for Phone Whore, a shower curtain clip, and some blobs of solder. The blobs turned out to be too fragile for wire-wrapping, but Kythryne got everything else in there. And the d20 pops out the back of the pendant.

Here's all the photos from the art retreat. And there is another one in October, for those of you who can make it to Concord, NH.

Well, internets, I am definitely experiencing a depressive episode that exceeds my medication's ability to compensate. :(

There are definitely some external components. Not sure if that makes me feel better or worse than Completely Random Brain Fuckery. I am probably experiencing a very extended sort of con drop, because I had 3+ weeks of New Orleans and parents and Doing All Of The Things (research, eating, shopping), 24 hours in Boston in which I had to Do All Of The Other Things (unpack, repack, work most of a day), then the con, and then more parents (they came up to Boston for a week to visit Ellie, so I got a few extra days with them post-con). Nothing to do but go to work, and I'm still part-time until the 5th.

( It is also approaching five years since I was raped. (formulated to be hypo-trigger-genic) )

I am dwelling on it because I promised to make an item for shadesong's Blogathon auction (I made three things last year). She always blogs for BARCC, but the theme for this year's items is the strength/resilience of survivors. I have no idea what I'm going to make, and the openness of the theme doesn't actually help (last year, I used shadesong's fiction for prompts).

( I probably should have made the Blogathon piece while I was in New Orleans. (there are some details here, maybe triggers) )

So my plan for the rest of the afternoon had been to catch up on my dreamroll, which I have not checked since Friday because spoons, but I think what I will actually do after I post this is play with my boxes of beads and whatnot. See what comes up.