I wrote a new article about a liquid effect I implemented 5 years ago. (It's been a while)
Stable Fluids is used in this algorithm, and I explain how I applied it to create the liquid effect in this article.
There are also small interactive demos and you can play with them!
https://t.co/mGafSXQAb2
honestly no special skills. what helped was asking for specific techniques instead of "make it cute": stitches drawn as height maps, shell rendering for the wool fuzz, verlet ropes for the thread. then lots of small rounds of "this looks off, fix it". the code is open: https://t.co/lkzR962Q9t