Hello again! This bookmark clearout is going to focus on various useful resources that I've found.

Gender

I've had the Gender Construction Kit open on my phone for almost two years now. It's incredibly helpful for any UK-based trans folks who need information on all aspects of transitioning, and it covers all the information in a very simple and accessible way.

Art

The Spriters Resource is a huge repository for video game sprites of all kinds and on all sorts of consoles! I don't remember why I had this bookmarked (I think I was going to try to do a conscript based on jars and bottles and was looking for inspiration?) but it's cute and I'm sure someone will enjoy browsing through it. Here's the page for Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire.

This Google Drive folder has PDF downloads of all the Morpho anatomy and figure drawing guidebooks that are so popular online.

Graphic designer Emma Bers keeps a Google Doc with a links to various Flicker archives of scanned ephemera and vintage designs. There's a more organised spreadsheet of all the different albums too.

Sewing

Tumblr user daftpatience has a free pattern on their Ko-fi page to sew this cute little kitten from scraps:

Tumblr user boigameista has also put up a free sewing pattern to make these little frogs:

Languages

You can learn Cherokee for free using the videos on the RSU Public TV site! These videos are part of a collaboration with the Cherokee Nation; there are 4 courses total, each with 48 lessons that all seem to be about an hour long and each come with a downloadable Powerpoint. This is an impressively bulky course and I'm really looking forward to checking it out properly. You can watch the first lesson below:

In this first video, the instructor (Wade Blevins) says that the way to approach these lessons isn't to take notes, but to 1) focus on meaning and 2) have fun. I personally love this method of language-learning and followed it to great effect with the Michel Thomas course for Japanese. That course has a beginner/foundation course and an advanced course, both of which are on YouTube in their entirety. Here's the first part of the foundation course for anyone who might be interested:

I found this style of learning to be really effective, but (and this is entirely a me problem) I did find the other students to be grating after a while. One of the reasons I prefer one-on-one language lessons is because I know I move a lot faster than other students, so to have to continuously listen to the students in this course make the same mistakes over and over got really frustrating. It did make me feel very clever though, so maybe they encouraged mistakes. Who knows. I know a lot more grammar than I did at the start of the course, I'll tell you that much.

This Google Drive folder contains looaaaaads of ready-to-print booklets for most if not all of the Duolingo courses, pulling grammar information directly from duome.eu (an unaffiliated site that collates the grammar notes for each Duo course). There's two sets of files, one "ready to print" (ie. formatted to be printed, collated, and stapled together) and one of "simple PDFs" (ie. just a regular PDF). We all clown on Duolingo and I found their Japanese course to be pretty weak, but some of their courses are fantastic; their Scottish Gaelic course is great, really thorough, and the duome.eu page is also very thorough. I recommend it.

Exercise

I don't stretch nearly enough as I should. I want to start following this video's Pilates workout.

Comics

You know what, I'd be a fool not to mention my own cool resource while we're here. I put together a brand new edition of Comic Lettering Basics, my wee guide on how to letter comics for beginners and veterans alike. It's got 52 pages of info and is chocka with examples from myself and other creators. I think it's pretty good and it's only $3 on itch.io!

That's all I got. See you next Monday.