The post-holiday cleanup was a little bumpier than usual. I did get the machines all cleaned and oiled without losing any screws or cracking any plastic bits, so I have that going for me. The software side... slightly less so.

I updated both computers' OS, and thought it all went well... until my Inkscape started freezing up, and my blog software failed to run. So I've been battling both of those for the last couple weeks. The solution in both cases? Delete old bits of software that didn't go away when the new versions got installed. I haven't run into this in a couple years because I've done scratch installs instead of upgrades (because of new hardware and such).

With that hopefully behind me, I'm ready to jump back into the testing backlog. I've got the monkey barrel, a clog (the famous shoe) charm, another bow, a primitive (raw-edge) bunny, and a penguin ready to test, along with some revised designs I'm hoping to put together for the Valentine printables. The official February design - a carousel horse - is almost ready, though I may push it back a week so I can do a bunch of different decorations, and drop the penguin on the usual date.

But the real news is the new baby in the family. We've had 3D printers before (including an early-adopter MendelMax) but, long story, I nabbed a Bambu P1S right before the big snowstorm. We're still mostly in "print for the printer" things, but I've printed a spool holder for the MemoryCrafts, important since the monster Isacords don't fit on the internal spindle.

What I'm really excited about is printing horns and other accessories for plush dragons and whatnot, and "carriers" for things that will take embroidered inserts (like I did with laser-cut dice trays some time back, except actually engineered to take a layer of marine vinyl or felt. And also cases for the wifi USB sticks with the screen add-on, so I can put together finished ones that are just plug-and-play.

I absolutely did not plan for this.

Normal blogs are doing a twelve-month retrospective. This is not that. Instead, I got my pedantic/ADHD self into doing twelve bonus designs (well, eleven since the Yeti is the monthly, but also twelve if you count the Cheers Words design that is kind of an offshoot of the Speech Bubble).

So, for the Twelve Days of Christmas, I gave my supporters:

One Kawaii Yeti

One Gem (Heart)

One Diskette

One Gem (Trillion)

One Scissors Guard

One Gem (Cushion)

One Double Bow

One Finish Strong

One Camico Cat

One Speech Bubble (and some Cheers Words)

One Gem (Brilliant)

and a Sitting Bear, not in a tree.

Aside from the Yeti, these will probably stop being free-to-supporters at the end of January, so sign up on Ko-Fi or Patreon now if you want a good deal. (The non-bonus designs are always free for three months.)

Most of these were things I'd done but never fully tested/polished for production, and honestly it was a good exercise just to remind myself that getting a design out the door can be pretty simple (if tedious and slightly time-consuming; I need to automate more of it).

I did get some side projects done as part of it: fixed (or at least made a formal work-around) the encoding issue with accented characters, fixed the missing accented characters in Bluenesia, made a bean-stitch version of Chicken Scratch. Both the latter alphabets will be in the next release of Ink/Stitch, so that's nice.

And now I have a plan for what I'm doing next: cleaning and oiling both active machines (normally a post-Christmas-rush thing, and they really need it), updating the sadly-neglected newsletter (and automating the blog-to-newsletter thing, which I keep forgetting to push the button on), and then the next designs: I Love You This Much, Primitive Bunny, Clog, Sit Here, and Valentines.

Whew.

I put together a simple little polar bear charm, posted it on the 26th, and said "on the second day of Christmas" because it annoys me when marketing types do a "twelve days of Christmas" countdown to Christmas. Christmas is the first of the twelve days of Christmastide, which end at Epiphany.

So, uh, that sort of led to doing a design a day. Not sure if I'll keep up with it, since while I have a lot of WIP designs I've been doing them just-in-time. If I'd planned this I'd've made a buffer.

So far:

One Finish Strong

One Camico Cat

One Speech Bubble

One Gem (Brilliant)

and a Sitting Bear, not in a tree.

Combined with the random designs I've done through the month, this is a ridiculous amount of stuff for a $3 membership (which, TO BE CLEAR, guarantees one (1) design per month).

I don't really have a plan here... the "Cheers" set should have come after the Speech Bubble but I discovered that something between the Perl parser and Ink/Stitch corrupts the labels that include extended characters, so I am battling that and whipped up the Camico Cat (that's not a typo) to fill in. I have four gem shapes (heart, trillion, and cushion are forthcoming) but wanted to space them out since they're all very similar. And the Yeti will land on the 5th, as the official guaranteed January design.

That still leaves three slots to go... though I just realized I haven't tested the tiniest Bow stackable, so I guess that's two.

