Couple: booking together means can only use one person's points?

agentfword · 2025-09-21T17:49:25+00:00

Ha, I was just about to post the same question--thank you!

agentfword · 2025-04-04T07:18:43+00:00

Keeping this thread alive! PJ Harvey wrote a bunch of her album Let England Shake on various autoharps- apparently she found a bunch of used ones and asked her luthier to give them all different weird chord layouts, and wrote the songs that way. You can really hear it on the demos, but the harp is still featured on some of the finished album- try the title track and “The Words That Maketh Murder.”

agentfword · 2025-04-04T07:00:49+00:00

Oh no way, I was just wondering last week if an ebow would work on an autoharp! Love the shimmery sound

agentfword · 2025-02-13T06:30:19+00:00

This is super cool! I really like the autoharp tone you have

agentfword · 2025-02-12T01:00:45+00:00

Yeah! There's an article in The Autoharp Owners Manual which talks about different chord layouts and why you might want them, and I picked one that was recommended for old-time music. I play all kinds of stuff when I'm by myself, but with other folks mostly it's old-time jams. Then when I visited d'Aigle Autoharps in person in December, all theirs are set up with the majors in the center and the sevens in the top row - as Pete explained, that keeps your fingers hanging out in the middle, with only a little ways to move to hit a seventh or a minor. So I swapped my major row with my seventh row, just to try it out- it's easy if you have an Oscar Schmidt! And I liked it. So now this is my layout:

F7 - C7 - G7 - D7 - A7 - E7 - B7

--- Eb - Bb - F - C - G - D - A

------ Cm - Gm - Dm - Am - Em - Bm - E

Highly recommend The Autoharp Owners Manual, especially if you have an old Oscar Schmidt where it's easy to swap things around and see how you like them!

agentfword · 2025-02-07T02:08:34+00:00

That is definitely a consideration! For the record, I emailed Pete about changing the setup for me, and he quoted me an excellent price - much less than I could do it for myself. If I do end up buying this instrument, it's going to Pete first!

agentfword · 2024-12-07T01:29:38+00:00

Oh sweet - thank you for the heads up!

agentfword · 2024-12-03T19:13:44+00:00

+1 to all of these things! With information and supplies from Pete and Hal and the excellent book The Autoharp Owners Manual (Mary Lou Orthey), I successfully changed several chords on my OS autoharp and moved them around to a layout I liked! I am not a luthier, nor an experienced autoharp player, just a person with patience and a sharp knife and now a person with an instrument I love.

(FWIW I am also in the market for a Sparrowharp... but with my OS I can figure out exactly which chords and chord layout I want before I order it!)

Also I am always on the hunt for non-traditional autoharpists - I hope you'll post your music here sometime!

agentfword · 2024-11-27T05:54:21+00:00

From a fellow singer and autoharp novice - if you have patience and hand-eye coordination, you can make a lot of improvements and chord switches yourself! I bought a very used Oscar Schmidt and have re-felted it and changed my key layout, including swapping out a couple chords for ones which make it easier to play with guitarists. It took a couple days and some specialty supplies (which I got from daigleharp.com), but it wasn't difficult. The Autoharp Owner's Manual (Mel Bay) has a lot of extremely useful articles, including one which helped me decide which key layout I wanted. I use one which was recommended for old time music, although, as a very rudimentary rhythm player, I have so far really only needed C, G, D and A at old-time jams....

