Say hello to my little friend

Many wonderful things have happened this week, amongst them a surge of visitors to this blog from Facebook.

Of course this gives me no end of joy, since I haven’t had a FB account for nearly six months. I can only imagine someone’s created a fan page for me and my blog, and judging by the geographical origin of the visits I am pretty sure I know who my benefactor and President of my fan club is.
(Yes Love, I can see you. In fact, I can see a bit more than you can. Remember this next time).

So make yourself at home and leave a comment – I’d like to do my best to make your visit an entertaining one!

You won’t be able to look at your tracing wheel without feeling dirty ever again.

Tags

sewing

Here’s a screenshot from the website of a British multinational retailer company specialising in sex toys and lingerie. It’s meant to “add a sexy S&M style twist to sensory play” – as long as you connect it to the Digital Stimulator. Because let’s face it, nothing is more erotic than taking an eletrical appliance to bed, only to discover the power cord isn’t long enough. Because hey, size matters. And what happens if you fall asleep on the wet patch?

Anyway, after coming across this I cannot look at my tracing wheels the same way again. Especially the double ones. I am posting this so I don’t have to suffer alone.

Me Made May 2013 – Part One

Tags

Me Made May, Me Made May 2013, pencil skirt, simplicity

Dear Blog
Guess what – I’m still alive! I took some time out from blogging but – it turns out – not from sewing.

I have also acquired a tablet, meaning that I only switch my laptop on once a week or so. This is not a bad thing, since it’s showing all of its 4.75 years of age.
I love my Nexus, but I am still useless with a touch screen, so typing (tapping?) long posts is a massive job, and any kind of cropping or editing of images is unlikely to happen on it.

 

This week, as 30th April slowly burned into evening and night, I wondered whether I could pull off the challenge, and quickly realised that I have made plenty of things that I simply haven’t blogged. So I thought I’d give this a chance and see where it gets me. Here it goes:

‘I, Stef of StefPulls, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May ’13. I endeavour to wear at least one me-made garment each day when I am leaving the house for the duration of May 2013′

You see, I love Sundays. Vegging out, slobbing around, moving the duvet to the sofa and watching films back to back for the duration. Of course that’s when I leave my bedroom.
This time last year even that was a challenge, especially after managing at 15-ish mile run on Saturdays.
This didn’t start with my running obsession, indeed it is a pleasure that I have cultivated since childhood. As a heathen who is the spawn of heathens, we had no Holy Day at any point in the week, and although Sunday lunch was sacred, there was still a lot of slobbing around.
No one is going to snog me, kiss me or smell me. So I’ll slob. Deal with it.

So knowing how unlikely I am to make a pair of slob/sweat pants before next weekend (unlikely), I had to adapt my pledge to suit my lifestyle. On to Part One:

Maroon l/s Simplicity 7451, H&M (mini)skirt, Peacocks leggings, gingham shoes by Converse.	Unblogged black pencil skirt from the ever-useful Marmalade Kiss tutorial, Karen Millen-esque Simplicity 7451, Googly Eyes because my own were closed in the picture. This is the kind of cake I enjoy making, which is just as well since I have to wear this sort of thing to work.
Unblogged Simplicity 7451 I lenghtened to tunic length, usual leggings. Boots from a shop in Rome in 2010.	Unblogged Breton-style mutation of Simplicity 7451, usual miniskirt and leggings.

Why I won’t be watching The Great British Sewing Bee

Tags

bbc, dressmaking, Great British Bakeoff, Great British Sewing Bee, inspiration, sewing, sewing machine, tv series

So The Great British Sewing Bee starts Tuesday 2 April, 8pm, BBC2. I know because there’s an article in the Daily Fail, which I will not link on pain of death. Here is another article from the Radio Times. If you want to know why I don’t read the Mail you can read this. But I digress.