Okay, I have updated almost all of the shop entries, though I haven't got all the direct Patreon links in there as of this writing. Here's what's new since I last blogged about them:

• The Snek, a simple, cute little ball python plushie (or other variants). 5x7 and up can wrap around your wrist.
• The Dragon Stacker, a sleepy little felt/vinyl dragon to stack with other things - originally the Crystal Ball, but a Christmas-colored one is going on a big Peppermint on my front door.
• Yardline Buntings, a quick-to-stitch little set of buntings for your football get-togethers.
• Halloween Cookies, a somewhat misnamed (it now includes the Thanksgiving turkey and Christmas tree ones) design to make life-sized versions of famous cut-and-bake cookies.
• The Moneybag Emoji, which seems oddly specific except it includes a trashbag and Santa sack variant.
• Coin and Card Slots, a freebie add-on which converts the Moneybag or any large-enough key fob into a holder for coins and cards (or cash).
• Peppermint Rounds, a versatile round design that makes peppermint candies, including both texts and two monogram variants.
• Nerd Christmas, a set of Christmas ornaments (the potion bottle is not Christmas-specific with a different tag) for D&D players. Behold!

I've been pretty busy despite hopping around with a semi-functional knee, and I've spent some of my enforced rest making even more things, though I haven't been able to get to all of them now that I'm back to the machine. All of these have been free to tier members, which is considerably more than the "one charm design a month" minimum. The Ko-Fi and Patreon memberships are open, and you'd get all of these designs if you joined before end of the month.

It's been awhile! I keep meaning to blog but first I gotta fix the shop and then I gotta fix the template and then I gotta... oh no, it's been a few MONTHS?!

I know I said I would only blog when I have something to say but I have put out SO MANY DESIGNS in between. Also I have a new knee (and I'm getting a second one in March, if all goes well).

Anyway, I gotta fix the shop. Both Ko-Fi and Patreon are working just fine, but the on-site pages have all the stitch counts and whatnot. I mean, they're all in the downloads, but I like to have them out there for you to see before you buy, and none of the storefronts have a real place for that.

I've complained about the time-sink that website maintenance is before, and I'm doing it again. The maintenance, not the complaining. Well, maybe a little complaining.

I launched the rebuild without having the file library in place, which means there are a lot of "File has expired" type notes in older freebie posts. But there was also a dead link in the Converting a USB machine to Wifi tutorial, so if you were looking for the watchdog file, it's now been restored.

I'm also working on a completely revised version of the wifi USB image, which will have a built-in web server so you can upload files and manage the Pi without ever looking at a command line. Another thing on my stack of "things to do at a keyboard rather than the embroidery machine."

I also need to fix some images; apparently the little lockdown bear was really popular with the conversion software and it substituted it for a lot of other pictures. I also still have a lot of "blue neon text on black" placeholder pictures for things like the Tutorials page, so that's also on the to-do list.

The "good" news? I finally broke down and scheduled knee replacement surgery, so I'll have a certain amount of extra "at a keyboard rather than the embroidery machine" time. But probably not too much: recovery is supposed to be fairly fast, and then I will hopefully be in "why didn't I do this years earlier?" mode and EMBROIDER ALL THE THINGS

Me, after the July design once again consumed over a week of my time: Okay, I am going to do a cute little charm and it is going to be JUST a cute little charm, not a cute little charm that turns into three different designs like the brain and two jars thing. And not a charm that requires special instructions like the coffee wrap thing. And not a charm that requires an entire rewrite of the software like the retro TV one. Just a cute. little. charm. I will do a few sizes, and the usual charm/plaque/bunting things, and that's it. Not even any alternate designs; the sizes/types are enough variation for the basic charm.

Me, getting ready to do the August design: Okay so since it is just a plain round it will be compatible with the fill, knockdown, both appliques, plaque, charm, both buntings, snap tab, AND patch. No problem.

... I should probably add the patch to the general instructions, huh

... oh wow, I have not updated the instructions in awhile, I should probably do that

... and make a web version of it

... which means I should write a utility that exports the same text/pictures into both PDF and web so I don't have to manually synchronize them

... oh no, this has turned into a week-long project yet again, hasn't it

Yes, yes it has. So the August design currently has the regular ("2024") instructions, which don't explain the new Patch type, plus some basic notes in the design-specific instructions. (The technique itself is pretty simple, but I will have some discussion of patch-making materials and so forth. For now, you can get that on other embroidery websites like Urban Threads'.)

