u/SciSciencing

We're half way through 2026, and for me that means I'm celebrating 6 months of stationery panning! Here's links to my posts from May, April, March and February, and the comment I started the year with.

I've got progress, plans and, unusually for me, actual photos of empties! I remembered the one category that I keep empties for and got a mid-year snapshot.

About halfway through the month I started to fear that all the writing I've been doing while enjoying my inks might be giving me wrist pain, until I realised that a much more likely suspect was Flight Rising's new Canopy Crepes minigame. I can't resist grinding for an achievement, but my pens are blameless and the ink panning is going strong! The wrist pain disappeared a couple of days after I completed the achievement and stopped playing.

I completed my Quarter 2 goals this month, following good progress in April and May, by bringing the remaining washi tape in the project down to 5 rolls. In fact I finished all the offcut washi and all of the original set of washi from the project, leaving only a handful of the more recent additions. I also completed my panning goal for Diamine Polar Glow, to fit the currently-panning sample vial into the other Polar Glow sample vial. Only about 0.5 ml (a small fill) was transferred in the end because I filled a pen before I realised I'd already made that possible.

My mid-month re-inking was a comparison of three similar turquoise inks in a Turquoise Showdown to try to decide which one has a long-term place in my collection, but mostly I just really enjoyed them all together XD I still have more left of the two serious contenders (a bottle of Disdainful Damson, and three more cartridges of Steel Blue) so I can always do the comparison again in a few months, and the third ink for comparison on the repeat will be Aurora Borealis which I'm definitely keeping, instead of Lamy Turquoise which I am definitely not keeping. On that note, that was my last cartridge of Lamy Turquoise, bringing my collection down to 28 inks.

Initially when I added ink cartridges to the project I set myself a goal to use at least 10 total cartridges through the remaining 9 months of the year. In less than three months since setting that goal I've used 9 cartridges already! One each of Kaweco Blue and Lamy Turquoise, plus Orange, Imperial Purple, Grey, Sapphire Blue, Steel Blue, Emerald and Autumn Oak, all by Diamine. I'm going to update that goal to be 25 cartridges, which will leave me with 15 cartridges remaining going into 2027. So far that seems fairly sustainable alongside using at least 1 mL per month of Livid Lime mixes, plus Salix, Scabiosa and my other favourites occasionally.

I'm now rolling my entire washi tape collection into the project, though mostly just for monitoring. I was finding that I felt like I couldn't enjoy my collection while it was out of the project, because I wouldn't be able to appreciate my progress on washi I wasn't 'officially' panning. Now everything is bundled into a handful of categories which I'm tracking the weight on, so while only one of those categories is a new finish-it-completely panning goal, everything can contribute progress by being used.

[S1] - [S2] - [S3] - [S4] - [S5] - [S6]

The fracturehood is now thirty years old! It took me half a real-life year but I finished season 6. I now present some drama, deets and data to sum up the last five years in my horribly-warped mini megahood.

As always we'll start with the season's birth records - this time, a record-breaking 12 babies!

