u/typicalwhisper

please feel free to tell me i’m in over my head. i’m asking for a reality check here!

i’m a competent crocheter but have yet to actually hold knitting needles even once. all that said, i stumbled across a knitted sweater pattern i really would like to make for myself!

i consider myself pretty good at picking up new crafts, crochet came to me very easily. i’d just like to know if a sweater like this would be ridiculous as a first attempt at knitting or if you guys with experience think it’s doable for a confident beginner. i know better than to go in completely blind and would do some test swatches and stuff to figure out the mechanics of knitting before diving in, but is that enough?

tips on where to start if not here would also be greatly appreciated :)

When I say "my artwork", I mean graphics that were created for use by the company I work for. Any legal action will be taken by the company, not by myself. I doubt anything will come of it.

It wasn't even anything that big or important. It was a social media graphic for a recruiting campaign we're running across multiple platforms. My manager had posted it in a LinkedIn group for the role we're trying to hire last week. Today, she scrolled across the same group and saw a nearly identical ad with all of our company's logos removed and the telltale disdain for negative space that AI generated graphics have. It wasn't just recreated in Canva or something, it was just stripped and edited with ChatGPT. Had a digital watermark and everything to prove it.

It feels gross. It feels worse than having a human designer copy my work, which has also happened somewhat recently. It was far from my best work and just a social media graphic at the end of the day, but something about it felt so violating.

I'm sure this will happen many more times in the future. It doesn't change how disgusting it feels right now.

Fair warning, this is really just a vent post. It's not that serious.

Scottsville Ice Arena is underwater and unlikely to reopen under the current ownership.

PLA is in foreclosure and seems unlikely to come back after two different ownership groups couldn't figure out the financial problems there.

Everything else closes down public skate in the summer except for RIC in Fairport, but that's a 40 minute drive out from my side of town for 50 minutes of skating. Kinda not worth the trip.

I'm not a hockey player so I don't dare go to stick & puck sessions, I'll hurt someone or myself in that situation.

It's just really unfortunate that ice isn't more accessible in the summer months. Especially with all the rinks closing down here.

I was hanging out with friends this weekend and one of them started asking me about when I started taking skating lessons. My answer at the time was “I started in March!” so about four months. But as I thought about it later, four months sounds like a long time. But in perspective, I’ve only been able to skate for about an hour every week since public skates closed down for the summer and I don’t have access to the ice otherwise. Realistically, I’ve only been learning for less than 20 hours total. So looking back at how much I’ve been able to accomplish in those 20 hours is actually incredible.

I’m 29 and severely out of shape and overweight. I couldn’t stand upright on the ice without hanging onto the wall or a mobility/balance scooter. Now I’m roughly in LTS 4 (the adult class at my rink doesn’t really follow any curriculum closely) and working on figuring out my edges and building up to forwards crossovers. I’m insanely proud of myself looking back and so excited for what I’ll be able to do when I’m in better shape and stronger.

I don’t know the exact reason I’m posting this. Maybe someone else will read this and help put their journey into perspective as well. Trying new things is hard but I’m so proud of myself for doing it and sticking to it.

Hoping the experts can help me out here!

I’ve been learning to ice skate since March for exercise and have been loving it, but access to ice has been limited over the summer. I want to practice and get a little more exercise throughout the week instead of one 50 minute class once per week. I’m doing this for fitness reasons more than anything (not learning figure skating or trying to play hockey at the moment) so I got myself some Bauer Chamonix boots just to not have to deal with rentals and it’s been going well!

I want to try inline skating to get more practice and exercise. I don’t really want to spend more than $200 but I don’t even know if that’s a realistic budget.

I only have access to the asphalt roads around my neighborhood at this time. I’m just under 250 lbs at 5’ 6” so definitely overweight, but that’s what I’m trying to fix! My feet run a little wide but not extremely so.

I’m looking for boot recommendations, what protective gear I should get, and any tips about teaching myself to skate within this context! Thank you all so much!!

I’m sure this sub gets this question and variations of it constantly. Sorry to add to the noise but I haven’t been able to find an answer that seems to meet my criteria yet!

On mobile, so apologies for formatting.

I started learning ice skating back in March of this year and have really been loving it, but getting on the ice to practice outside of a weekly class has been nearly impossible after the closest rink to me suffered a water main break and has been closed ever since. The other nearby rinks don’t have open skate in the summer or at hours that work with my work schedule.