Back to The Great British Sewing Bee. Best of luck to all involved, but my telly will be firmly switched off. Which is the state it’s always in, unless I am recording films to watch without adverts, or I am in the lounge and can’t reach the radio in the kitchen. Or I need a dose of Kevin Eldon.
Here are my reasons:

1. That baking show did ever so well. Just not with me.
Readers outside the UK might have missed out on The Great British Bake-Off, the true predecessor to the Sewing Bee. It was a baking competition for non-professionals that gripped the British TV-viewing public.
It didn’t grip me, because it wasn’t a film, it wasn’t on the radio and it didn’t feature Kevin Eldon.
I had to take notice of it because all of sudden everyone at work *had to* bring baked goodies in. Especially the people who never knew there was an oven in their kitchen, even though they bought the place years ago and even spent money on that British middle-class staple, “a new kitchen”.
Plenty of charity bake-offs where organised, with the perpetrators telling everyone that they could bring in store-bought baked goodies if they wanted to – the modern CofE approach to making someone do something.
The people who already knew how to bake and decorate (a whole other source of snark which I’ll leave untapped for today) brought in some amazing things. The people who didn’t know how to bake brought in some terrible things and didn’t get any constructive feedback, because this is the office charity bake-off and not an evening class. The people who brought in store-bought goodies have asked to remain unnamed.
Cookery programs on television are always wrong. They turn one of life’s basic skills (you don’t eat, you die) into an on-going competition and patronise the people who don’t have time to marinade their goujons or spend an hour on each meal. And those are the people who probably need the most help in order to eat healthier, cheaper meals. I am waiting to see what new-fangled patronising snobbery this programme will add to sewing.

2. Sewing is not baking.
Sounds obvious? I’ll expand. Baking shows have turned people’s attention to that neglected corner of their kitchen – the oven! It was there all along, in fact I am pretty sure they noticed before, possibly the last time they put a pizza in it.
But when was the last time you moved into a house with a sewing machine?
Dear Sewing Bee producers, what went on in your head when you thought sewing would work as well as baking on tv? Where are these mythical dwellings and where do I apply to live in one? Do you have a separate list for overlockers?
I have no problem with more exposure for sewing, but the public will be exposed to a skill that requires equipment that is expensive when it’s lightweight and cheap when vintage and all metal and very clunky – ask me how I know.
Good vintage sewing machines are already unreachable on eBay, and this program is likely to merely sell a boat-load of cheapo, sweatshop-made plastic machines that will never get serviced or repaired because “they were too cheap anyway”.
When you are a beginner, it’s hard to tell whether you are doing something right if your equipment is below par. There’s nothing worse.

3. Claudia Winkleman.
It’s not really about her. I am trying to think of a media personality that would make me watch a programme I couldn’t otherwise be interested in. I guess Ms Toksvig would do. But until then, the tell will stay switched off, unless it’s Ewan McGregor night.

It’s not fair. At all. Thanks for nothing, collapsed arch. Farewell, fighting shoes. Just as well I won’t tread those boards again.

I’m off to have a giant sulk. Giant I tell you.

Simplicity 7451: a rant and a bit more Pi.

Tags

apparel, charity shop, dressmaking, fashion, refashion, rtw, Seventies, sewing, sewing machine, sewing patterns, simplicity, sizing, solids, top, Vogue

Dear blog,
I am going over old ground here, but I luRve charity shops. LuRve, luRve, luRve.
And thanks to the recession that is currently (I am told) gripping the UK, every time a retail outlet of some description closes on my local high street, a charity shop is sure to replace it, because they’re entitled to it reduced business rates compared to “normal” shops. You can read more on that here, since you might not be in the UK and I am no Business Correspondent.

Any flies in the soothing ointment that is my love for charity shops have already been decribed in this post from December 2012 on “So, Zo… What do you know?”. With one important exception. Zo writes:

I am convinced that all those lovely volunteer late-middle-aged women have collectively received thousands of donated vintage sewing patterns, maybe had a laugh with their colleagues about how their old mum used to sew all her clothes, and then systematically binned them all like some horrendous vintage sewing pattern holocaust.

Well, guess what: us poor, dumb Notherners, with our ferrets, cheap house prices, horrendous brand-new Media City, scary accents, windy weather and flat caps, we have one up on the South for once.

Forgive my anecdotal numbers, but 3 out of 9 charity shops here in M33 have sewing patterns, and pretty much all nine of them have knitting patterns and /or knitting gear.

But there are deadly bugs in this greener grass of the North. And to show you just how deadly, I would like to introduce some evidence.

Ladies and gentlemen, members of the jury, I give you Exhibit A: McCall’s 5374.
So Nineties it hurts, but lovely darts and plenty of scope for good things:

“It’s all about me!” said Maroon Girl.

Exhibit B is Vogue 8205, a 2006 pattern:

“It’s not pigeon poo on my head! It was the price sticker, I swear!”, “Who’s the Prime Minister, Ms White Jacket?”