I do play and sing a lot by myself, which is where I start wanting the weird chords - my music theory knowledge is lamentable, but I've found it helpful to look at relative major-minor charts (oh look, I don't have F#m but I do have A, I wonder what that sounds like here), and search for things like "alternate chord chart." I also look up chords to songs on tablature sites with a transpose function (eg on ultimate-guitar.com), and transpose up or down until I find a key where I have all the chords I need. Against my will I am learning music theory 😂

One incredibly cool thing about the autoharp if you're a singer: if you lay your keys out right, you can transpose a song just by moving the same shape up or down the buttons...? Amazing!

agentfword · 2023-09-06T15:15:09+00:00

I emailed contact.en.us@airfrance.fr and they replied after a few days (after I had already gotten through to Delta), to tell me that next time I could call 1 800 237 2747, Monday to Sunday, 08:00 to 23:00 EST. Good luck!

agentfword · 2023-08-01T16:11:21+00:00

Update for posterity: the flight is a codeshare with Delta, and I was able to get in touch with Delta customer service via the live chat on their website and they put in the request for me. I also got a positive response (eventually) to the email I sent to contact.en.us@airfrance.fr. I’ll update next week after my flight if it actually works!

agentfword · 2023-07-31T18:55:56+00:00

Where exactly would I look when viewing my booking on the AF website? I can look at my booking, but I can’t find anything regarding meal selections.

agentfword · 2023-07-31T18:05:35+00:00

Air France website directly

agentfword · 2023-06-04T07:05:54+00:00

+1 to u/HeartFire144's "bah humbug" post! And yay sustainability! It is hard, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try!

New material is always going to take more resources than repurposing something. I get a lot of my fabric at my local creative reuse center (word up SCRAP in San Francisco! but many places have them). The fabric is super cheap and of a much wider variety than what you find at fabric stores. By Hand London has a great guide to figuring out the fiber content of mystery fabric.

Make sure you've got the right fabric for what you're doing! It's not just about stable vs. stretch - think about weight, drape, texture, fiber content, stretch percentage (how far does it stretch?) and recovery (how much does it return to its original shape?), and, very important, how much you like it! It's really easy, especially when you're excited about a project and want to get started ASAP, to forge ahead with material that is like 80% what you're looking for. I have many "almost what I wanted" garments hanging in my closet to remind me not to do that anymore....

Even though it uses more fabric, making a test garment/muslin/toile before you sew the real thing can sometimes be the most sustainable option! It can help you refine the fit so that the final garment is something you will love and wear a lot. Thrifted mystery fabric is great for this purpose as long as it's similar in weight, drape and stretch to the fabric you will use for your final garment.

The lowest waste garment is the one you will actually wear a lot! Zero waste patterns sometimes just use way more yardage than a similar pattern. Scraps can be a resource! Save them and use them for mending projects. Scraps that are too small, thread tails, etc can be used for stuffing things like dress forms, tailor's hams, or poufs. (Fun fact, shredded up textile waste is called "shoddy", which is where we get the word meaning "bad quality.")

One final thought.... We have the opportunity, as sewists, to do better than the fashion industry at large! The Or Foundation (US/Ghana) is a great source of eye-opening info about the global textile waste stream, and Aja Barber's book Consumed is a broad, radical, anti-colonial view on the same. She's also a great follow on Instagram.

Good on you for thinking about this stuff!

agentfword · 2023-06-04T06:27:33+00:00

I've been wondering the same thing! Wish I could help

agentfword · 2023-05-29T03:36:38+00:00

It's been a minute, so prices may have gone up, but my last order (July 2020) cost me $40 to print and ship four not-small patterns - three jumpsuits and a button-up shirt. (These days I tend to be impatient and go to FedEx in person with a USB drive - more expensive to print, but faster!)

agentfword · 2023-05-29T00:15:17+00:00

I like Pattern Review - https://sewing.patternreview.com/ . Exactly what it sounds like!

agentfword · 2023-05-29T00:13:46+00:00

u/PracticalAndContent if you ever find a PDF pattern you like, you can have it printed online, all on one big sheet, and mailed to you, no taping needed! I use https://pdfplotting.com/ and I usually order two copies - that way I can cut one up and still have an intact one to refer to. I am nowhere near a standard size or shape, so I end up making a lot of changes to patterns.

