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How I make my rugs (tabithaarnold.substack.com)
95 points by p44v9n on Oct 21, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 31 comments



The comments veered away from Tabitha Arnold's work which is quite good. Her post (OP) is full of examples from an artist with a distinct point of view and the ability to convey it clearly.


What is a good place to find more pages like this? Is there a hacker news for art?


Substack > Discover > "Art" tag?


How does rughooking, crossstich and needlepoint differ? Which might be easier for someone initiated.


Crosstich is a particular 'x' stitch. It follows the grid of the fabric very rigidly, and is typically done using cotton strands. Needlepoint is the same process, but not necessarily using 'x' stitches, and extends to more types of threading material. Rughooking is a broad term, that means any rug making pushing yarn through a fabric.


Do you ever have an existential crisis while you’re making something?

“Will this object outlive me?”

As a software engineer I have to admit… I’m envious.


Software these days don't even survive past npm update :(


You should get into enterprise Java. Too inscrutable to change, to complex to replace. Every now and then they try, manage to replace 4% of the functionality whatever platform or design pattern is popular at the time before running out of budget, and now the system is an even more byzantine Cronenberg.

I hear, every once in a while you can spot a rare IllegalStateException("Killll mmeeeee...."); being thrown in the logs.


Lol and true. Total hell to live in. Guaranteed job security.


> Too inscrutable to change, to complex to replace

can you give some advice to me, maybe others, on what you'd like to see in that codebase that would make things easier for you? Serious question, ta.


Things I wish a legacy codebase had: documentation (maybe with history of major changes in its lifetime), tests, up to date comments, and modular design that allows for deprecating/replacing itself part by part to a new system.


The usual stuff then! Thanks.


In some philosophies, being envious about art objects' durability vs. a software library's use-life makes for a category error. Art objects are defined as having value in themselves, that we look at for their own sake (~form), rather than for what they can do for us (~function). For software libraries, this is mostly flipped.

The metric of concern there, I might submit, is how many people have been helped by it and the downstream effects of that help (maybe it helped someone get a job, which then helped them get a house, and raise a family, etc...). Not the library's longevity per se, but the effects' longevity...


Bright side is your mistakes probably don't haunt you as regularly or as long. Like say poor design detail on a building that will outlive you, that you see everyday on your commute, or when you look out your living room window.


Oh for sure, I am on a team that's been working on the same app for a decade now, which is soon to be retired. It's done hundreds of mil in business, but soon all those years of time we put into it will disappear. If we'd just met up every day in a field and piled rocks up, after 10yr we'd have a huge stone wall (no millions, though).


Looking though 3 year old code...

Lord Gsus, who wrote this s*it?!

Then in git log... really?! Me? Did I write this?


Git blame was a trick :/


Envious? I am aware we will all die, and I am proud to leave a mark on humankind.


I've always said that our software is like a Tibetan sand painting. You may as well imagine yourself wiping it completely off the table the minute you look away.


Is this about having kids?


Haa! Yes, these days one has to be prepared. Nope, this is not about kids.

This is about tools, intricacies of the tools, appreciation of beauty, beauty in the details, etc.


Just what I needed to start producing my own war rugs.


[flagged]


"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


She's a very talented artist in a niche field. Seems rather likely her works will end up in a museum somewhere

https://www.tabithaarnold.com/work/rugs


[flagged]


I'm just showing you the work of a talented young artist. No one obviously knows, but there's a lot of museums out there dude. I feel like you assume the museum has to be the MET. Could be a regional textile museum, who knows? My point is she's an artist who's aspiring for something. Why shit all over that?


> In 100 years nobody is going to know who she is, much less be fawning over her work trying to figure out how to restore it.

Agreed, that's a very likely outcome. If she were living in ancient egypt doing this same thing with a substantially smaller and more primitive world population the odds of this work being future museum pieces would be entirely different.

Instead what we're looking at is someone's blog post describing their arts and crafts hobby.

It's not "a question for conservators and museums", it's a question of a huge and advanced society deciding her work is exceptional enough to be historically significant vs. many competitors.


I appreciate the reminder that there are better places to spend my time than HN


don't be an arse, she's very clearly talented and her work is politically motivated, making it ripe for the picking at an exhibit in the future.

anywho, i was at a farmers market // flea market the other day and walked past this old looking gown. i noticed the price tag was set at nearly $1,000, so i went up to the lady and asked her if she'd made it, why else would it priced so? she laughed and explained to me that she could never dream of being so talented, she was simply invited to an estate sale the previous week in rural Vermont (is there any other kind of Vermont? lol). it happens that the family farm is hundreds of years old and the dress i'd been so captivated by was older than my home state. for being so old, it was in pretty good condition. i learned that it was handmade by one of the daughters of the original homeowner. i asked her why she was selling it here and not hoarding it herself or donating it to a museum. apparently, the daughter was indeed skilled at dressmaking and it was one of a dozen or so such gowns, this being the one in worst condition. a couple were kept by the family, several were sold to collectors, and the rest donated to museums. so, the way i see it, it would not be so strange to see works like this in a museum some day.

[0] https://jacobin.com/2022/07/tabitha-arnold-interview-textile... [1] https://hyperallergic.com/678743/spirited-textiles-capture-t... [2] https://www.disobedientmagazine.com/disobedientonline/2021/0... [3] https://www.carnegiecenter.org/exhibitions/form-not-function...


You must be fun at parties.


Please don't do this here.


you're right how dare they.




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