Mon, 25 Sep 2023

The September release is out: gumdrop cats. Or blob cats. Or, as the filename originally started out, bean kitties.

They're little rounded kitties with happy faces and crooked tails. I haven't done a fully 3-D since the flopsy elephant, and it was time for a fun single-piece plushie.

It wasn't without its issues, though: I sidetracked on a variant body (which I'm really ambivalent about) and when I decided it was time to quit tweaking it and just finish the basic design, my USB cable shorted out. Yes, singular.

If you're not familiar with the wifi USB drive I use, it's a single-board computer that pretends to be a USB stick to the embroidery machine, but is a computer on the wifi network to the other computers. It's much less squirrelly than the usual way an embroidery machine networks. I just drag-and-drop my files to what looks like an ordinary directory. It's very easy and I never have to deal with physical USB sticks, but it also requires a special cable to keep the tiny computer from trying to send power to the embroidery machine, which a USB stick never would.

"Never have to deal with" means I packed up the USB sticks... somewhere.

So the design doesn't presently have a proper assortment of kitty sizes, and the instructions show the variant body rather than the plain gumdrop (the difference is just one curve, but I am particular about these things). And until I go get some electrical tape, my embroidery machines are out of service.

I've been making good use of my time, though: the Discord is set up and linked to the Ko-Fi and Patreon memberships, and the new website template is in place.