2023-03-05                         from the editor of ~insom
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   In some of my hobbies, I am beginning to develop preferences
   for materials and that's kind of pleasing. I think that as a
   computer-person-for-money (Staff Engineer) one of the main
   things I do is "have preferences and opinions which you can
   back up with experience". Developing preferences in some of
   my skill-based hobbies means I am going from the "go to the
   shop and buy random material because I don't know what I'm
   doing" phase into a more deliberate practice.

   For leather, I extremely like working with heavy tooling
   vegetable tanned leather. By far-far-far. I don't even know
   why I _have_ chrome tanned and pre-dyed stuff; it doesn't
   suit what I want to make.

   For the metal lathe I want to make things out of aluminium
   or brass which fits through the bore-hole in the centre of
   the chuck. It is so much more work to turn larger materials.

   I've tried a bunch of pigments and media for painting -- the
   most natural is turning out to be acrylic and the most
   interesting so far is applying oils with small spatulas.
   Pastels and water colours can fuck off.

   Anyway, this is not just to boast that I am getting good
   enough to even care what materials I am using -- it's also
   because I'm trying to notice these things more. To feel the
   differences between "I practiced my craft and it felt great"
   and "I noodled around, it was okay, I guess".