u/UnholyDoughnuts

I'm sitting in the middle of a final draft of my first novel, so I'm looking for someone to share the writing process with.

It's a contemporary supernatural mystery about a duo investigating haunted objects, starting with a haunted Toby Jug. It's character-driven, occasionally dark, and there's quite a bit of humour in it.

I'm not really looking for a formal critique partner or anything too structured. More someone to talk writing with, swap ideas, complain about difficult chapters, and occasionally send each other something we've written.

Happy to read other people's work too. UK timezone would be handy, but I'm not fussed where you're based.

I can't pick favourite books but I suppose I can with authors. In no particular order:

Tana French, King, Clive Barker, James Herbert, Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams and David Eddings.

My discord handle is the same as my reddit handle if you prefer to message there.

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I'm sitting in the middle of a final draft of my first novel, so I'm looking for someone to share the writing process with.

It's a contemporary supernatural mystery about a duo investigating haunted objects, starting with a haunted Toby Jug. It's character-driven, occasionally dark, and there's quite a bit of humour in it.

I'm not really looking for a formal critique partner or anything too structured. More someone to talk writing with, swap ideas, complain about difficult chapters, and occasionally send each other something we've written.

Happy to read other people's work too. UK timezone would be handy, but I'm not fussed where you're based.

I can't pick favourite books but I suppose I can with authors. In no particular order:

Tana French, King, Clive Barker, James Herbert, Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams and David Eddings.

My discord handle is the same as my reddit handle if you prefer to message there.

Every day someone asks for a job. Its boring, more often than not they get no replies, call it low effort if you like. Its always 16-20 year olds, I've tried telling them to use google and I get downvoted in a thread with 0 comments other than mine.

Maybe i should join the club ignoring them, but i dunno it just makes the community look dead when we aren't.

As the title says curiosity got the better of me and i decided to email woolwarehouse.co.uk before deciding on future orders/brand loyalty. I asked if they're aware of the linked in post and do they use AI and what are there plans for the future? Happy to say i got a great reply and thought I'd share it.

Dear UnholyDoughnuts,

Thanks for your email. We’re aware of the LinkedIn post you’re referring to, and were as surprised as much of the craft community to read what we read! We’re pleased to say we enjoy and embrace our creative photography, and certainly don’t find photoshoots “long and awkward”!!

 

Our website has no AI in it or on it, and our photos are real photos, taken by real people. We do admit to using Photoshop for things such as colour correction, as there are certain parts of the colour spectrum (particularly certain greens and pinks) where the images that come out of the camera don’t accurately represent the colour of the yarn, and need some manual tweaking to get them as accurate as possible. Each and every swatch photo on our website has been taken by us, manually checked for colour accuracy by a human being (Helen!) on a calibrated Eizo colour management monitor, and adjusted if necessary. This is something we’ve been doing for nearly 14 years, and we regularly re-shoot images of older yarns, as we find shades can “drift” over time from certain yarn brands, meaning a photo we took a few years ago may not be a good match to the colour of the yarn being produced today.

 

We can also say with 100% certainty that we don’t have a pro-AI CTO, in fact we don’t have a CTO, or even a CEO for that matter – we’re nowhere near the size of Hobbii! We’re not a private-equity-owned tech company, we’re an independent family-owned yarn retailer. Creative crafters are our lifeblood, and AI poses a huge threat to the community we serve. We have no plans to adopt AI, and events of recent weeks only serve to reinforce that decision!

 

Kind regards,

Adam

Edit - Adam has since been in touch and will inform Helen of her new fan club.

The amount of repeat posts not to mention hourly photo updates of how someone just got a new switch2, or hyperion controllers the new fad of vinyls is getting to the point where every post is a repeat. "I cracked and got pokopia" SO DID EVERYONE ELSE INTERESTED. Maybe I'm old and cranky but this sort of engagement results in a subreddit people quietly leave from and I'm close. Its detrimental to growth and discussion about new games.

The only exceptions being when a new games out and hearing performance/gameplay updates then this sub magically becomes useful before falling back into repetition.