But after that, I'm going to update the General Instructions, make a web version too, and then I'll update the shop entry on the Demo Pack so you can download just the new PDF if you want. And because I'll need some new pictures, there will be a new freebie in the demo pack, and that's what the image at the top is.

Oh and on top of that? Patreon has discontinued their "shop" function, right after I built my whole business model on it. I exaggerate, but I can no longer make the previous two months' rewards available to new members the way I did there and on Ko-Fi. It's fiiiiiine, it just means I really need to get the self-hosted thing available so I can just have Ko-Fi and Patreon trigger the local shop. They have webhooks for it and everything, it shouldn't be hard. (Narrator: yet somehow it will be)

If you are the one (1) person who has signed up for blog posts by mail, you've hopefully seen the first blog post and weekly digest go out. (Odds are good it went in your spam folder because that's the state of email these days, but whatever.)

I also sent out an embroidery newsletter (I forgot I had set up an embroidery newsletter!) though I'm still tweaking bits of the archive setup. The archive lumps everything together which may just be how it is, and the extremely-default template isn't showing what list things are from, but: here is an examplle.

And, starting with the last post,I have re-started the Bluesky posting (which shows up at https://bsky.app/profile/silverseams.com rather than in my conversational account at https://bsky.app/profile/silverseams.bsky.social) so once I get the template re-connected I should have the minimalist comments/likes back.

The newsletter signups are all here though the indexed ones are still Buttondown leftovers.

The July design is out: the Coffee Wrap. Bonus Kid looked at the collection (this is not even all of them) of testers and asked if I was making a design, or making things to sell. It did end up looking like enough to stock a booth.

It's been kind of annoying to have nothing else to report beyond "I am working hard behind the scenes, I promise" but... that's kind of it. Mostly. I've been doing some design creation that hasn't made it to the machine yet:

(not visible: each of those files is a four-design set)

When I said I needed to "pause to do the July design" I did not mean "pause for nearly a month" but that's kind of what ended up happening. Sort of. See, part of the reworking of the packaging software involved nesting options. That is, things like "include this stitch run but only if it's a Plaque and Applique." And also multiple groups of stitches for the options, like "if it's the Antenna option, choose the Tackdown that includes it, the actual Antenna fill, and the final Outline stitch that includes it."

And I had that mostly working for PlinkStar, so when I ran into a limitation of the old software, I thought: why not use it for the software that creates the all-permutations packager? And so that's what I did: now I have PlinkPackager, and that's what built the Coffee Wrap. I made some changes in the file structure, and now there's a different ZIP archive for every format of embroidery file: PES, JEF, and so forth. Every archive has the instructions/colors/etc. files, so you only have to download one ZIP now.

Part of the extended "pause" was other factors, though: we've had storms more days than not, and the embroidery machine doesn't run on a proper UPS, just a basic surge suppressor. So I've spent a lot of that time working on the laptop, and building up some simple (really! absolutely simple!) designs for a buffer.

I put together a template of every possible permutation of round objects, in part because I intend to revise the General Instructions and I want plenty of examples. So: charm (turned plush), plaque (or feltie), bunting (plaque with a slot to thread a ribbon through), vertical bunting, applique (to put the design on something else), outer applique (where the satin is outside the design, to be the color of the base fabric or a contrast outline), fill, and knockdown.

Of course, it's the making of tests/samples and the photography that really eats up the time, so we'll see how efficient this really is.

I've got a working title for the software: PlinkStar. "Pl" for the usual Perl extension, "ink" for the Inkscape+Ink/Stitch it uses under the hood, "Star" for "starman" that lets it run as a web service.

Things are progressing well, though I'm going to have to pause to do the July design. But I've got the front end for the customization software almost ready for testing.

If you looked at the background of the previous entry's title image, you saw a pretty technical-looking setup. I've changed direction somewhat, because there's really two applications of this software, and I was going too far into the wrong one.

For myself, the software has been a way to set up very structured Inkscape designs, over and above the usual Ink/Stitch markup. If you look into them, they're nested layers with special names that signal things to the processing software that produces all the variations. I was making something that built those: all kinds of knobs and dials to twiddle to set things up.

But!

Most of you will want the other application, which is the one that takes an already-built design and just says "I want a TV set plush with an antenna and a X__X face, that is the biggest my 6x10 hoop can make."

And that's what I'm doing.

I'm going to update the Demo Pack to this format, which will give me a couple advantages over the TV: it's a free design, so I don't have to limit access to people who've bought it. And it's a charm and snap tab set, so I can make sure multi-design pages work right. Plus, a little further into testing, one of the sizing things I want to do is let you say "I would like to fill a 5x7 hoop with the small fobs, but rotate every other one so they nest better."

