about
- Vae
Hi, I'm Vae - mid thirties, she/her, big fan of the smallweb.
"The Old Norse term véttr/vættr and its English cognate wight are descended from Proto-Germanic wihtiz (thing, creature), from Proto-Indo-European wekti- ("object, thing"). Vættr and wight normally refer to supernatural 'being', especially landvættr (land spirit), but can refer to any creature." Source
I chose Vaettr as my handle because Wight is a family name belonging to relatives of mine who are long passed but remain near and dear to my heart, and to whom I owe so much. The spooky connotation is a happy coincidence, as I'm a bit entirely a spooky girl at heart.
I live in Canada, and spend my time learning to code and makin' stuff - oil painting, drawing, knitting, spinning, producing music, sewing and any other crafty pursuits I can get my hands on. I also recently learned to solder to repair my midi keyboard's USB-B port, and now I have the electronics repair bug.
I've loved computers and the idea of the internet since I was a little kid, biking the 5km to the public library every day, every summer, learning HTML from Neopets to decorate my shop. I think I made my first website, on geocities, at about 12 years old, as a gift to my first boyfriend for Valentine's day, complete with drippy blood horizontal rule decoration. Peak romance.
... couldn't help myself, I had to find it again :)
Since then I've had numerous craft blogs, and spent 5 years streaming art (and games, eventually) on Twitch. I've always loved connecting with people using the internet and this recent foray into blogging, owning my space online, leaving the big social media silos in favour of the fediverse and forging ahead with this hand-coded little website has been reflective of my interest in owning my data, controlling my experience online and leaving the ads and algorithms behind.
Finding that personal websites still exist and that blogging is still thriving out there, brought me back to the early days of the excitement that came with using the internet, following rabbit holes and learning anything I can get my hands on.
The movements that exist already, IndieWeb, smolweb, the Gemini protocol, Brutalist Web Design, they're all so fascinating and I intend to pick and choose what serves me best and stays true to the heart of what I'm trying to do here - build my own space online, with my art, my data, my pursuits to widen my perpetual self-education and share what I enjoy.