Ohm Ohm Ohm

It's Saturday night and I'm all out of sorts.

I lost the last week of my life to a stupid cold and I'm really pretty grumpy about it. I had plans! I had stuff to work on! And instead of that, I spent the week rubbing my nostrils raw from blowing my nose into toilet paper.

On the evening before I became properly sick, I did have a mini mending session. It's funny, because each month I spend literally hours and hours repairing other people's clothes and textile-ish items at RepairPDX, but my own mending pile goes untouched at home. Well, no, it does get touched- It's touched every time I add a new article to it. The mending pile outgrew its box under my desk ages ago and spilled over into first one auxiliary grocery bag and then two. Tig loves it! She loves to reach her paws in and pull the ratty clothes out one by one, sweeping them together on the floor into her perfect roosting nest by my feet while I'm trying to draw comics, godamnit.

Ah, so yeah. That evening last week I resolved to tackle some of the easier fixes, while my throat got progressively sorer and sorer. When I woke up the next morning there was no doubt, I was properly sick with Matt's cold that he was just getting over. UHG. But at least I'd chipped away at my mending pile! The stuffed toy/pillow I posted above is my very own Ohm that I designed some years ago.

You remember the Ohm, right? The villain (OR WERE THEY) from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind? With no experience in 3D construction, I adapted a free narwhal stuffed animal sewing pattern into the Toxic Forest's trilobite and printed the design onto fabric with Spoonflower. I went through a couple different versions and I fully intended to share my Ohm as a fabric print once I'd finished tweaking it, but I... I dunno, man. I wandered off, I got distracted. I never finished it. But! I did have an abundance of prototypes! And it turns out, they're, like, the exact perfect size for cushioning my neck when I'm reading a book dicking on my phone in bed!

So, all that to say: one of my Ohms sprung a leak. A leek? No, leek is the vegetable. "Leak (noun) a hole in a container or covering through which contents, especially liquid or gas, may accidentally pass." Is synthetic stuffing more of a liquid or gas?

In any event, I fixed it. It didn't take long at all.

I really would like to finish my design and make it available so other people can make their own. I think that'd be cool! One of the problems had to do with the proportions of the pieces and the other one was that I made up what the underside of the Ohm looks like and then later I found actual reference and, lol wow, I really was not close at all, so I'd like to go back and re-draw that part.

When I sat down to write a post, I had intended to share a few of the various things I mended and whine a little (a lot) about being sick and feeling existential and all that, but I guess instead we're all just getting the plushie Ohm update.

It's Saturday night and this is the first day in a week where I haven't felt actively sick, although my phlegmy cough and frequent wet nose-blowing still have me too disgusting to be out among other human beings. I'm also still really weak and tired, too. But, I'm on the mend! So I'm grateful for that.

There's more things to talk about! Like this weird career limbo-waiting-room I'm in. But it's four minutes until eleven at night and I'm tired and my nose needs to be blown again and I already used up everybody's attention span on my old Ohm plush project so let's just call it here, ok? I'll catch you up on my existential angst in other post, I promise.

If you are somebody who sews, would you have interest in making your own stuffed Ohm?

xoxoxoxah-CHOO,

-Erika