Now, dear readers, I’d like to point out that the McCall’s pattern had been cut and there were missing pieces, unimportant piece like sleeves and stuff (who needs those?), while the Vogue was complete and still in factory folds.
So, which one was priced at the equivalent of USD 2.25? And which one was a mere USD .75?

Why, of course. The cut and incomplete one was the more expensive one, and the perfect one was cheap.

The expensive pattern was from the expensive charity shop, the one that starts with O and ends in xfam, so I wasn’t entirely surprised.
But what made the experience more irritating is that the same charity shop currently boasts in their window a “Wedding dress made with donated garments by out volunteers”.
I couldn’t bear to take a picture of it, and I’m sure a lot of work went into putting together half of a black (yup) vest and some white net curtains. I suspect it’s the work of the teenage girls who often volunteer in there.

So, there are people in this shop who think they are handy at refashioning, they might even (I hope) know a spool from a bobbin, and yet does anyone think of looking into the pattern envelopes and pricing the patterns accordingly? No way.

I am not saying the people from the shop where I found the cheap pattern have a clue about sewing patterns, but they have a more realistic approach to pricing everything they sell, something that both Oxfam and (heaven help us) BHF here in Sale could benefit from.
On the subject of Charity Shop Fashion, someone I know loves those shop windows as much as I do, here.

The rant is meant to introduce this pattern, which set me back the princely sum of USD .30 a few months ago:

This is Simplicity 7451 from 1976, “Misses’ Jiffy wrap skirt and tops (tops sized from stretch knits only”. New, this would have set you back 60p in 1976, which is apparently GBP 2.88/ USD 4.33 in today’s money, a rather decent price for a very basic pattern with a dearth of variations.
The envelope is tatty and ripped in piaces, but all the pieces are there and whilst they have been cut that’s not a big deal for a single-size pattern.

I have no interest in making the skirt, since gathers don’t flatter me and when you’re clumsy as I am anything around your backside that’s fastened with a knot is purely asking for trouble, as I know from experience.

I do like the top though, and I often wish I had more knit top with sleeves. The RTW ones are always in a fabric that’s too thick to be flattering, or too short for my waist, or fitted for someone who doesn’t have a waist / hip ratio of .73, which is Excellent according to the BBC Health website but an utter bee-atch when you are trying to buy clothes in the UK, the land of waist-less women.

I hate to sound snarky, but having grown up in the Mediterranean the shape of clothes here -which I find reflects the shape of a lot of female bodies- is a matter of unending fascination and frustation for me.

Anyway, enough of this Op-Ed column of a post and on to some more ugly pictures. Forgive the halo, it’s probably my Spirit Guide telling me not to use this fabric again. He’s a 17th-Century Scottish Sailor called Shaun MacNoShit:

The Facts

Fabric: Black knit, had it for ages, loose enough to preserve my modesty but too loose for the machine to handle, even with a ballpoint needle. The needle just misses the bobbin thread, which gave me a huge fright on Wednesday night, meaning I was cleaning the shuttle race until 11PM. Fun times! The machine is fine with other fabrics, so at least there was no damage.
I also remembered that it wasn’t the first time I had this issue with this type of fabrics, so I’ll simply stay away in the future.
For this reason, the least said about the hem the better. I could have put another strip of the blue on it but I knew by then I wasn’t going to wear this enough to justify it. Sometimes even I know when to fold, even if that’s usually two hours after the smart people who do not fancy an hour on a camp bed under tinfoil and on a drip.
Pattern: Simplicity 7451. The pattern is size “Medium 12-14 Miss”, which is “87 (34) to 92 (36)” waist measurement and calls for something with about 25% stretch, meaning it would be huge on anyone who made this according to their measurements. Massive. Ginormous. Twice sesquipedalian.
Proof? My knit has about 10% stretch, so I used 1cm seam allowances instead of 1.5cm, and added a whole 2 centimetres at the fold for both front and back. It fits me perfectly all the way to the waist and I need to take the sides beneath my waist because there was no need to add anything. So there.
I also added an inch to the length, but then I alway do that.
Year: 1976.
Notions: Black thread, bias tape for the shoulders, leftovers from the Life of Pi dress.
And the insides? The insides? Are you joking? I could barely do The Outsides without the fabric giving me a coronary. No chance.
Hours: 30 minutes to trace and alter the pattern, 4 hours of cutting and sewing, 30 minutes to repeatedly take apart and reassemble the shuttle race, another hour of assorted swearing at my choice of fabric. Six hours in total.
First worn: Yesterday for work, tucked into my only RTW denim skirt. It looks lovely.
Wear again? I think so. I actually quite like this. I’m a forgiving soul.
Make again? Yes, in a knit that’s easier to work with. I have so much trouble buying t-shirts that this thing and I could be BFFs.
Total cost: A fiver for the fabric last year and 20p for the pattern. GBP 5.20, which is about USD 7.80. Not bad for something I will wear again.

