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wiredferret.bsky.social
Wiredferret!
@wiredferret.bsky.social
5.5K followers 1.1K following 6.6K posts
Explaininator, Sticker Thoughtleader, Marketing nerd. Not straight, she/her. Parent of adults, catbox scooper, wife of @silmaria.bsky.social, Kermit-coded.

Find me at heidiwaterhouse.com

#quilting
#sewing
#knitting
#therbligs
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wiredferret.bsky.social
Fluffernutter has learned another great lesson of Catness: lying on the sewing project to delay progress.
A fluffy tabby kitten lounges on a black quilt back I was trying to repin. Murder mittens! A close-up of the tabby kitten's front paws, which have abundant toe floof.
December 1, 2025 at 4:51 AM
wiredferret.bsky.social
The two things I claim full responsibility for today: molded cranberry sauce (delicious), and linen pants (so swooshy, hemmed for boots I was not wearing). The sweater I knit 10+ years ago.

All the rest of our delicious thanksgiving feast was @silmaria.bsky.social , from turkey to pies.
Slightly weird looking round cranberry molds on an antique green glass cake plate. It's possible that whole berry sauce with clementines segments was not meant for mini-bundt molds. A white woman with pink hair taking a mirror selfie. She is wearing a purple sweater with half sleeves and a v neck, and tan linen pants with very full legs and front pleats. The hems seem too long, but only because she's barefoot. (Feet not appearing in this show)
November 29, 2025 at 5:43 AM
wiredferret.bsky.social
It is! It's a replacement quilt for the one I made my brother as a high school graduation present, which got loved to bits. Also we have better pictures now.

Also I'm embroidering the rovers on.
Two fabric images of the planet Mars. On the left is a photo mosaic in truer color. To the upper right is a much blockier mosaic interpretation in bright red.
November 28, 2025 at 2:50 AM
wiredferret.bsky.social
My thread-catching dumpster continues to amuse me.
A orange quilt being quilted. On top of the sewing machine is a 3D-printed dumpster-shaped thread catching bin. It's white, with black hinged lids
November 27, 2025 at 11:58 PM
wiredferret.bsky.social
I co-wrote a book on how to make software teams that consider users a key part of the product!
An orange book held up in front of fall foliage. The title is Progressive Delivery: Build the right thing, for the right people, at the right time.
November 27, 2025 at 5:01 AM
wiredferret.bsky.social
WOULD YOU LIKE TWO KITTENS I HAVE TWO REFUGEE KITTENS IN MY BEDROOM RIGHT NOW.
A very photogenic long-haired tabby kitten with ear tufts is gazing at the camera with big eyes. It would love living in Boston.
November 21, 2025 at 6:21 PM
wiredferret.bsky.social
This is honestly a huge part of why I taught myself to sew. Which I'm thousands of hours into, and it took a long time to get up to "acceptable for professional wear".

And I'm only small fat.
November 20, 2025 at 5:42 PM
wiredferret.bsky.social
How I come to you this evening:

with the feeling that at any moment, one green eye will open and judge my writing harshly.
A white woman with pink hair and glasses quirks a grin at the camera. Sleeping on the back of her chair is a small grey cat, perfectly positioned to supervise anything appearing on the screen.
November 18, 2025 at 11:15 PM
wiredferret.bsky.social
That's lovely. Lettlopi?

This is my lettlopi sweater.
Icelandic style sweater with a zip. Colors are glacier blue, pine green, medium green, and natural white. Back view of the same sweater.
November 13, 2025 at 6:09 AM
wiredferret.bsky.social
I got this yarn in Dublin, and I love everything about it. So crunchy and springy.
5 skeins of yarn in a blueberry color with flecks of yellow, pink, and red. The tag says it's from Kerry Woolen Mills, and each skein cost me 15 Euros. Other side of the tag: 100% PURE NEW WOOL, breed unspecified. Colour: Blue Fleck.
November 13, 2025 at 4:47 AM
wiredferret.bsky.social
Contrast this with this Elizabeth Zimmerman book, which has luxuriant, enormous margins, uncoated paper, and good contrast. It begs for note-taking.
A book open on a table. It has margins almost as wide as the text, and well-spaced and sized black font. The photography is way less showy, and grey scale, but I can READ IT.
November 13, 2025 at 2:23 AM
wiredferret.bsky.social
Dear book designers:

Please consider the probable demographics of your readers, or, indeed, basic humanity, before you create a page with tiny grey on grey text printed on glossy paper.

The author worked hard on those words!
A book held open to display text made unreadable by font size, lack of contrast, and paper sheen.
November 13, 2025 at 2:12 AM
wiredferret.bsky.social
I am at the research stage of an aran sweater for myself.

I should have started sooner if I wanted to be able to work on it from the waiting room tomorrow.
An array of books. From left to right: - The Gansey Knitting Sourcebook - Knitting Without Tears - Viking Patterns for Knitting - the Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns - Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitting Workshop
November 13, 2025 at 12:52 AM
wiredferret.bsky.social
Also also, these are not the breasts of any ordinary chicken. I think they may be trying to breed back to t rexes. Look at the size of these monsters.
Four chicken breasts so large that they take up a whole baking sheet. Literally the size of a turkey breast.
November 13, 2025 at 12:26 AM
wiredferret.bsky.social
OK, knitterati, how do we think this worked?

