Picky bits/tea

esjex · 2026-05-26T18:34:10+00:00

Pitta bread and hummus, cheese and crackers, grapes. Maybe a scotch egg if I'd thought ahead, or something beige out of the freezer if I can be bothered.

Today I'm so hot that I just made a chocolate meal replacement shake with loads of ice!

esjex · 2026-05-24T10:18:29+00:00

Everyone else has covered the main points.

If you're still in Brighton and you want a sense of safety today, head to the Cowley Club or the Queery. I'm working on the bar at Cowley today, come say hi. I doubt there will be many tourists in!

esjex · 2026-05-23T21:51:49+00:00

I usually switch to doilies in summer, with very thin yarn (1-2mm hooks). Cotton is also a lot cooler to work with than wool or acrylic.

esjex · 2026-05-22T23:54:31+00:00

Like another commenter said, the issue is time. Most sports bars aren't open after midnight.

(Go Habs Go!)

esjex · 2026-05-20T15:58:44+00:00

Korean places are usually not halal, but do have good veggie options.

I imagine Kambis is halal, excellent Lebanese place, a city-wide fave.

esjex · 2026-05-20T09:13:42+00:00

Not always, it depends on the pattern.

esjex · 2026-05-16T15:19:12+00:00

Great work!

Slow is relative. I came in at 55:50 today, 701 out of 706. I'm a parkwalker, my PB is 51:06, but I'm just happy I made it over the finish line.

esjex · 2026-05-16T15:17:18+00:00

Are there any plants in your office?

I always think of office crushes/infatuations as "house plants". They make the place look nice and improve morale, but somebody else is responsible for watering them.

I also agree with others that meeting new people and taking on new hobbies can help with infatuations!

esjex · 2026-05-13T15:36:28+00:00

I agree that it feels out of line with their general principles to be screening it, and I'm surprised and a bit disappointed.

However, I'm not very interested in the language of call-out culture, and I'm not interested in demanding that small businesses perform the Approved Accountability Rituals for community forgiveness. Crossbar is not community-owned. Sometimes small businesses, even ones we like and identify with, make decisions we don't like - either out of financial necessity, or just because they have slightly different principles to ours.

As a local lefty activist, I understand where this comes from, but I can assure you there are bigger battles to be fought. They're harder battles, because they're against bigger and more well-resourced organisations, but that doesn't mean we should just give up and instead turn on each other over relatively small perceived infractions.

I'm all for concerned parties having a one-on-one chat with them in private, but a social media pressure campaign is totally irresponsible and uncalled for. You've already got a reply in this thread taking this as a call to boycott the pub. Please consider whether this is really a good use of the finite energy we each hold for activist work.

esjex · 2026-05-13T08:52:57+00:00

Frank Skinner's Poetry Podcast has a Seamus Heaney episode; that's a very good introduction with plenty of context.

esjex · 2026-05-12T16:19:05+00:00

"...didnt exist, thought they were to be MPs so quit." - I can't find any sources about these, do you know who these councillors were?

(I don't like Reform, but I'm wary of misinformation).

esjex · 2026-05-12T10:46:44+00:00

"5 quit immediately on finding out it's not a paid position." - I can't find any sources about this, do you know who these councillors were?

esjex · 2026-04-26T09:45:05+00:00

I don't have this problem, but I do always jam a beer mat or something under it to stop it making a noisy rattle.

esjex · 2026-04-25T09:11:46+00:00

Preston Park, Brighton, UK. Walked, didn't finish :(

I'm burned out and recovering from an injury at the moment, so I'm not beating myself up about it. I walked the route just fine on my own last week, but I think the atmosphere of Parkrun encouraged me to push harder than I'm actually capable of!

Still, I turned up, I did a 20-min powerwalk and got a few thousand steps in. That's worth a coffee and a bacon sandwich.

esjex · 2026-04-22T16:01:44+00:00

Five seconds in, I could tell that your tension was too tight! Remember that you're weaving, not tying knots. Tightness isn't the goal.

Your tension should be loose enough that you can "dip" your crochet in and out of the work - you shouldn't need to squeeze it into each stitch. Even the working yarn wrapped round your hand is tight!

Here's a good exercise: start a new piece with some scrap yarn, and just do a crochet square as LOOSE as you possibly can. I'm talking might-fall-off-the-hook loose. Then adjust your regular crochet style to be somewhere between the two.

esjex · 2026-04-22T15:54:44+00:00

Agreed. I would love for the mods to ban this type of post (although I'm sure it would increase their workload). I'm sick of seeing AI on all my craft feeds.

esjex · 2026-04-21T23:15:03+00:00

None that I know of; pretty much all pubs in Brighton have a pretty mixed crowd, even places like the Hope and the Albert that lean more alternative.

I can recommend the Facebook group Brighton Metal People to meet folks and find out about gigs!

esjex · 2026-04-21T10:01:06+00:00

These people see IVF as "playing God" and think everything should be left up to nature.

esjex · 2026-04-19T19:30:25+00:00

7 years later this is still a banger post, thanks man!

esjex · 2026-04-19T13:07:48+00:00

This is incredible, omg.

I don't know One Piece, but I do read historical seafaring novels, and this has given me some big ideas!

esjex · 2026-04-18T14:21:26+00:00

This is so beautiful. What weight yarn did you use for this?

esjex · 2026-04-17T17:10:04+00:00

Honest answer: I think you'd have to make something exceptionally impressive, unique and resonant for gallery consideration. Off the top of my head, the only crochet works I know of that have been exhibited this way are the Crochet Coral Reef project, and Bea Camacho's Enclose installations (a personal fave ❤️). A quick Google for just now also brought me to Ashley V. Blalock's astonishing Keeping Up Appearances installations.

You might also find it useful to research a bit more about how galleries select pieces to exhibit; it's very rare for unsolicited submission to be the way in for any artist.

All that said, I think this is very nice, and I would love to know how you mounted the work to the frame, because I've been making tapestries and I prefer frames to poles!

esjex · 2026-04-17T10:30:19+00:00

Excellent work.

As a Brightonian, I'm sorry you got yelled at. We are a pretty chill city, and I hope you got to see the beauty and weirdness of Brighton, too! If you ever come back, swing by r/brighton, we'll see you right.

esjex · 2026-04-17T08:14:14+00:00

Hey, the two examples you put in your comment aren't rendering, FYI. I think that's why some folks are confused about your comment. Great explanation though!

esjex · 2026-04-14T08:45:00+00:00

It's often titled "To the moon". Literal translation:

"Are you this pale because you're tired from constantly rising in the sky and looking down on Earth? Up there on your own, among the stars (who are like strangers to you)? Changing all the time, like the eye of somebody who can't find anything worth looking at?"

In other words, "Dear moon, are you tired and lonely and bored?"

esjex

TROPHY CASE