I must now log off, dear readers, and head out because it’ Saturday and that means there’s gay men who must pour me drinks and I hate to disappoint them. Toodle pip!

FO: a successful prototype.

Tags

quilting, sewing, sewing machine

They say done is beautiful.

But sometimes finished is fugly:

I know it looks alright from there, even cute, but this is utterly fugly, and if I was a cat -let alone a baby- I’d know better than to have a snooze on this.

There aren’t two squares the same size, there are bunches at the back, the sides are wonky and the stitching is horrendous.

But in fairness, this time last year I would never have imagined I’d be attempting something like this, let alone finishing it.
In fact, old me would have left this as a UFO and binned it in a few years’ time, when packing for the next house move.
Extant me ploughed through this to the finish knowing full well it wouldn’t be good enough.
It’s my good old Sewing The Void dilemma – when do you give up?
Too soon? Too late? Ten minutes from base camp?

I am very grateful for the encouragement everyone has given this (my work colleagues have a PhD in feigning interest and I love them for it), in particular to the person who described it as “a successful prototype”.

For now I am working on something simple while still cleaning the machine, since I had the great idea to put fleece at the back of this, and fleece is 85% fluff and 15% lint. Still, it worked well with my normal Teflon presser foot.

This quilt isn’t going anywhere, and once I have my mojo back I’ll decide what to do next.

Giveaway winners – and not much else.

Tags

Burda, giveaway, skirt

Dear Blog
Apologies for being so utterly rude of late.
I have been on a tracing frenzy and then I did some quilting and both efforts are meant to be surprise gifts so I have little or nothing to show for them.  I seem to start tracing and be completely unable to stop and completely forget about sewing.
I certainly put the OBStreperous(*) back into OBSessive.

Last weekend the sun was out and I just had my bike back from service so I took it for a long ride and Saturday and another one on Sunday and by Sunday night I knew I was unwell and yesterday morning as the tram approached my office I realised I had made a big mistake leaving the house since I could barely stand.
After the whole post-marathon saga last year I promised myself to stop this nonsense of going to work when I am feeling sick and today I am vegetating at home and trying to stay well away from any cutting tools since my head is feeling very woozy and I am having a nosebleed-tastic time.

But enough of me falling apart in a non-emotional way (for once!) and on to the business of announcing giveaway winners:

1. Style 3294, the skirt pattern, goes to Laurie at SewExhausted!.

2. The Simplicity retro pattern goes to Nessa at NessaHux!

3. And the Burda Classics magazine goes to Abby at Sew Get Dressed! Go over and read her post about gender norms. Over here she’s preaching to the choir, but I did share the frustration.

Winners have been notified and I will be going to the Post Office this Saturday, hopefully also laden with a certain quilting project that I cannot wait to see the back of I am sure will delight and surprise its recipients!

I am off to lie down now since the caffeine in my last dose of meds is wearing off and I barely have the strength to complain. No really, I don’t!

(*) One of my favourite words. “Stubbornly defiant”. No idea why I like it so much. Oh no Siree.

FO: Maudella 5776. When life gives you lemons, name your own alter ego after them and make a great sitcom(*)

Tags

30 rock, apparel, dress, dresses, dressmaking, fashion, giveaway, happiness, hope, liz lemon, maudella 5776, new look, print, prints, Seventies, sewing patterns, Simplicity 7073, sizing, tv, tv series, vintage, womenswear

Giving life and her lemons the evil eye.

The Facts

Fabric: Printed knit made of 70% static and 30% thread. Grey with black sleeves.
Presses with docility and doesn’t crumple. The static wasn’t too bad when I wore the dress today but when I took it off you could have landed a plane using the sparks alone. I bought it from Abakhan on Friday when I popped in after work to cheer myself up. It worked, but I was in serious danger of binging like a pelican on the beach.
I bought a big piece and I should have enough for a top if I work with a little more leftovers from another knit.
Pattern: Maudella 5776. Maudella (b. 1937) is the Grandma of New Look. You can read more about it here. I cut the size 12 bodice (talk about a boatload of ease), opened up the neckline a little and folded the tiny darts on top of the back piece on the tissue paper.
The skirt I drafted myself, directly on the fabric, as a rectangle cut into two trapeze shapes. Speaking of patterns, you can still  enter the giveaway here.