I failed on the first item of my to-do list.

upload current versions of all of my designs to Nextcloud

I thought it would be a neat idea to upload not just the ZIP file of the design, but the full file structure so you could go through the folders and choose the specific stitch file you wanted, just as though you'd unZIPped it on your own hard drive. You still should download the full ZIP for your own archive, of course, but it would be a nice convenience feature to offer.

Except.

Turns out the Retro TV is about a third of a gig compressed, and having both the archive and the file structure overflows the default 1GB space allotted to the library. Now, I'm the boss of that user so I could just increase its limit, but it also lives on a 40GB virtual machine. I could also increase the storage on that, but that just seemed excessive. I ran a little comparison (if you're in the Discord you saw it), and the TV is huge compared to most other designs. Sugar Bunny approaches it, in sheer number of variations, but not much else. Part of that, I realized, is that I included GCODE as well as the actual embroidery-machine formats. I am going to yoink that from the formats: anybody technical enough to be using GCODE is also technical enough to be exporting it from the SVG themselves.

On which note: I think I'm going to push some items onto the top of the to-do stack. I've been contemplating the little stitch-exploder utility, and if I deliver an unexploded SVG and a utility (Windows/Mac/Linux capable) that will let you produce exactly the options and size and format you want, instead of the giant ZIP package of pre-created ones, that will save a lot of space. I can even hook the back-end of the utility into the web server, so it can drop the finished file into your Nextcloud account and you don't have to install the utility yourself.

So that changes my to-do list a bit:

• write a minimal version of the stitch exploder (option/size/format select and export)
• implement a version on the web
• recruit a few Ko-Fi/Patreon members as guinea pigs and give them Nextcloud invites
• upload current versions source SVG and instructions for of all of my designs to Nextcloud
• re-link currently-unavailable freebie files
• experiment with Nextcloud's sharing functions and settle on some best practices
• automate sharing new releases for tier members
• automate sharing new purchases for all customers
• import all past customers into the mailing list software
• send out Nextcloud invites to all of them
• add all past purchase histories to Nextcloud
• whew

Just when I said "that's enough emoji adaptations, I need to get back to original designs," I thought about another capture design like last month's Canning Jars and realized: the TV emoji would be a fun thing to do that with. You don't have to do a capture, of course, but adding a clear vinyl cover for the screen is a neat touch no matter what version you've chosen.

The pictures on the entry are a little sparse because I'm having trouble syncing my phone tomy new computer, and I have to basically email them to myself. That should clear up today or tomorrow, though.

TL;DR: I've written a tutorial on using my embroidery designs to make sewn plushies and the Retro TV design is about to drop. The rest of the post is just me venting and then prognosticating.

It is possible that I shouldn't have made quite so many radical changes all at the same time.

• New blog software
• New blog host
• New PC
• New OS install
• New Inkscape
• New Ink/Stitch
• New month (i.e. new Charm Tier release)

I didn't think any of it was a big deal, except it's time-consuming, and didn't leave me much wiggle room for the release. And something about the new setup (not even sure if it's the hardware or one of the many changed software) means the compilation of the design variations suddenly went from taking a few hours at most to... well, I'm not sure because I didn't let it finish, but if my projections are correct it would have taken over a week to build the Retro TV package.

(I broke it into three parts and it's still taking a few hours, then I will stitch out a few more to make sure everything generated correctly, then it will be released. But not by the time this entry publishes.)

ANNNNYWAY.

It's been keeping me from what I really want to be doing, which is setting up more stuff on that new blog host. I mentioned some of it in the last post, but since I am bored and waiting on that design to generate I'll expand on my vision a little more.

Going through the blog history cleaning things up was a little depressing: I've tried out so many different platforms to sell on. Let me sum up where I'm at with them, in case you're looking for one yourself.

• Etsy - pros: lots of handholding/automation for shipping physical goods, good name recognition with customers. cons: fees are enormous, marketplace effect is tanked by AI/resellers, software has had some major, major screwups lately, absolutely does not allow updating digital goods for prior purchases WTF.
• Shopify - pros: best shop software hands-down, shopping cart can be embedded in a site. cons: they let Nazis sell there!
• Gumroad - pros: second-best shop software, allows multiple membership tier tracks. cons: CEO is a garbage person who worked for DOGE to dismantle the country!
• Ko-Fi - pros: low fees, allows PWYW, tier capability is maturing. cons: marketplace effect is pretty minimal, physical-goods shipping flow is minimal
• Patreon - pros: everybody knows their name, digital-goods distro is superb. tier capability is mature. cons: no physical goods selling at all, shop function is new (nobody knows you don't have to be a member to shop there), fees are not as bad as Etsy but still high-ish.

