Or have a house where she couldn't see them as their subterritory - that's standard to do anyway; even crafters who don't like the idea of having their own household find living in someone else's hard, and it helps.

That makes sense! She can put out a call for possible interest (without expecting particularly quick slot-appearance). Any other filters that should be applied to prospective household-visitors?

Hm.

She has a lot of animals right now; being comfortable with that would be important, and basic animal-handling skills would be good. She doesn't know what Sun's species eats; she can set up a garden plot for food plants they bring, but she won't be familiar with caring for them, so knowing things about that could be important. She doesn't know what they'll want to do for meat but she can figure out the logistics of that closer to the time, probably; if they think it'd be better for her to start learning to care for some of their livestock now she can do that.

Being able to communicate will of course be important. She thinks for this temporary experiment it'll be safest to go with people who are fairly quiet and not too active. Alternately... actually it might be best to introduce her to some adolescents of Sun's species and see how she reacts to them; crafters often have a slightly easier time being permissive with them among their own species, and she knows that works well for her from her own kids. If they're doing it that way - ones who are interested in learning from her? Or artsy ones, she's not that much of an artist herself but she likes being around them.

Green four year olds who like animals and gardening, sure thing. Probably they'll mostly pick up food from the city occasionally though; Amentans like to eat a lot of staples that are best farmed in mass quantities rather than individually gardened, so the plot will probably have, like, herbs and stuff, not most of the visitor's calories. They have checked and Amentans can eat local chickens, and they're very tasty.

She has chickens, but for eggs, not for meat, pigeons are better for meat. She has those, too; she can spare a few for them to try. She - isn't actually sure she'll be able to set aside storage for their food, she's not sure how much space to expect that to take up.

An Amentan who isn't very picky can live on about three pounds of food per day indefinitely; in their own homes they use cold storage, which she's not sure if crafters have, but it's possible to do without, again if one is not very picky. Their camp has this much food for their planned three-day stay for Sun, three greys, and the purple. Sun would be surprised if Amentans could eat chicken meat and not chicken eggs but there hasn't been a proper study about that yet.

She can do cold storage, both above and below freezing - she should actually walk Sun through one of the house models she has with her and all the amenities that comes with, crafters like their houses comfortable and crafting can do lots of things like that. Anyway. She will in fact have to get enough crafting-material together to make houses for anyone who's going to visit, now that she thinks of it, and food storage won't make a significant difference on top of that, the whole thing is just going to be slow.

They might eventually establish a routine helicopter route for dropping off people and supplies, and that can include more rocks if lone sassafrass wants!

It would definitely help. The dog who tried their eggs is doing fine, by the way. Does Sun want to see what a crafter house looks like?

Yes!

She can with some finagling and awkward leaning out of her vehicle get ahold of the relevant box of minis and some crafting-material left over from Meston's walker and make a roofless scale model to show Sun through the window.

Crafter architecture uses rounded, lumpy shapes rather than straight lines, and this one, which she describes as a very normal common sort of house, is roughly lima bean shaped, with the entrance at the center of the inward curve. The back wall across from it is lined with a workbench, with two protrusions dividing it into three workspaces surrounded on two or three sides by work surfaces - one for cooking, with built-in water dispenser and food waste chute, one for crafting-material conversion and miniature enlarging, and one for whatever other project the resident might be working on, generally, with storage cabinets underneath and lamps rising on stems from the countertop to light the workspace; the missing ceiling would also have light panels. The far walls can have different sorts of storage put in; perhaps a freezer for someone who hunts or a pantry cabinet for someone who likes food from plants with a limited growing season in the kitchen, or a cabinet for extra cooking appliances, and usually storage for frequently-used minis on the other side but sometimes storage for tools, or a display cabinet for favored knickknacks. Some people also put a conveyor belt along the back wall, to let them send things to one side of the space or the other to be put away later without having to get up.

The two lobes flanking the door each have a raised, rounded enclosure built into the wall; these are beds, and she peels the roof of one of the enclosures back to show the soft crafting-material mattress set into the bottom of it. The person who lives in the house will take one, and the other is for visiting romantic partners, small children, or the sort of emergency where you need someplace for someone to stay right away; some people will replace the second one with something else, like a reading nook or more storage, instead. The bed enclosures are climate-controlled separately from the main space, with their own heating, cooling, soundproofing, ventilation fans, lights, and water dispensers; some people will add a network connection or miniature library or similar recreational option. Adding lots of pillows is popular, too.