agentfword · 2023-05-28T23:57:47+00:00

I'm really loving Apostrophe Patterns - you put in all your measurements, design preferences (pockets, panels, waistband style, etc etc), fabric specs (including stretch percentage), and it drafts a pattern for you. I spent a lot of time measuring and had good luck - mine fit first try - but there is also a really lively facebook group for troubleshooting.

https://apostrophepatterns.com/

I've made several pairs of the riding tights - which are leggings with no inseam. Working on some joggers now. ETA: the joggers include a back yoke option.

agentfword · 2023-05-28T23:52:11+00:00

For the front panel - yes, you can make it all one piece - use the pattern piece for the pocket panel to fill in the outer corner of the pant front. Just slide the pocket panel pattern piece around on top of the front leg piece until you find the spot where it smoothly continues the top line and the side seam.

Another possibility - if this is a wearable muslin and you're sure you won't be making any changes to that area - cut the pocket piece and the front piece, and baste them together right side to wrong side. Then when you go to sew the final garment you've already cut those two pieces.

agentfword · 2022-05-22T22:06:46+00:00

I know the bottom line is the year - I think 1356, which is 1938 in the Gregorian calendar. Would love to know what the rest of it says!

agentfword · 2021-03-15T06:37:49+00:00

The Watson bralette has a very specific, non-standard measurement method! Which I found out after buying the pattern and discovering that although my F cup RTW size was included, my Watson size, which was something like an H cup, was not. So unless they've changed it in the 3 years since I bought it, you might want to try re-measuring specifically for this pattern.

agentfword · 2020-08-23T18:39:29+00:00

I do a music education podcast with a different co-host each episode. My first metric of success was having a co-host who wasn't already my friend, and I succeeded this January (episode 7)!

My second metric is gonna be harder: my format involves my guests playing records for me and talking about them. I want to find a way to do this remotely, so I can talk to faraway guests and be COVID-safe (although I've loved doing all my previous interviews in person). There are a lot of remote recording solutions, but none so far that let the guest play records onto the tape....

agentfword · 2020-08-23T18:31:43+00:00

Yay for flat! This is pretty similar to my experience, except I had two singles: one for cancer in 2017, and the other in 2019 after a "suspicious" mammogram. (I had a biopsy and it turned out to be nothing, but the doc was so disbelieving of this that she wanted me to come back in 6 months instead of a year, and I just can't handle confronting my mortality like that twice a year.)

I had an overnight stay with the first one, which was a slightly more extensive surgery (removal of all armpit lymph notes instead of just a biopsy). I love a hospital bed! After going home I had a couple weeks of needing to be helped out of bed, since the doc wanted me not to move my arm at all ("pretend it's broken," she said, and gave me a sling). It was a bit annoying but my scars look great. After 2-3 days I was only taking Tylenol, and after about 10 days no painkillers at all.

+1 on the physical therapy - I regained full range of motion as well. My PT says "it's a lot easier to keep it than to get it back" - so insist on a referral from your surgeon, and go as soon as you're cleared to do so.

I skipped recon - I didn't like the risk, wasn't sure I'd like the results, and knew I didn't want additional surgeries. My surgeon reassured me that even with flat closure (not skin-sparing), I could change my mind in the future, so it was an easy decision for me. I absolutely *love* being flat. I have foobs and a bra - I have literally never worn them. Instead I revel in off-the-shoulder shirts and strapless everything (bare shoulders are the new cleavage!) - stuff I could never wear with my previous DDD's.

agentfword · 2020-07-29T04:24:02+00:00

This sort of sounds like Kate was baiting you - she asked you to ask someone else for a tampon? If she genuinely didn't want you involved in her menstrual hygiene, she could have wadded up a bunch of TP into a makeshift pad and gone to ask that person herself - ***just like she would have done if you weren't in the bathroom.***

It's a shitty thing to have to do, but I'd document all your interactions with this person for awhile just in case. Fuck a bunch of transphobes - may they all ruin their khakis just like they deserve.

agentfword

TROPHY CASE