six's log

Personal log, 2026.10.07

2026-10-07T00:00:00Z

It is my birthday.

More importantly, it is also my four-year anniversary with Mr. Six! He has a cold so we cancelled our plans for today. Instead I'm sitting at home watching baseball and writing this! Neither of us particularly mind. I mean, of course Mr. Six would rather not be sick, but we don't care too much about not getting to celebrate on this specific day. We'll just do it when he feels better!

My relationship with my birthday has never been all that great. As a kid, it was a thing that made me sad because I was so jealous of other kids that could afford to have big parties. It didn't help that I shared a birthday with a couple popular kids too, haha. Then as an adult with depression, birthdays became a thing I never asked for that just kept coming and coming and coming.

At thirty-one, that is still what it is to me. I have my anniversary to celebrate instead, and that gets me by.

Personal log, 2026.09.28

2026-09-28T00:00:00Z

I joined a local doodle club! We meet once a week and just sit and draw together. Everyone there is super cool and I feel lucky that I vibe with everyone! I've had a lot of thoughts about wanting to quit drawing recently so the club has been good motivation for me to keep at it.

As you may know, earlier this month I made the decision to quit Bluesky. I wanna say I was active for 2 years or so? Prior to that I had spent quite a few years off social media entirely, so I'm not new to this.

No surprises here if you know me, but I quit for mental health reasons. The usual. Just started feeling like it wouldn't matter if I was gone from bsky and as far as I can tell, that has been true. I wasn't posting much art and was ranting a lot about my health, and that's not what people followed me for so I felt bad. I'd never want someone else to feel bad if they did the same thing, but it's hard to be kind to myself.

It really feels like my imagination and art skills died this month, but I'm grateful I still feel interest in my other hobbies right now while I'm going through this rough patch with my art.

There are a few things I'm looking forward to for October, so I'm keeping my head up.

My intro to sewing

2026-08-25T00:00:00Z

Mr. Six says I have too many hobbies, so I got another one. It helps to have a few different things to choose from when I'm feeling burnt out on something! I really am running out of space in my room though :-)

My delusion is that I will someday be able to make my own Star Trek uniforms, but we gotta start at the beginning.

pattern that I will likely not touch for five years

First things first: the machine. I am using a Brother CS7000X. I definitely recommend it as a beginner, but keep in mind that I haven't done much beyond basic quilting. I probably could have gone for something with less built-in stitches, but the extra features like speed control are so helpful and worth the cost imo.

I will mention it likes to wind my bobbins to be bottom-heavy, but I've been using my finger to guide the thread as it winds as a fix. I don't even know if it's a problem for a bobbin to be uneven ¯\(ツ)/¯ Better safe than sorry?

That's it for the machine though. Onwards!

To be honest, my machine sat on the corner of my desk for a long time before I worked up the nerve to learn how to use it. It didn't help that I just could not find a beginner project that got me excited to learn. The commonly recommended projects—tote bags, coasters, pillow cases—were not sparking any joy.

I can't remember which video told me about this sewing pattern, but what I eventually picked for my first project was the Soften Studio Bandana! I printed the pattern at home, and for fabric and thread I walked to my local Michaels to pick some out (if one more person tells me to go to Hobby Lobby I'm gonna scream). Got some quilting cotton and Gutermann thread!

As a quick aside: I watched a lot of youtube videos on how to start sewing instead of actually sewing, and one thing that is stressed over and over again is that you must read the manual. Listen to these wise people and to the wise manual. It told me everything I needed to get started, so winding the bobbin and threading the needle was no sweat.

There's not much to say about my first project! I did my first ever stitches on some scrap fabric and then got to sewing. There is something very relaxing about having the machine at the lowest speed setting and letting it do its thing. Cutting the pattern out was way harder than the sewing, I think. I also used the heart stitch setting to add some extra detail! It turned out so cute and I wear it a lot :D

baby's first sewing project completed!

