Author: Kris

  • Happy anniversary, part 2

    Happy anniversary, part 2

    Since we had to get dressed up for an event in the city tonight, we took the opportunity to finally check out Fabbrica for dinner afterwards. We shared the wagyu tonnato, deep-fried zucchini flowers, trottole puttanesca, and hazelnut tiramisu. Everything was very, very good.

    Wagyu Tonnato

    Deep-fred zucchini flowers

    Trottole puttanesca

    Hazelnut tiramisu

  • Happy anniversary!

    We went out for breakfast to celebrate the fact that 24 years ago today, two silly, shy, impossibly young web developers got drunk enough on vodka-Redbulls at the Leopard Lounge in Fulham to confess their mutual crushes and have a pash on the dancefloor. ❤️

    A collage of two middle-aged people having breakfast

  • A tale of two dresses 👗👗

    Earlier in the week, I popped into Made590 to pick up a couple shirts… and whoops, a new Liberty dress was right there. It was Tana Lawn and it felt like silk, and I looked great in it. 😍

    Saski dress in Liberty Tana Lawn

    I sent the photo to a couple friends, and one of them went by a few days later to pick one up for herself. That night she said, “You know it’s AI-generated, right?”

    Wait, what? Liberty of London? The famed 150-year-old “purveyor of craftsmanship,” that prides itself on its “dedicated in-house design studio” who are responsible for “hand painting and creating our beautiful prints”? THAT Liberty of London?

    Yep, them. Check the “Editor’s Notes”:

    For Avalon Scenes, the design studio approached Tom Furse, an artist and musician who specialises in creating artwork with AI in controlled environments. Harnessing the cutting-edge potential of AI technology, this design conjures a display of surreal landscapes morphing into psychedelic flower forms…

    Well, that sucks. I had a good long think about it. It really is a lovely dress. I am not against algorithmic art entirely, and I can see cases where I’d be fine with this – like if the model was trained only on Liberty’s pattern archive. But I could find zero mention of the technology used, not on Liberty’s site or the artist’s website or Instagram. (The artist is actually a musician that seems to dabble in AI, so I doubt he’s training his own models for this.) I contacted Liberty through both their website and Facebook page to ask for details, explaining that I was concerned about whether the model used for their AI-generated fabric was trained on any stolen artwork, and how the environmental impacts of the project lived up to Liberty’s stated corporate social responsibility goals. I got a reply back asking “Which AI-generated fabric specifically are you asking about?”

    Not good.

    I decided to return the dress today for one featuring Australian plants photographed straight from the shop owner’s garden. Made590 were lovely about it, and I can’t fault them – most people wouldn’t feel as strongly about this as I do. But right now I’m in the “no ethical use of AI” camp, and I’d rather pay artists for their art. I’m so disappointed in Liberty – ACTUAL LIBERTY OF LONDON – jumping on the AI trend bandwagon. Ugh. I’ll update if they ever send me the details, but for now I feel a lot better about my pretty new dress.

    Saski dress in Botanist print

  • Bouquet 💐

    Bouquet 💐

    Our neighbours have been growing some beautiful dahlias, zinnias, and sunflowers in the garden up at their weekend cottage, and they just gifted me a lovely bouquet “to match your red kitchen”! 😍

  • Pub lunch

    Pub lunch

    The Purls of Wisdom all got together at Philter today to put a big dent in our $600+ of pub trivia vouchers!

  • Links I’ve been reading lately

  • Highlights from the w-g archives

    On this day

    • in 2015 I went to a tech meetup that Dropbox were holding in a Sydney laneway, and I learned about an Aussie startup called Canva. I introduced myself to founder Cliff, did some research over the next week, and decided to talk him into hiring me. Two months later I was working there. It may well have been the most significant meetup of the hundreds I’ve been to over the years!
    • in 2009 the Sydney CBD experienced a major power outage. It was a turning point in my relationship with Twitter, as the locals were having a lot of fun positing that zombies were running amok in the city. I jumped in and never looked back. (Well, until the end of 2022.)
    • in 2007 Kim and Kelley Deal came into the knitting shop where I worked, and I didn’t even recognise them at first! Thank goodness my crappy mobile phone had a camera on it.
    • in 2003 I knitted a bikini. No, I never wore it. Knitted bikinis look flattering on approximately 0.2% of the population.
  • Smooth Sailing

    Smooth Sailing

    This was our fourth(?!) time seeing this talented crew of yacht rock superstars.

    A band onstage performing

    Mr. Snook always feels there should be more cowbell. 😂

    A man in a captain’s hat dancing enthusiastically to a band

  • Silk organza press cloth

    Silk organza press cloth

    I was reminded while I was sewing the other day that I really do need a press cloth. This is a piece of fabric you put over your work when you are pressing seams, to keep the fabric from potentially getting scorched. We used them in my sewing class with Gertie a few years back, and I seem to recall they were silk organza. I’ve seen this recommended in a few places because silk has a high burn point and it’s transparent enough to see your work through it. I looked them up recently online but couldn’t really find any for under $20 AUD. Then today I found myself at Spotlight and realised I could make my own. They had one bolt of silk organza at $47/m, so I bought 30cm of it for $14.10. Then I cut it into three pieces of roughly 12″ x 18″ (31cm x 46cm) and overlocked the edges to keep them from fraying too much. I also cut a tiny bit of ribbon and put that in the corner so you can hang it up. That’s one for me, and two for friends for < $5 each!

    Overlocking silk organza on a Singer overlocker

    Overlocking a ribbon loop into the corner of a piece of silk organza

  • AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism

    Ahhh, yes. And it’s all over Facebook. I had to unfriend a former colleague this week for posting a shitty image of a Muslim man walking a British police officer on a dog leash, who actually tried to defend that (as somehow being related to child abuse?) when I called him out for it. It’s awful and dehumanising and racist. Leni Riefenstahl would’ve loved Gen AI.

    AI imagery looks like shit. But that is its main draw to the right. if AI was capable of producing art that was formally competent, surprising, soulful, they wouldn’t want it.