The April S.C.R.O.L.L.
In which I yell about AI being everywhere, being stuck on a 2-hour flight for more than 5 hours, and my rights as a creator.
After co-creating a 90+ piece collection of spring fashion and accessories earlier this year, April was all about documenting and distributing the very first Look What Skate Made drop. I also snuck in a trip Las Vegas for Emma + Joey’s wedding, where I rented a Nuuly for the first time in over a year.
Mostly, though, I took Beatrice on 4 walks a day through our North Portland neighborhood and got to watch the flowers bloom in 4-hour time lapses. There’s nothing like Portland in the spring.
S. Scrolling: Past the AI overview on everything
I’ve written about this before, and I’ll write about it again: I don’t want your AI integrations!!!! I don’t want AI to summarize my emails, texts, or social media posts; I don’t want AI to recommend me stuff that I can search myself, and I don’t want AI to tell me something inaccurate!!!!
So, why does every digital product I use push their AI integration onto me?? Why am I having to scroll PAST the AI nonsense to get to the actual feature I want to use? Why wouldn’t you put that at the bottom of the page where I can find it if I, for some reason, want it?
I know that it comes down to the bottom line: Money. But I can’t help like feeling like this AI push is like the cryptocurrency bubble we saw late 2017-2018. Hopefully it ends the same way, too.
C. Creating: 20 hours, 32 minutes of beading, junk journaling, and trying to fire a piece of silver clay
While March was full of beading, sewing, and other forms of creating, I slowed down a bit creatively in April. Like I mentioned earlier, this month was more about documenting and distributing than it was about making things.
That said, I still spent 8 hours finishing the beaded maxi dress that was my pride pet in this collection (and potentially my creative career). I also added beads to plush bag charms that Suzanna had made, and tried (and failed) to fire a silver clay piece that was supposed to be in the drop.
Post finishing the collection, I finished a necklace for a trade and made a bunch of beaded friendship bracelets for Emma’s wedding. On the way to Vegas, the 2-hour flight was stuck for 3 hours on the tarmac, an hour of which I spent listening to my fave podcast and embroidering. When we got back, I rediscovered a beaded bag I started last year, which I just finished this week.
R. Reading: 0 books (521 pages)
I just started tracking how far I get in books that I don’t finish in the 21-day Libby hold time. So, while I didn’t finish anything in April, I DID read bits of 4 different books.
“Solidarity with Children: An Essay Against Adult Supremacy” by Madeline Lane-McKinley: This essay is 192 pages long, and I only got through the forward before it was due back on Libby. As a new piece of nonfiction, there’s no audiobook of this, so I read it as an ebook. So far, I’m extremely interested in learning about how I can better support the kids in my community — with citations.
“The Dispossessed” by Ursula K. Le Guin: I’ve long touted this as my favorite book of all time, and decided to give it a reread after 7 or 8 years to see if it still holds up. I got 90% of the way through this 13 hour audiobook and can safely see it’s worth tthe title. It’s a story of an anti-properatarian, anarcho-communist community, and the life of the scientist who leaves his comrades for a teaching job on a capitalist planet. I don’t typically enjoy male main characters, but Le Guin writes the scientist as a man raised in a feminist “utopia,” making him reflective, thoughtful, and well-spoken.
“White Tears / Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color” by Ruby Hamad: I’ve slowly been listening to this audiobook over the course of about a year now. If my quest to read “Solidarity with Children” tells you anything, it should be that I struggle with nonfiction. I like that this book, written by a journalist born in Lebanon and raised in Australia, spotlights the narratives of women of color throughout the world instead of just one part of the globe.
“Severance” by Ling Ma: I got about halfway through this in April, and in the past four days, I’ve nearly finished it. I’m obsessed with this book about New York in the 2010s, living through a hurricane and a pandemic, and what happens when civilization collapses. End-of-days books are some of my fave pieces to read, and I read a lot of them. This one stands out for its starkly accurate depiction of working in New York through a pandemic.
O. Opposing: The Bead Factory
The Bead Factory (me at the Ikea table in my living room) has unionized and they (again, me) have a list of reasonable demands, including more creative expression in production.
In the past, I’ve made many variations of the same type of piece in my batch creations, like 40 beaded stretchy necklaces or 18 bag charms. This has been particularly helpful as I’ve worked on honing my skills and defining the Han Made brand. But I want to do more creative work, and use my skills on a wider range of beaded forms.
This includes the Summer ‘26 Look What Skate Made collection. The Pinterest board is already 100+ pins deep and it’s full of stuff I’ve never made before. Hair clips, scrunchies, button bag charms, and more are all on my list of things to try. This is all more in line with the Han Made ethos: creating with curiosity instead of uniformity.
L. Listening: My April playlist, ft the entirety of Slayyyter’s “WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA”
TikTok has replaced Tumblr as my source of new music. Before Tumblr, I used to go to the Deschutes Public Library in downtown Bend, Oregon and sift through their “new arrivals” CDs. Before that, I used to stock my iPod Nano with music from my dad’s iTunes library.
Which is how my music taste evolved from Arctic Monkeys to Taylor Swift, from Taylor to The Neighborhood, and from indie sleaze to Slayyyter. And I’ve documented the highlights of the last 15 years of creating playlists by making the ultimate playlist for myself. My April playlist is 14+ hours long, complete with music from every stage of my life. I finished it off with the entirety of the new Slayyyter album, most of which I’ve starred on Apple Music.
L. Loving: Matcha
As a white girl from Oregon, I didn’t discover matcha. I wasn’t even a fan before it became “trendy” in the U.S. I’d tried it once in the 2010s and hadn’t particularly enjoyed it.
But when Jinju announced it was moving locations and Koki Koki, a bakery that specializes in matcha, cookies, and soft serve, opened up in its place a block from my apartment, I committed to trying again.
And, readers, I became obsessed from the first sip. Since then, I’ve had no less than 10 matchas “out” and even bought some matcha powder to make it myself (albeit poorly). I had a matcha every day in Vegas (shoutout Mothership Coffee), a matcha when I missed the bus yesterday and had to wait an hour for the next one, and even a matcha affogato one fine day this month. My Instagram is flooded with matcha recommendations and content, and I’m just excited to have another treat to enjoy.