Now I really didn't think I would want to sew a tote bag, but the creator of the bandana also has a pattern for one! The Mini Soften Tote was much more interesting to my brain than other totes because this one is quilted and lined!

AND LOOK AT HOW CUTE THESE TURNED OUT!

I gifted both of these!

Even though they weren't perfect, the feeling of being able to look at them and be like, "Wow, I made these!" was everything.

There was a lot more involved here compared to the bandana. Even though I was still only sewing straight lines, I definitely learned a lot. Some things that are obvious to me now, but weren't before:

The needle should be changed often, after every project as a guideline.
Stitch length should be increased when sewing through thicker layers. (DUH, but I really hadn't thought about it until my second bag attempt.)
Skipped stitches can happen when sewing over thick seams. The hump jumper is your best friend!

Just going to end this by saying I am feeling quite depressed at the moment about spending so much time on yet another thing that doesn't make me money, but I'm sure I'll snap out of it and I'll get back to making something cool.

Thanks for reading!

Learning how to solder with the Discipad

2026-07-17T00:00:00Z

A couple months ago, I got really into fishing in FFXIV. My hotbars are set up in game to match the 12 buttons on my mouse, but I am only able to reach 9 buttons comfortably. Fishing has a ton of skills and even if I wasn't pressing them often, my right thumb was getting fatigued.

Clearly the solution was to get a numpad to use with my left hand. But I didn't want just any numpad! I wanted the Discipad, the counterpart to my current keyboard, the Discipline V2, which I purchased prebuilt off r/mechmarket years ago.

Now if I was going to get the Discipad, I was going to have to build it myself. The problem was that I had never soldered anything in my life! Luckily some research told me that through-hole kits are great for beginners, so off I went, grabbing everything I needed to learn. Unfortunately my brain is built in a way that if I am getting into a hobby I have to go ALL OUT, so I splurged quite a bit on all the necessities...

Tools:

Hakko FX888DX-010YW soldering iron
KOTTO fume extractor fan
Kester 44 solder wire, 63/37
Hakko CHP-170 wire cutter
Hakko SPPON solder suction tool
Silicone soldering mat

I watched this youtube video and then got started on a beginner kit: the Jitterbug. The instructions were nice and easy to follow! I liked the part for soldering the legs where the instructions tell you not to body shame any jitterbugs.

I gave the completed Jitterbug to my husband, who is an entomologist!

Definitely glad I got the practice under my belt before I moved on to the real thing. The main thing I learned was how much pressure I needed to apply when touching the solder to the iron.

Moving on to the real thing... I was still extremely nervous starting out, and you can tell. The first few diode joints look really messy because I accidentally soldered them on the front of the circuit board instead of the back... whoops.

My first real roadblock: figuring out which resistors were which. My kit didn't come with them labeled, so I had to google the 5 band color codes. I double-checked with a multimeter as well!

The USB-C connector was the most stressful part. Had some bridging issues, but the solder suction thingy had my back when I needed to fix anything!

Second roadblock: I realized my kit was missing the bottom plate for the entire thing. I emailed the store about it, but as of writing this I am still waiting for them to ship it. I wanted to continue on with the rest of the build, so I screwed in my stabilizers, soldered my NK Silk Milkshake switches, and plugged it in to my computer.

Third roadblock: the link to the flashing guide was broken. I went to the Wayback Machine to see if anyone had archived it, and sure enough there was a version I could look at! Downloaded QMK Toolbox then followed the instructions to put the Discipad into bootloader mode and... it wouldn't connect.

My heart sank! I totally thought it was because I had messed up the USB-C connector. But I tried switching cables and that did the trick. PHEW! I flashed my Discipad and then opened up VIA to test the keys.

EVERYTHING WORKED!! My first soldering project! Hopefully the back plate comes soon so I can really say it is done.

I know it's not perfect, but it doesn't need to be! I'm quite content to just have it working. Maybe some day I will revisit it and desolder some of the bits to make it nicer-looking, but for now I am already looking for new soldering projects.