1) This is The Aran Store in Dublin. I expect everything is flat knit and seamed. I will not be doing that.
2) My first instinct is to knit the body round, steek it, and add the inner flap and folded-over collar at the same time as the zipper.
The hem of a grey aran-style sweater, showing that the front panel is overlapped. The front of a grey aran-style vest. It has an asymmetrical cabled collar. Down the left-front, as worn, is a band of plain ribbing in contrast to the opposite side, which has a cabled band in the same place. The same sweater as previous, but now the plain vertical band is revealed to have a zipper inset into it, with an underflap, a panel cabled similarly center front panel. In short, it's like a moto jacket closure on an aran.
November 12, 2025 at 8:28 PM
wiredferret.bsky.social
Aurora! In the front yard!
A pinkish aurora and a single star on a sky framed by bare branches. Reddish aurora in a fall night sky. Greenish blue aurora with a cityscape in the background.
November 12, 2025 at 3:17 AM
wiredferret.bsky.social
Look what they did to my boy!
A lower limb has been ripped off a cherry tree by big bully trees.
November 11, 2025 at 11:58 PM
wiredferret.bsky.social
By the third one, I managed to get it to only brush the cherry tree.

The fourth and fifth were both going the correct direction, but then BOUNCED OFF ANOTHER TREE AND INTO THE CHERRY TREE.

LOOK AT THESE BASTARDS.
Two long tall trees fallen and bracketing a poor beleaguered small cherry tree. In the foreground is a tangle of electrical cables and ratchet straps.
November 11, 2025 at 11:58 PM
wiredferret.bsky.social
Excuse me, I need to update my personal style guide to use this citation method:
A "Do nothing!" option allows decision makers a chance to reconsider and to escape the paradox early on, before a lot of money is spent on it. If you think this is hooey, please read Jerry B. Harvey, The Abilene Paradox: The Management of Agreement, Organizational Dynamics, Vol. 17, No. 1, Summer, 1988, pp.16-43.
November 11, 2025 at 1:31 AM
wiredferret.bsky.social
I'm currently reading Wicked Problems, Righteous Solutions (1990). I need to share this with you:
22. Wicked Problems, Righteous Solutions Some of them are: Ada and other high-order language advances, object-oriented programming, artificial intelligence, expert systems, automatic programming, graphical programming, program verifica-tion, CASE, and workstations. Fred Brooks considers these as candidates for the title of Silver Bullet. [Brooks 1987] To him, a Silver Bullet is the magical device that saves us from the monsters that our familiar software projects sometimes turn into, just as familiar people were sometimes transformed unexpectedly into werewolves and were laid to rest by silver bullets. But, he says, they are directed at the accidents of software engineering, not the essence of it, and, therefore, cannot have the productivity impact claimed for them. The real issues, he says, are complexity, conformity (and by this he means that software must bend to the arbitrariness of the human institutions and systems to which the software must provide an interface), changeability, and invisibility. To him, the real impact will come from buying versus building, prototyping, incremental devel-opment (grow-don't build software), and great designers.
November 11, 2025 at 12:46 AM
wiredferret.bsky.social
It’s our book birthday! You can now buy the Progressive Delivery book and join the conversation about adding the user to the software development lifecycle!

progressivedelivery.com/pre-order-pr...
A book named “Progressive Delivery”, held in front of some pretty marigolds, held by someone wearing a sweater with fuzzy green sleeves.
November 4, 2025 at 2:38 PM
wiredferret.bsky.social
I finished knitting my #MandelbrotSweater! I'm pleased with how it turned out.

(Also our book launches tomorrow!)
A woman wearing a colorwork sweater knit in lett-lopi. The body of the sweater is a light aqua, the hem and cuffs are dark green, and the colorwork at the yoke is medium green, natural white, and dark green. A zipper in front makes it a cardigan, and there's almost no rippling She is holding an orange book titled Progressive Delivery. Back view of the same sweater. The hem is at low hip/high thigh length.
November 3, 2025 at 10:59 PM
wiredferret.bsky.social
TOMORROW IS THE DAY! You'll be able to read/listen to Progressive Delivery at long last.

Want to hear from someone who has already read it? What about our own @kentbeck.com ?

Preorder page: progressivedelivery.com/pre-order-pr...
"Art goes into shipping early and often, art that has, until now, been passed on as folklore and campfire stories. _Progressive Delivery_ brings the art of responsibly shipping early and often into the daylight.. Software serves people, not the other way around, & _Progressive Delivery maps out how." -- Kent Beck, author of _Test-Driven Delivery_
November 3, 2025 at 5:59 PM
wiredferret.bsky.social
Update: a pettin has been permitted.
A slightly blurry picture of a fluffy tabby accepting pets from a human.
November 3, 2025 at 4:20 PM
wiredferret.bsky.social
And now @silmaria.bsky.social is playing cat TV for Fluffernutter.
A small fluffy tabby is LOCKED IN on an iPad. It is up on a bed with grey sheets, within touching distance of a human.
November 3, 2025 at 4:02 PM