The Village Of The Damned look was all the rage in the Seventies.

Year: I could not for the life of me find a copyright anywhere on this, but I reckon late Sixties, maybe early Seventies.
Notions: Thread and recycled bias tape for shoulder and waist seam, Magic Hem (Wunda Web? Supa Trousers? Turnups No More? You get the gist) for the hem. All from stash.
And the insides? Nope. I started this at lunchtime on Sunday to wear to work on Monday. Insides, schminsides.
Hours: An afternoon with a break for the last episode of Africa, and a bit of the evening.
First worn: Today for work, and I am quite pleased at how it withstood at 10-hour day at the office.
Wear again? Oh yes. This can go next to my brown and turquoise dress that I have worn to death for the past three years.
Make again? Absolutely. I do not have any more knit fabric but I’d quite like to see this in a woven. It’s a lovely fit for something so simple.
Total cost: A fiver for the fabric. Yes, I have destroyed the budget for February, but I am a happy woman.

When life gives you lemons, go to the fabric shop.
Last week was a little bit odd. Work was quiet, while we waited for something we must have before the January Marathon starts. Lemons were handed, but not in the office.
I trimmed and framed some quilting blocks and spent some time making a stripy top in one of those flimsy knits that I hate so much. The top didn’t work, but the stripes on the darts and centre back seam are so perfectly matched that I might have to salvage it just to show them off.
I also found out that I will be roommate-less in a few weeks’ time, which is always a bummer. I am tired of the usual rigmarole of ten people emailing and five showing up, of which four are creeps and one is decent but ends up moving somewhere else. I’ll be ok, but I could do without the aggravation. Sadly, I can’t do without the readies.
After learning the news on Thursday I decided to go fabric shopping to cheer myself up, and picked up some grey synthetic knit with the black leaves to make another Simplicity 7073. Fast, easy and flattering. What could possibly go wrong?

Please rent my room! I’m not a creep, I just look like one… love me… please…

When life gives you lemons, turn to an old friend.
On Saturday morning I tried on my first ever S7073 (still nicely full of ease despite three months of non-running and much eating) and decided to re-trace the pattern, both to allow for the stretch of the knit fabric and to shorten the skirt using the shortening lines rather than gingerly chopping six inches from the traced pattern and the actual dress.
So I sat down to re-trace a much smaller and shorter version, and after about two hours I was lucky enough to have to leave the house, lest I tried to stab myself with a Sharpie in frustration.
The process resumed in earnest on Sunday morning, but it just wouldn’t work. The thing is way too big on the tissue paper. Massive. And because it’s a single-size pattern, there are less reference points when altering it. I’ll come back to it, but after my week I needed some low-hanging fruit(**) that wasn’t citrus-tastic.
I traced the Bust 34 bodice, cut, sewed ignoring the instructions, made a skirt ignoring the pattern, wore it to work today and loved every minute of it. Fruit doesn’t hang much lower than this.

When life gives you lemons, place them into abyss.
Simplicity 7073 and I have grown apart. It was a painful realisation, but I found great comfort in the book I’m reading, Love me by Garrison Keillor, which is the story of how a couple grows apart. It’s very good.

When life gives you lemons, speak Rhino to the lemons.
On a break from making this dress I rang my viewing companion to sync the respective media players for the latest episode of Africa. They mentioned how, according to the blurb, Sir David was going to meet a baby rhino. In jest, we agreed that there was no doubt Sir David can speak Rhino, because he’s utterly awesome.
And a few minutes later, that’s exactly what happened. Sir David spoke rhino to a baby rhino. The clip is here on the BBC website and there’s no end to how amazing it is.

In other words: when life gives you lemons, keep smiling. And squeeze them away from your eyes.

(*) Spent a lot of the past week talking about 30 Rock. Wouldn’t have it any other way.
(**) My boss loves the expression and I find it very Donaghy-esque.

On my own terms: a mean witch’s response to TJ’s response.

Tags

30 rock, dress, dresses, fashion, liz lemon, sewing

First read this, followed by this. This started out as a comment on TJ’s post, but it got so big that it just didn’t look right, so here it goes. Disclaimer: the Mean Witch is me and only me.