The climate control panel for the main space is on one side next to the door; the other has a small cabinet for emergency supplies that would be dangerous to lose in with the general household storage - medical supplies, mostly, plus a very loud automated drumming machine that can be deployed to let neighbors know that they're needed to help with an emergency.

The conveyor belt is clever! It looks very cozy overall. Why is it lima bean shaped?

It's nice and efficient for everything that goes in it, mostly. People who want very different things in their houses will make them different shapes - here's a rounded-square four-person house with a side for each person and the kitchen and crafting station and a spiral staircase in the middle, as another example. (The upper level that she's not rendering in this model was an aviary, in the original.)

Amentans usually do rectangle houses and rectangle furniture because that packs efficiently, but these are certainly very nice looking and she supposes they don't have to be that concerned about packing efficiency since they have lots of room per household.

That makes sense. Crafters generally like to have their houses fit in aesthetically with their surroundings, as the next concern after fitting everything inside efficiently, and boulder-ey shapes are good for that.

Now Sun wants to know about crafter art!

It's actually not common for crafters to make art as its own thing; they do pay attention to the aesthetics of the things they make, though, and there's rarely a reason not to pretty things up. Most crafters have fairly consistent aesthetics that they use in most places - lone sassafras favors the subtle blue and crosshatched grey, divided horizontally, that's visible on her walker and shed, with green or gently yellow complementary objects for highlights, and a darker grey with blue and yellow detailing for her own clothing and personal effects. Representative art is rare; realistic copies of natural objects are more common, and abstract patterns fall between the two in frequency. Personal aesthetics also act as a subtle - or occasionally not-so-subtle - territory marker: a crafter household-member's house will use the head of household's aesthetic on the outside, but generally have the household-member's own aesthetic inside and perhaps around the door to help remind them that they can go in or that the head-of-household won't; similarly, the head of household presenting them with tools in their own aesthetic can make it clearer to them that they're meant to use them. Territory markers always use the head-of-household's aesthetic, for roughly the same reason.

Oh that's SO cool. Sun is really interested in the use of aesthetic markers for psychological support. At what age do people settle on these? Do they change? What if two people want similar ones?

They do change, usually pretty slowly over time - she used to use a slightly lighter shade of blue and use a sky blue sometimes for highlights, for example. Children and young adults are more prone to dramatic changes; that generally settles down after they've had their own territory for a few years and figured out how they like to do things in it. Very young children first learning to craft tend to copy their parents' aesthetics as often as not for the first few months, insofar as they have much intentional control over it at all, and then start experimenting from there; lots of crafters settle on at least one element of their personal aesthetic that they'll end up keeping permanently by the time they're ten or so. (Lone sassafras's personal example is the horizontal divide; she favored brighter colors and circular or blobby motifs when she was small.) People with very similar aesthetics will tend to add or change elements to differentiate themselves, and might find it uncomfortable to be in each others' territories over and above the usual issues, but it's not generally a particular problem.

How do young crafters lack intentional control?

It's the same sort of thing as a small child being clumsy at walking or using tools; they have to figure out what to do to get the results they want, and they're bad at it at first. Plus crafting is on the complicated end of that sort of thing; there's only a little skill involved in keeping existing traits steady while changing others, but there is some, and little kids don't have it at first. Like balancing to stand while using a tool, if Sun has watched a baby learn to do that.

She has! Babies are so cute and good.

Yep.

She can craft up some examples of traders' aesthetics that she's seen, if Sun would like.

Yes please!

She cannibalizes the house model for material for a set of six-inch-tall copies of her walker: this one in a striking dark metallic gold with burnt umber legs and roof and black interior and trim; this one garbed in a realistic rendition of waves on a beach, complete with starfish and seaweed washed up on the shore, with deepwater-blue legs with sandy tips; this one apple-red and apple-mottled on the outside with a spring green interior splashed with pale yellow; this one studded with protrusions like giant tumbled amethysts on a midnight blue background, with a slightly abstracted rendition of the stretch of the galaxy across the night sky running diagonally down the sides to curve under the windshield; this one a crazy-quilt patchwork in patterned teal; this one giving the appearance of being coated in iridescent dust, glimmering through a warm pastel rainbow, with a plush-looking pink and yellow interior and a pair of fluffy backswept moths' antennae sprouting from the roof.

Of course the best-looking ones are the most memorable, she notes.