I’ve started to think that maybe doing some inline skating to help build strength, balance, and muscle would help in the meantime, but don’t have a pair of skates or really know what I need.

Here’s the limitations or conditions I’m working with:

- I’m NOT learning figure skating. I use an ice hockey-style rec skate with a longer, flatter blade than most hockey skates. I don’t want any skates with a toe stop.

- The plan is to mostly just skate around my quiet suburban neighborhood as there’s not many dedicated skate parks or trails in my area. There are no sidewalks so I would be skating on the side of the asphalt road. I’m not sure what wheels/setup work best for that?

- I have not put any sort of rollerblade on my feet since elementary school, and that was about 20 years ago. However, I’m in LTS 4 in my ice skating classes if that makes any difference!

- I’d like to spend under $200 but don’t fully know what skates go for. I’m basing the budget off what I spent on my ice skates.

Any advice is much appreciated!!

monetizing your hobbies is a slippery slope to begin with but it drives me nuts the more i see posts like "i want to sell my [insert craft of choice here]. what items do people buy the most?"

like... it all depends! how are you marketing your stuff? where are you selling it? what type of people attend that event or market and what can you make that will appeal to that demographic? are you creating patterns or just freehanding or using someone else's pattern? there's so many questions and variables before you can even start to recommend a pattern or item that'll likely perform well.

i get it, not all artists or crafters are good marketers. it's a very different skillset and knowledge base. i find that a lot of artists are actually very bad at marketing themselves (it drives me nuts when i see someone with a corner booth who only has their booths accessible/displayed from one side... you have a corner! use both available sides!!).

still... if you want to make money from your craft, you need to have some idea of the people who will buy it. build a customer persona of someone who wants to buy the thing you want to make. figure out where that person would go to buy things. it's actually quite a fun exercise if you put your mind to it.

i should start bringing business cards to craft fairs and handing them out to people who clearly need marketing help. i think that might be more lucrative than trying to sell any of my own craftwork.

I wish I could share it here without doxxing myself. For those who remember me from my logo design client from hell posts, it's unfortunately not the same brand or client. But I'm celebrating this win!

This rebrand has been about 2.5 years in the making. It was talked about long before I even joined this company, but it wasn't until a few months into this job that we actually started to work at it. It's finally approved by ownership and is being launched tomorrow. Of course, as much as my marketing department tried to prepare for this, we weren't expecting the launch to actually go through. I'm sure anyone who works for family-owned businesses understands, it tends to be a lot of micromanaging and hurry up and wait.

But we did it, it's finalized, they're happy with it, and it's being unveiled to the other employees tomorrow.

It's not my first branding project and not the first time I'll see one of my logo designs "in the wild" but it's still exciting nonetheless. I'm celebrating this big win for my career and my whole department.

First time poster here, hopefully this is the right place to look for help!

I recently received a new medical diagnosis and have been instructed to switch to small, frequent meals throughout the day. As someone who doesn’t really feel hungry throughout the day and previously ate most of my calories and nutrients in one large meal in the evening, this is not very intuitive to me and I need help coming up with a plan. I do plan to find a dietician since I have other medical dietary restrictions to work around but until I can get in with one, I need to start this somehow. I’ve been instructed by my doctor to eat low fat and low fiber, and by a separate doctor to eat low oxalate.

I work in an office (no remote opportunity) Monday through Friday, normal business hours, and do have access to a full kitchen in the office. Still, would like to avoid any office faux pas like reheating fish in the microwave and other similarly potent smells.

Right now I’m thinking I’ll eat on a schedule like this:

7:30 am - Small breakfast (premade egg bites? toast with peanut butter and jam? a humble bowl of cereal? I think I have options for this one)

10:30ish am - First snack (I’m thinking some sort of overnight oats or greek yogurt parfaits would make sense here?)

1pm - Lunch (I do eat a small lunch right now, greek yogurt and a protein bar and a piece of fruit, but probably want to change this up a bit as I don’t want to only eat yogurt all day 😅)

3:30ish pm - Second snack (No idea what to do here- maybe salad? veggies with ranch dip? tuna or chicken salad with crackers?)

6pm - Dinner (good on this one, but always open to small portion recipes! This is the only meal of the day I can reliably make a hot meal)

I know it probably sounds like I have a plan but I really don’t, just ideas 😅 So if anyone has any suggestions or recipes to share, I would be very appreciative!!

