Ele Jenkins
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jenkinel.bsky.social
Ele Jenkins
@jenkinel.bsky.social
170 followers 130 following 350 posts
Handicrafts, cat photos and comics, probably in that order 🏳️‍🌈❤️🏳️‍⚧️ they/she, living on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung land. See my artwork at www.elejenkins.com
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jenkinel.bsky.social
Despite my brown thumb, I get to have one gardening triumph this year, as a treat.
A spray of cymbidium orchid flowers in shades of cream and dark pink. In spite of my worst efforts, they're immaculate.
October 13, 2025 at 6:05 AM
jenkinel.bsky.social
You ever watch someone encounter their very first satire, and then crash fatally on its rocks?

This passage was, improbably, found at the end of a review for The Secret History.
Have you ever read a book and were unable to decide which character you should have a crush on? I have (smiley face emoji)
September 19, 2025 at 11:03 PM
jenkinel.bsky.social
The "how many of you have ever felt personally victimised by Regina George" meme from Mean Girls, but her name is replaced with "RUOK Day". Everyone's hand is raised.
September 11, 2025 at 8:48 PM
jenkinel.bsky.social
I love late-winter flowers!
A spray of small, delicate hardenbergia flowers. They're a deep purple, with the sun shining through the petals. A sticky everlasting, a flower that looks like it's made from jagged slivers of waxed paper. This one is pink with a vivid yellow centre, and I'm holding it cupped in my hand.
August 22, 2025 at 3:01 AM
jenkinel.bsky.social
Called out by my past self, who left this note at the end of the current comic script:
A word document on a computer screen that says GET BACK IN THE SKETCHBOOK BEFORE YOU TYPE ANY MORE! GO ON! GET!
August 18, 2025 at 4:04 AM
jenkinel.bsky.social
Goldwork comes with all-new jargon, and I notice that the most dramatic - "plunging," "sinking" - comes with the most annoying and fiddly procedures.
A partially completed square of Japanese couching on an embroidery sampler. A gold thread is wound around in concentric square-ish spirals and held down with a lighter yellow thread. The ends haven't been plunged (taken to the back of the fabric) or tied (secured on the other side) yet but goddammit, I'll have to do that very annoying bit eventually.
August 2, 2025 at 11:18 PM
jenkinel.bsky.social
I have unlocked sparkly embroidery, and I'm going to be insufferable about it
A partially completed goldwork embroidery kit, with three small finished squares of chip-work. They're bright gold, and insanely sparkly.
July 24, 2025 at 1:56 AM
jenkinel.bsky.social
K and I spotted these two gossipy co-workers on their break at the no-longer-abandoned cheese factory
Two large Chinese lion-dog statues with sweet excited faces, turned towards each other as if mid-conversation. They have been placed just outside a factory door which is covered in safety warning signs. In front of them the factory carpark is strewn with lots of pallets as though they had paused mid-unpacking.
July 17, 2025 at 9:19 PM
jenkinel.bsky.social
And now he has taken his place in our kitchen, holding our cooking salt and ruling over the Onion Domain
The frog is full of salt, and perched on a little kitchen shelf. He is nestled among jars of other seasonings and rather a lot of onions. I really need to do something with all of these onions.
June 23, 2025 at 8:27 AM
jenkinel.bsky.social
My sweet boy survived the kiln!
A ceramic frog with a gaping mouth that takes up almost half his body. He has wide eyes and a fretful expression
June 23, 2025 at 8:27 AM
jenkinel.bsky.social
Made some little buttons out of my embroidery and knitting scraps (or "orts," as they are pleasingly known)
Three small buttons covered in a pale translucent cloth, revealing cheerful tangles of colourful thread and yarn beneath.
May 31, 2025 at 12:20 AM
jenkinel.bsky.social
A little detail from an upcoming project which I'm sure I'll yell about to you all later:
I am prone to thinking of my body like this: [picture shows a figure with an enormous smug head and a tiny little body underneath] Or maybe even more like this: [figure with an even more exaggerated head, filled with colourful thoughts that look like fireworks going off. The only facial features are big soulful eyes. A comically tiny vestigial body dangles underneath]. A LOT going on up here, of great significance - and oh yeah that other stuff below the neck, too.
May 30, 2025 at 9:48 AM
jenkinel.bsky.social
I'm sorry, it was a lovely first date but you just don't have that special something:
Screenshot taken from a Scottish hiking website. The text reads: Bog Factor
May 27, 2025 at 9:14 AM
jenkinel.bsky.social
Omg Beps, it's truly mind-boggling how terrible and hideous they are. Check this one out for sheer technical mastery:
AI image where the AI has forgotten to give one character any arms, so that it looks like she is slowly melting into the jumper of the person behind her. All three people in the scene are drawn in slightly different cartooning styles.
May 24, 2025 at 8:52 AM
jenkinel.bsky.social
These are being marketed as books for children, with no human editorial oversight. You trust AI to tell your kid a nice story?

How about this one, in which a boy goes to the beach and transforms into... a foot monster? A few pages later the writhing mass of feet eats children from an orphanage.
"as the feet enveloped Milo, he felt himself changing, his laughter merging with the chorus of giggles. His form dissolved, reassembling into a mass of wiggling, playful feet - no longer just Milo, but a new being: Feet Pile."
May 24, 2025 at 7:55 AM
jenkinel.bsky.social
When literally anybody on the internet can input a prompt, things obviously get creepy really quickly. Some titles feature fetish-adjacent content.

