My favorite sewing tool is a search engine
I’m watching a video from Missouri Star on Youtube featuring Jenny Doan, and it’s fabulous. She’s showing me how to make zipper pouches that look wonderful. I’m trying to learn as much as I can about zippers— I don’t use them much! Sure, there are a million tutorials on Youtube, but it’s kind of hard to find just the thing that makes me want to keep watching. I’m old-fashioned- the style of Youtube these days is really fast-paced and a little annoying. Too many quick cuts.
I found this, first hit, incredibly helpful and real, from using Kagi.com, a new paid search engine that makes me like the internet again.
The video is from 2015, a golden age of the internet*. Sometimes Jenny dithers a little, she makes some mistakes, she corrects her mistakes, and half of the sewing is real-time, no cuts or fast-forwards. It gives you time to watch a professional do her thing and it really realistic. I keep thinking, “I could meditate to this.”
I am not on TikTok**. It would probably be good for my business, but I have learned that I do not enjoy making content, especially the kind where I’m featured. And as referenced above, quick cuts and infinite scroll are pieces of modern life I’ve started avoiding. Tiktok (and similarly-styled videos) make sewing projects look really fast and easy, and I think it sets new sewists up for disappointment. Yeah, the person in the video is fast BECAUSE they speed it up AND because they have probably been sewing for years. You just can’t hack practice. Or, you can, but it’s called practice (the long hack).
I started using DuckDuckGo instead of Google*** but daaaaang I hate it. I never find what I’m looking for and it’s still just a long list of Amaz*n links when I’m just looking for “how to straighten a wire” or “Sean Astin how tall”. For a while I was doing a super complicated search string of "zipper tutorial blogspot 2012" and also limiting the time period to over a decade ago, but even that was just shooting me into AI slop articles.
Somebody on BlueSky was talking about a paid search engine last week and there’s a free trial, so I started using Kagi. Yes, you have to pay for it eventually, but IT’S LIKE OLD GOOGLE. Which means, it lets you use the internet as it is supposed to be. Not just a firehose of shopping links, but actual data. Made by people, not roving bots who whip up a riz-less article about whatever niche thing you search. I haven’t actually started paying for Kagi yet, but I’m going to. I’ve been using Google since it came on the scene and when I think about how integral internet search is to my life, it’s bonkers I’ve never paid for it. My favorite, most used tool in sewing is a search engine.
Well, we’ve all paid for it, just not in the way we ever would have chosen to if we could have foreseen the current moment.
Feel the feelings that brings on, then head over to kagi.com and look something up you’ve been wanting to know, and feel the goodness of pre-2022 internet. Then watch a Jenny Doan video, she’s a HOOT.
*To me, at least. I’m 43.
**I am but I can't figure out how to log in again, and I don't care.
***Because Google evil.
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