Category: writing

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Fiber Artists of the Apocalypse

By Mary | by Mary

The inspiration for this post comes from Liz Haywood, a clothing designer in Australia who has been focusing on creating zero-waste patterns. She shares her fashion adventures on The Craft of Clothes [https://lizhaywood.com.au] blog. In her November 1, 2021, post, she wrote about “Fashion in a dystopian world,” inspired by her children’s recent interest in post-apocalyptic fiction. She shared photos she found online showing the current concept of dystopian clothing, which includes a lot of…

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Just the Punctuation

By Mary | by Mary

I ran across a cool new tool on Twitter recently. Created by tech writer Clive Thompson (@pomeranian99 on Twitter), the tool strips all the letters from your writing, leaving you only the punctuation. It’s called Just the Punctuation [https://just-the-punctuation.glitch.me]. If you’re a writer, go ahead and give it a try. Paste some of your writing into the box and click the Submit button at the bottom. It helps if you use  a substantial piece of…

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Family Creative Projects

By Mary | by Mary

I have an immensely creative family from all quarters. Artists, writers, musicians, we’ve got it all. Most of us have grown up steeped in the arts and practice some form of creative endeavor. Recently, three family members finished major creative projects that I want to share here out of pride and support. Fetch – Spirit Tamer Eldest Son, Ian Warner, just finished a month-long game-creation challenge from Manticore Games. The result is a role-playing game…

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A Research Surprise That Isn’t All That Surprising

By Mary | by Mary

As I contemplated today’s blog post last night, I realized I didn’t have any blog topics in my back pocket, waiting to be written. When you have a regular blogging practice, this happens occasionally and you’ve got to think of something fast to write about. While Twitter is generally good for immediate blog post inspiration, what’s top of mind for me is research I’m doing at work on a guy who lived in my county…

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Defusing Confrontation

By Mary | by Mary

It’s Indepence Day in the United States. Historian Heather Cox Richardson has a marvelous newsletter to mark the occasion, one that reminds us to live up to our highest ideals in this country, rather than sink into our lowest manifestations of a society. We haven’t been doing a good job of reaching the ideals of life, liberty, equality, or the pursuit of happiness lately. There’s a sliver of people who would rob the majority of…

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