All of these continue hosting stuff even after I've shut down my shops, so you can in theory always get what you bought. But I'm not going to update Shopify or Gumroad files ever again, and Etsy won't let me even if I wanted to. Plus, you never know if they're going to go out of business or just lose everyone's data or whatever, so I like to have control over things. (You should also have control over things: always make and keep your own copies, and not just on USB sticks!)

Right now, I can once again create local download links (the temporarily-unavailable freebie files scattered through the blog archives will be coming back online soon), and send out manual invites for Nextcloud accounts. That's super-handy, especially for Ko-Fi where I can't just attach a file to a member post like I can on Patreon. Sometimes I don't want to create an entire shop entry for a spur-of-the-moment freebie, after all.

My to-do's right now, in approximate order of priority:

• upload current versions of all of my designs to Nextcloud
• re-link currently-unavailable freebie files
• recruit a few Ko-Fi/Patreon members as guinea pigs and give them Nextcloud invites
• experiment with Nextcloud's sharing functions and settle on some best practices
• automate sharing new releases for tier members
• automate sharing new purchases for all customers
• import all past customers into the mailing list software
• send out Nextcloud invites to all of them
• add all past purchases to Nextcloud
• whew

I'm really hoping to get back into the whimsical-freebie era again.

In hindsight, maybe leaving a blog post about a health scare up as the last post for a month-and-a-half was not my best idea. I'm fine, I've just been head-down in the blog revamp. I posted an interim post and then only published it in the new version because I'm a genius. I'm going to leave it in place though it looks a bit back-dated now.

In any event, here we are. I've got the blog, newsletter software, and a file share set up. The last thing isn't quite as automated as it will be, but at the moment I can manually send out expiring links for any files I want. Eventually you'll be able to log in and download the latest version (or older versions!) of all my designs you own. This is not as big a deal for Patreon/Ko-Fi, but some previous platforms (Etsy!) don't allow buyers updated access to current versions.

There are still some dead links, particularly in freebie downloads which I haven't gotten into the new file setup yet, but I'm working on those. But first: the Ko-Fi membership window opens tomorrow, and the new design is (kind of) up there in the header: the retro Noto TV, a fun little design with applique, capture, and fill options. It'll drop on Monday, so if you sign up now you'll be able to get the still-active March design along with the April, May, and June designs. The charm tier reward tag always shows the currently available downloads, and the Patreon members get the same thing.

I've also posted a new tutorial, though not a sewing/embroidery one. One of the important bits of any blog is its RSS feed, a quiet little bit of technology that Mark Zuckerberg and his ilk would prefer you didn't know about. You don't need social media silos. I'm going to do more tutorials like that but for embroidery, though patrons will get to see them first.

I was legitimately not sure what to put for the image here, since I used the Sad JoAnn for the "before" picture, and the shiny new JoAnn that replaced it is now sort of a different metaphor. And then I thought: what better than the auto-generated placeholder image? This one, and this one alone, is the right image. I've finally stomped the last vestige of WordPress: the directory structure for older blog-post images. Not all the links got correctly converted, so I'll be manually reuniting some blog entries with the photos they once had, and in the meantime there will be black/neon placeholders here and there.

I've dropped a couple of new designs which entirely consumed my life the last couple days. Specifically, the jar. Made a Brain Emoji design because my brain has been giving my so much trouble lately and I thought it would be funny to combine it (the emoji, not my brain) with the Kawaii Faces and then I thought it would be funny to make the jar emoji to put the brain in.

And then I started coming up with all the different ways to capture things in clear vinyl while making it, or make it a pocket to put interchangeable stuff in, and then it seemed weird to put bugs and frogs in a sealed jar so I dug the Lemonade Jar out of the (as yet unpublished) Pitcher Perfect pack, took out its lemonade and, well.

Normally my basic charms need a single page of documentation, giving the specific sizes to cut, seam allowance clipping points for the turned versions, and maybe a couple notes on variations that don't scale as well on certain fabrics. There's a Demo Pack with generalized instructions that covers everything else generically. The Canning Jars have five pages of instructions, with pictures, for all the alternate choices. So yeah, got carried away with the "simple" monthly designs again.

Anyway. Think it's about time to throw the switch for the changeover, after which you should see a related-pages section for all the things I just mentioned. That's something I've been meaning to do for awhile, so I'm kinda happy about it.