I have to change up my food habits for medical reasons, on top of already having medical dietary restrictions that I could previously manage by myself, so I’m looking for recommendations on a registered dietitian to help me out and come up with some meal plans!

Google was giving me nutritionists who are peddling weight loss supplements when I tried searching. I’ll also be calling my GP to see if they can recommend or refer me somewhere but I wanted to get feedback from others too!

Maybe because it’s summer and we’re getting into event season, but more and more there’s been posts on this sub that are just AI-generated “flyers” and very little follow up information. It’s disingenuous marketing at best, possibly a scam at worst.

The AI policy in this sub right now is quite ambiguous and hasn’t been enforced on these types of posts. I’m asking if we can put forth a policy that limits ads/solicitations that are low effort and use AI imagery. Especially when it’s a product, service, or event that is asking for people’s money.

I’ve been mulling this question over in my head and trying to see all points of view or have my eyes opened to information I wasn’t previously aware of. I understand that veganism includes an exception of sorts for only going as far as possible and practicable, such as necessary medications including animal products if no alternative is available. My question here is what is the endgame for veganism when it comes to animal testing and research?

I want to include the context that there’s very different types of testing and research going on all over the world right now. I understand that there are unavoidable safety measures involved that may one day be able to be phased out for different kinds of testing, as testing drugs and other products on mice or dogs often doesn’t yield the same results in humans anyway. I’m not necessarily talking about that type of testing, I’m talking more about the research being done to better understand how different organisms function and why biological behaviors differ from species to species. Especially when it comes to medical research.

For example, I’ve been reading about various cancer studies lately where scientists have discovered that bats have an extra set of the gene that manages the destruction of cancer cells, which is why they very rarely develop fatal cancers. Likewise it’s been recently discovered that megafauna like elephants, giraffes, etc. rarely die from cancer because they’re so large that any cancer they do develop often gets killed by a second type of cancer. Once researchers understand why this happens to animals, they try to use this information to help create treatments for humans.

While I’m sure some of this research can be done in humane settings with no more disturbance than the occasional swab, I’m not naive enough to believe that is always (or even often) the case. Dissection of animals remains necessary to understand the body and how it functions. There is so much about this planet and all that inhabit it that remains unknown.

My understanding of the perfect vegan world is that there would be a complete elimination of animal testing. I guess my real question is what is the cutoff for that? Should we not continue to use animals to try to understand their natural defenses against diseases like cancer and how that can apply to humans? Should we not use every tool at our disposal to try to minimize the suffering of future generations? This same research can help all animals, not just humans after all.

What is the endgame? Or is the assumption that the perfect vegan solution will only exist after all possible information is understood?

I’m a total beginner to skating; just started ~8 weeks ago, going to a local learn to skate class once per week. The first 8 weeks I used rental skates. The new session just started today, and I got myself a pair of rec skates to kick it off since I’m having so much fun learning.

WOW!

The rentals at my rink aren’t terrible, but obviously they’re not often sharpened. Before today I had no idea what an edge was or what it was supposed to feel like. I couldn’t believe how much more stable and confident I felt on the ice!!

I’m SO excited to keep learning and improving. Getting my own skates was definitely the best decision I ever made. If anyone else is a beginner like me and on the fence, take the leap! Get the skates! It makes being on the ice so much more enjoyable!!

In case anyone was curious, I got the Bauer Chamonix lifestyle skates after doing my first 8 weeks on figure skating blades. I usually wear a women’s size 8 wide (or 8.5 regular) and the size US 6/EUR 40 fits me perfectly, albeit just slightly snug at the widest part of my foot but I’m confident that they’ll get more comfortable as I wear in some of that padding. It feels like excessive padding compared to what I was used to with the rentals. I had them sharpened at 5/8”. I also ran a wax stick over the laces a couple of times and didn’t have any issues with them slipping or getting loose during my lesson today. My ultimate goal isn’t to get into figure skating; I’m not exactly trying to learn jumps and spins, just basic forward and backward navigation skills. In the back of my head I’m thinking about joining the adult learn to play hockey lessons someday, but it’s not a high priority for me. I kept tripping over the toe pick on the rentals so I’m very happy with these skates so far! I also got a few compliments on the look of them from other people at the rink :)