2023-03-05 from the editor of ~insom
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In some of my hobbies, I am beginning to develop preferences
for materials and that's kind of pleasing. I think that as a
computer-person-for-money (Staff Engineer) one of the main
things I do is "have preferences and opinions which you can
back up with experience". Developing preferences in some of
my skill-based hobbies means I am going from the "go to the
shop and buy random material because I don't know what I'm
doing" phase into a more deliberate practice.
For leather, I extremely like working with heavy tooling
vegetable tanned leather. By far-far-far. I don't even know
why I _have_ chrome tanned and pre-dyed stuff; it doesn't
suit what I want to make.
For the metal lathe I want to make things out of aluminium
or brass which fits through the bore-hole in the centre of
the chuck. It is so much more work to turn larger materials.
I've tried a bunch of pigments and media for painting -- the
most natural is turning out to be acrylic and the most
interesting so far is applying oils with small spatulas.
Pastels and water colours can fuck off.
Anyway, this is not just to boast that I am getting good
enough to even care what materials I am using -- it's also
because I'm trying to notice these things more. To feel the
differences between "I practiced my craft and it felt great"
and "I noodled around, it was okay, I guess".