• Olivia Weaving is Buck Grunt's daughter with his former-dormie husband, born into Angela's cult. I'm about to rearrange the cult again to absorb Leod McGreggor, and I think Olivia will be joining the new household without either of her parents to help maintain Angela's control.
• Kody Burb is Jennifer and John's second and almost certainly last child, very much younger than sister Lucy, getting all the attention from both parents since John is staying home and Jennifer has already worked her way up to a cushy job.
• Benjamin and Nicky Ottomas inevitably came along with adding the Ottomases to my fracturehood. I'm coping OK with the Ottomases after the practice of Angela's massive cult households, but they didn't make things easy. Nicky (brown hair, blue bed) has an ultra-boring personality like the rest of the family, while Benjamin (blond hair, yellow bed) has a super extreme personality like you expect from half-alien kids.
• Levon Nigmos is Johnny and Ophelia's FOURTH son and probably last child because the Curious Family Wreath is quite large enough already. This is the comfiest cosiest household you ever saw and Levon is a very lucky lad to be born into it.
• Ruben Woods Burb is Lucy Burb's and her dormie husband's; they're giving all their kids two given names to keep them unique. Money and space are a bit tight at the younger Burb household, so Ruben Woods might have to wait a long time for a room of his own.
• Zaki Caliente will be the first sim to inherit Alexander Goth's heritable fracture; we will be a Pleasure sim. Currently Zaki's living circumstances are very much a 'making do' situation as Alexander wants nothing to do with him, but Bella has stepped in to make sure Nina isn't coping alone (due to her fracture Nina is actually a little younger than Alexander).
• Urania Wilford is the half-alien daughter of 'Heaven Wilford' (Circe Beaker) and unlike Circe's older children might actually be raised like a human being. Circe has kept her existence secret out of habit, except for hiring a Nanny so she can keep working.
• Koyomi Wan is one of the two babies resulting from Patricia and Crystal deciding they want to platonically raise children together to continue their legacies - I think Crystal has gotten a bit swept up in the Life Weaving rhetoric and Patricia is being dragged along for the ride. Genetically, Crystal is the 'father'.
• Xuan Vu is the other baby resulting from that plot, this time a (gender-flipped, personality-scrambled) clone of Crystal. Xuan and Koyomi were born the same day and share a household, but I built two houses on the same lot so Crystal can raise Xuan and Patricia can raise Koyomi but they have their own spaces.
• Oliver Curious is a result of Nervous' continued interest in the night sky and my interest in keeping a little more of Nervous' genetics around. Most of the rest of the Curious Chaos has left for university now, so he has his dad and step-dad's full attention.
• Ellie Martin, the last baby of the rotation, is Jacob Martin's first child - he and Dustin have spent most of their adult lives raising Jules and Dirk's orphaned kids together, but the Dreamer trio are reasonably independent now so a baby isn't too much chaos.

(edit: I forgot to include the baby photo collage >.< Since I can't add photos to an existing post, I'll add it to my next (year 31) update and link it in both directions)

Going forward I think it's going to have to be updates every in-game day because a whole five-day super-rotation is just too much to type up (or read) at once at the 'hood's current size. I feel like I'm leaving out a lot of context so do feel free to ask questions if there's something you're interested in! For now I'll make an attempt at mentioning some non-birth-related key events XD

All the first season's babies are now adults and mixed up in relationships of varying degrees of stability and seriousness. Michaela Goth roped in a dormie as her 'girlfriend' to do her bidding, the others have been pairing off or flirting with anything that moves in accordance with their aspirations.

Evin Pleasant and Racer Curious both achieved their lifetime wishes to have 20 best friends while they were still in university! I think playing rotationally makes this a bit too easy - relationships aren't hard to maintain when you can boost it while playing as either side.

A bunch of the older premade adults became elders - some are carrying on as-is, some are enjoying retirement, and I moved General Buzz Grunt in with Buck in the Cult of Life Weaving as a simulation of him rapidly losing his faculties and being unable to live alone. I don't control him but he manages to keep out of trouble as long as someone cooks for him at mealtimes.

I moved the Ottomases and Ramaswamis in, and Peter and Priya received alien-looking custom skin recessive genes (I flipped a coin for each of Peter's premade kids too). So they're secretly carrying a fracture gene which might cause some interesting drama when it surfaces - neither Ottomas twin expresses it though. Sanjay and Priya are expecting a baby and Peter is wanting to cheat so it may not have to wait long for one or the other to show up.

Alexander Goth, having just discovered that he has an unwanted newborn son by Nina, also got abducted by aliens and got another of his girlfriends pregnant. I'm really torn about whether he might foist those further two kids on Bella, or pretend they're Xander's and hand them over to Morty. I need to decide, also, whether all three of his kids inherit his Pleasure Aspiration curse or just one.

All in all the Fracturehood currently consists of 111 sims (including unborn babies) in 29 households. Of the sims old enough to have an aspiration 12 have Fortune, 13 have Romance, 17 have Popularity, 17 have Knowledge, 18 have Family, and Alexander Goth has Pleasure.

The first things I'll do for the next day in the Fracturehood are probably spending a little while in the uni house getting Dylan Dreamer and Benny Curious settled in, and playing Jill Smith and her wife Tori to find out the genders of their twins.

The kind folks of this sub ID'd this chouke, my only Hoya, for me when I bought it nearly two years ago. Today it bloomed for the first time! I almost didn't dare hope they would actually open, so I was very surprised to find this when I moved it to dust its windowsill.