I can’t really offer indignation as requested at the end of the post but I had to comment, since the chances of TJ seeing me semaphore my approval from over here are made even slimmer by the snowstorm outside my window.

I did not get -alongs when I was a knitter, even less so with sewing, where I will never cease to marvel at how much faster than knitting the process is. At last for the simple garments. Don’t mention iPod cosies and Pompom scarves, since they are a great way for people to start out with a new skill.

Unless an activity requires other people to be carried out successfully (like comedy improvisation does) I really have no idea why people just desperately need mates to do it with. Book clubs I do not get (I have to finish this when someone tells me to? Woot?) and if I go to the cinema with other people it’s because it’s the 2-for-1 offer and I am broke that week. But generally speaking I am more than happy doing things on my terms and at my own pace.
It doesn’t mean I am always succesful. Far from it. It means I can deal with failure as well as success. It means that I can live with myself, which is not a bad skill to have.

What this sewing community is about -when it’s good- is that it feeds the part of me that  is much happier having one single exchange with someone I am unlikely to meet in IRL about a shared interest than I am with the million of inane conversations I have with the people I interact with IRL everyday(*).

And when I say “when it’s good” I mean when it’s kind and decent to the n00b, which it generally is, as long as the n00b doesn’t ask daft questions.

I know what I would like to do with people who do not read what I write only to ask a question already answered in the first paragraph. It’s why I doubt I will ever do tutorial-like posts even if I am ever skilled enough to have something to offer. And it’s also why I keep a cricket bat on my desk at work(**).

Is it leeching? Perhaps, but I do not blog to teach people anything, although I would be first to the rescue if anybody needed help that I could actually offer. My old blog, which was alive and well for seven whole years, was based around absolutely nothing and I used to post a lot more often than I do on this.

Having said all this, do you want to guess how often I look at how many followers I have? Nah, didn’t think so.
If you think this sounds despondent, if you should have met my Gran. If you want to tap me on the shoulder and tell me I need to be a little bit nicer or I’ll die alone, I am miles ahead of you already.

***

As a kid from the only atheist family in a staunchly religious area, who got bullied by the other kids for not going to church for the best part of twenty years, I can guarantee there is very little that I cannot enjoy doing by myself.
I just do not get how people just want to be “in”. But that is what they call a story for another day.
I will stick to the part of this community I like, rather than go look for the feeling that I belong because we are all wearing the same frock even though it only fits 3 out of the 20 people who are wearing it (and doesn’t that sound dangerously like what I witnessed in school?).
A shared interest is a great starting point for conversations, but it would sustain a friendship alone and it will not make you all the same hip measurement for making that frock.

I guess most people join -alongs because feel they lack the motivation to finish that dress, of bust the stash, and to a smaller extent like to find help if they get stuck, even though in my experience that help is already in Google somewhere rather than in a specific community. And if it works for them, all the better for it. I just don’t feel it.
What I do feel is that the Internet gives you the chance to go undercover and not tell the world you haven’t finished that project, or how unhappy you are with it.

All these people are dead nice to each other whenever something is finished and fitting, so why so much fear of sharing the unfinished and unfitting?

***

I did mention comedy improvisation because it’s one of a few things where you do need others that I actually have enjoyed.

I recently had a chat with someone who has been doing it for a similar length of time. Most of what TJ and Dibs have said can be applied to that same community with little modifications and with more extended ramifications.

Smallish community of very passionate people starts growing exponentially. So many N00bs join the fold that the occasionally horrid specimen slips through the net and ruins the fun for everyone else.

Smallish community of very passionate people starts growing exponentially. Not everyone has time or the inclination to be nice to the N00bs who aren’t quite good enough yet and/or have mistaken a shared interest for a cult where they will find the friends they have never had (for a reason) and eventually a spouse.
N00bs who have put absolutely nothing in the community get frustrated at the lack of meaningful relationships that they were just expecting to have found at this point, so they ruin everything for everyone else and storm off to build their own community, which implodes in the space of a few months(***).

I could go on for a long time, but the snowstorm is on a break and I need to get to work. The moral of the story? Be nice to each other, trust your abilities, and Google before you ask a question.

(*) I love my colleagues and I know how lucky I am that I get on well with the people I have to spend 8+ hours with every day. Still, we don’t share that many interests.

(**) Sadly, I don’t. But even the Mr Donaghy who told me I couldn’t have one agreed with me on the desperate need for one.

(***) Can you tell the difference between some websites and real life? Sometimes neither can I.