I have no idea if that's due to the prompt that's been given, or whatever bizarre mix of content the AI was originally fed on.
Screenshot from a book about an "Unbreakable diaper". The AI-generated illustration shows a young girl in a forest with a cat. Text reads "the diaper, made of unbreakable fabric, could expand and absorb anything, making it the perfect tool to save their home. But first, Lily needed to reach the sorcerer's castle. She crawled determinedly, her diaper rustling with every move."
May 24, 2025 at 7:55 AM
jenkinel.bsky.social
You shouldn't need me to tell you there's no consistency here, no coherent storyline. Characters morph and change clothes/facial features/age from page to page. Characters from any IP you could imagine show up to... discuss theology?

My favourite train wreck are the comics speech bubbles:
Screenshot of two pages of an AI-generated book in which Gwenpool and the Winchester siblings have a conversation about god. The speech bubble above Gwenpool reads [sic] "WHAT IF JAN'T OS ME JACK ISN' SUPPPSED HAT OF MAYBE, THAT'S TOT THE POINT!"
May 24, 2025 at 7:55 AM
jenkinel.bsky.social
The books on offer are just as ugly and inconsistent as you'd expect. I didn't try generating any myself, because why add to the sum of human misery any further? Especially when the so-called "trending" stories are freely available to peruse:
Screenshot of "trending" titles on a website that generates children's story books with AI. Titles include "The Race of Wisdom" (cover features an uncomfortably photorealistic image of a Galapagos tortoise running in a race on a city street" and "The Lesson of Lies" (cover features a generic white boy with freckles looking sad). The covers are all hyper-saturated and glossy in the way AI tends to be.
May 24, 2025 at 7:55 AM
jenkinel.bsky.social
Welcome to a whole new AI abomination: children's story books, generated, printed and posted on demand.

I've left the url out on purpose, I hate the idea of sending them any more traffic.
Screenshot of a website. A banner reads "What's your AI children's story idea? Turn your idea into an AI children's story in minutes". Then there's a text box to input your AI prompt, and some AI-generated copy beneath spruiking the service.
May 24, 2025 at 7:55 AM
jenkinel.bsky.social
My therapist: "Yassified AI Frida Kahlo isn't real, she can't hurt you"

Yassified AI Frida Kahlo:
A towel for sale in a shop. The print on it features an AI slop version of Frida Kahlo, her facial features nudged into a sort of overly saturated white-girl-beauty-standard. She is holding a martini in one hand.
May 12, 2025 at 5:48 AM
jenkinel.bsky.social
I mean, seriously:
The most anti-capitalist protest is to care for another and to care for yourself. To take on the historically feminized and therefore invisible practice of nursing, nurturing, caring. To take seriously each other's vulnerability and fragility and precarity, and to support it, honor it, empower it. To protect each other, to enact and practice a community of support. A radical kinship, an interdependent sociality, a politics of care. Because, once we are all ill and confined to the bed, sharing our stories of what helps, what we need, how we cope, what makes it feel better, bearing witness to each other's tales of trauma, prioritizing the parts of our bodies that are sick, pained, expensive, sensitive, difficult, deviant, and fantastic, and there is no one left to go to work, perhaps then, finally, capitalism will screech to its much-needed, long overdue, and motherfucking glorious halt.
April 18, 2025 at 11:55 PM
jenkinel.bsky.social
Johanna Hedva's 'How To Tell When We Will Die' is fucking magnificent, and I don't think I can bear to read it away from home because I'm bursting into tears every ten pages or so.
"Sickness" as we speak of it today is a capitalist construct, as is its perceived binary opposite, "wellness." Under capitalism, the "well" person is the person well enough to go to work. The "sick" person is the one who is not well enough to work. What is so destructive about this conception of wellness as the default, as the standard mode of existence, is that it invents illness as temporary. When being sick is an abhorrence to the norm, it allows us to conceive of care and support in the same way. Care and support, in this configuration, are only required sometimes. When sickness is temporary, care and support are not normal. Here's an exercise: Go to the mirror, look yourself in the face, and say out loud, "To take care of you is not normal. I can only do it temporarily." Saying this to yourself will merely be an echo of what the world repeats all the time. What would happen if we decided to say the opposite?
April 18, 2025 at 11:53 PM
jenkinel.bsky.social
I just think this guy is the best shape:
Matsumoto Hoji's famous ukiyo-e print of a squat little frog who is perfect in every way (c 1814). He's predominantly round with a huge frowny mouth and a big white belly. His eyes are set wide apart and have a confused, perhaps nervous expression. His big webbed feet are almost hand-like, and ever so cute.
April 14, 2025 at 5:25 AM
jenkinel.bsky.social
Thinking up ideas to try and make in ceramics class. A salt pig based on Hoji's ukiyo-e frog, and some kind of painted butter dish.
Double page spread from my sketchbook with designs kitchenware. There's a big blobby frog with a wide open mouth for storing salt in, and several sketches of slightly different shaped butter dishes painted in bright primary colours. A simple repeated tulip design seems to be winning out. In my scribbly notes I wonder if the butter dish should have a little knob shaped like a bumblebee.
April 14, 2025 at 5:20 AM
jenkinel.bsky.social
I bought this fancy cheese today because "the Dairy Viking" is a phrase that made me laugh. Turns out the Vikings did eat dairy, but mostly from goats instead of cows.

When I got home, Nym pointed out the adorable little serpent logo down the bottom - is that meant to be Jörmungandr?! 🐍
A foil-wrapped wedge of Viking brand Danish blue cheese. The wrapper has an attractive blue, silver and red design of a Viking longboat, sail billowing in the wind. Down the pointy end of the design of a tiny serpent creature with a silly, cheerful little face and its mouth wide open. It's curled into a kind of infinity symbol shape, it's very cute.
April 13, 2025 at 6:25 AM