Thought I'd share this to distribute some flowering luck amongst anyone else here who has been waiting years for their Hoya to flower XD

It took me 7 whole months since the last update, but I finished season 6/year 30 of my Fracturehood! The babies born in my first update have all become adults now, so ahead of my season update, which is going to take quite a bit of recapping and writing, I thought I'd throw in a post to share my adults.

This batch is disproportionately classic/unsurprising pairings, because most of the off-piste pairings needed more than one season to produce children, so there's a good chance you've got full siblings to compare to some of these guys in your 'hood.

Vinnie Curious - Knowledge, 10.5.10.0.10, living opposite the Curious house in a little starter house with Clay.

Rowan Broke - Romance, 3.7.10.10.3, moved back in with Brandi and stepdad Ajay after uni, but now Racer's graduated they'll work towards finding a place together.

River Broke - Popularity, 3.8.4.10.7, found his own place on a shoestring budget and is working on starting a robotics empire, then maybe a mega rockstar. Guy's got Ambitions.

Michaela Goth - Fortune, 2.7.10.7.1, moved back into the Goth mansion and immediately kicked Bella and her younger siblings out. Mortimer really overestimated her benevolence when writing his will.

Clay Greenman - Family, 3.5.9.7.6, moved in with Vinnie, they're either going to be a comfy cosy couple or fall out dramatically over the neat/sloppy and serious/playful clashes.

Racer Curious - Popularity, 2.8.9.8.6, temporarily moved in with the Brokes; not that his relationship with Rowan was that serious but he's just as Broke as Brandi ever was and it feels cooler to move in with his girlfriend's family than his own.

Evin Pleasant - Popularity, 6.8.6.8.6, moved in with River, again not necessarily a super serious relationship but they weren't going to move back in with the Pleasants.

Anyone got full siblings to these guys to share? I don't want to start an essay that no one might care about but feel free to ask questions XD

Bit of a quiet update (here's the last) since it's mostly been just chugging along as planned, but I thought I'd drop in with updated panning box photos and stats for the month in case anyone might be uplifted by some general panning vibes.

This month I passed the stretch goals I set at the beginning of the year for using both sticker sheets (stretch goal was 61 g owned, reached ~56 g) and loose stickers (stretch goal was 50 g owned, reached ~48.5 g), so I'm really happy with that despite the pace slowing down a bit. I'm not going to create new goals for stickers, but I'm also not buying any more or stopping tracking.

At the start of May I inked six pens including using 3 cartridges. In the end I used a fourth plan-to-pan cartridge to bridge May and June since I wrote most of my pens dry, and will probably actually finish that cartridge tomorrow XD So it's fantastic progress on that new goal from last month - one cartridge was also the last of its kind in my collection so I'm down to 29 colours. It seems the 10 cartridges overall goal was a bit too cautious. I really enjoyed having a single many-coloured 'currently inked' last month but I think I'll split June in half to keep inking more balanced - turns out I don't actually own enough pens to stay rainbow all month XD

Solid progress on my more granular quarterly goals too - I sneakily inked up Salix today, counting it for June, so just the washi tapes to really target for those goals through June. After that point I'll probably start looking at my whole washi tape collection the same way I'm currently handling stickers.

I decided to try inking all the pens I expected to ink in a month right from the start, rather than keeping just two or three inked at a time and inking more as needed. I'm not entirely sure this approach is working for me, but it does have the benefit that I can write out a fun 'currently inked' for the month like this.

This year I'm focussing on using up any inks in my collection that I wouldn't rebuy, and I worried a bit that I wouldn't be able to assemble a set of colours to reflect my taste while making good progress on that. Fortunately it turned out that this is pretty much in line with the kinds of colours I'd pick if I was picking freely from my whole collection, just not the exact inks I'd have chosen to represent those colours. I would have leaned more teal/green rather than the two truer blues.

I'm particularly enjoying Orange and Imperial Purple, though I'd usually pick Diamine Ancient Copper for an orange and Pilot Iroshizuku Murasaki-Shikibu or Rohrer & Klingner Scabiosa for a purple.

The Laureat I whose nib size has been obscured by the Al-Star's clip is a Medium if anyone wondered.