How The Princess Saved Herself

A few days ago, I posted a photo on my private Twitter account showing a batt I had carded that day. A very, very pink batt I thought of naming Candy Overdose once it was made into yarn, as I wanted to stay away from any stereotypical attributions.

I briefly considered doing something with skulls and swords, but as I had already used these add-ins with another (pink and black) yarn on the same day, I thought it might be boring. Also, I ran into kind of a dead end when I thought about it. It all went very fast and quite subconsciously, and it's a bit hard to reconstruct, but it went along the following lines: I could use these things to bend the gender stereotype, but in doing so I would also imply pink was girly while swords and skulls were not and therefore contribute to the stereotyope - and I really hate this kind of thing. As I said, my brain went through this very quickly and it seemed to happen in the back of my head without me really noticing the details.

But then, my dear friend Twisted saw the photo and twittered (in German, so I am going to translate here) "I want to see swords in the yarn! And skulls! And then you'll call it "The Princess Saves Herself"!".

And it clicked.

I could actually do some stereotype bending without contributing to the stereotype, although I still had to use the stereotype to bend it, of course - and here my brain went all fuzzy again. I have to think about this some more, and I can't pinpoint exactly why this title makes the idea work, but it does.

In fairy tales, movies and all sorts of stories princesses are traditionally weak (and in distress) and need to be saved by a prince. This trope can be applied to constellations other than princess/prince - and the underlying pattern and implication is that women need to be saved by men (please also watch Anita Sarkeesian's Damsel in Distress series for this, which is a must-see, in my opinion). I have resented this idea for a very long time, and I get angry and frustrated whenever yet another movie/game/story uses this trope. It gets old, and it's been old for decades now.

By taking swords (traditionally used by the prince and attributed to men - also just look at archaeological interpretations, but that's a topic for a different blog post) and skulls and spinning them into a pink (recently-traditionally attributed to women and overused with princesses) yarn I combine elements that are attributed to two different gender groups, merging them - and with the title I let the princess take an active role, making it clear that she uses the swords herself, and that she can stand for herself and be her own rescuer. I use existing stereotypes and I challenge them.

There is also a single dragon in the yarn, by the way, for - I think - obvious reasons.

As a side note, I came upon a webcomic the other day, telling the story of two princesses. It's called Princess Princess, and I enjoyed it very much. It's funny and creative, and it's untypical and untraditional. It's free, too!

While writing this article I realized that using stereotypes in a way that bends them doesn't mean contributing to said stereotypes. This is actually quite obvious, but as I said, I thought myself into a dead end, and I seem to have needed to write this down in order to organize my thoughts. I also realized that sometimes I have to use stereotypes to challenge them.

Time is running

...and Halloween is only one month away. I love spinning Halloween art yarns, but somehow I always start too late. Also, August and September have been incredibly busy the last few years. This is why I have only a few themed yarns, not all of which are listed yet. I'll try my best to put them in the shop over the next few days so they will arrive in time for a Halloween knitting party - or a Halloween party you just take your knitting to ;-)

Bats and Pumpkins

This one features the traditional colours and also bat charms and pumpkin charms. It's 168 m / 112 g

Gotham Night

 This one is already listed, you can read about the details here.

Also, there are these two - not Halloween yarns as such, but the colours fit the theme somewhat and I'd like to show them because I like them a lot :-)

Gallifrey

This one features hand dyed bluefaced leicester wool and silk as well as merino wool - and semi-precious stones (fiery red agate, carnelian, and citrine) strung onto a shiny orange thread. 251 m / 113 g

Friends of Slytherin

 

 This is one of my recent favourites - I absolutely love the snake charms. I've been meaning to spin another Slytherin yarn for a long time now, but it took me a while to find suitable add-ins. This art yarn is sparkly (silver angelina) and features wild silk, alpaca, linen and merino wool. Also, I spun in silk fabric strips and beads. 112 m / 95 g

Pirate Jenny

When I was in school (about sixth grade or so, I think), a class of older students performed the Threepenny  Opera by Kurt Weill, and I became kind of infatuated with Pirate Jenny (in German: Seeräuberjenny), a song from said opera and character in this song. For days, my best friend and I would try to sing the "Schiff mit acht Segeln"/"ship, a black freighter" part (and fail horribly, I might add).

I then saw a performance of the Threepenny Opera in one of the local theatres a few years ago and started searching for versions of the song on youtube. Somehow I seem to have missed the best ones, and I forgot all about it until I kind of stumbled upon a version by Amanda Palmer.



Now, as a former opera singer to be it took me some getting used to her style of singing, but I've grown to like her very much, and she is a fabulous artist. (Her latest album is downloadable for the price you want to pay, by the way).

I found another version of Pirate Jenny by Ute Lemper, a German singer. I think this is by far the best performance, I am absolutely amazed at how versatile her voice is.



To think that this is the German voice of sweet Arielle... Would you have believed it?

After listening to so many versions of the song (there are more to be found, of course, and I listened to many of them), I became inspired once more by Pirate Jenny, and I decided to spin a yarn (what else?!).

I put in skull beads (one of my favourite ingredients, as you might have noticed by now), coin charms for the penny which is referred to in the song, and ripped pieces of cotton fabric for the rags. I also added rust red linen for some texture.

Christmas is not as far away as you might think

It's been weeks since I read on Etsy that sellers should already prepare for Christmas, and start making Christmas items. I was somewhat reluctant to start that early, especially since I always have more ideas for Halloween art yarns - but I thought it might be time to start, after all. Sooo - here's my first Christmas yarn for this year:

I love the holly charms (which I purchased from nicoledebruin on Etsy) and was looking forward to using them, anyway ;-) I hope to list this one soon, but I need more light to take better photos.

The Bats are Coming!

 Halloween is approaching, and I turned that fact into an excuse to order many, many charms ;-) Some of them I found on Ebay, and some I ordered from nicoledebruin on Etsy. I can't wait to spin them all into yarns *g* I already started with some bats, as you can see here:

The Batcave

I love the colour combination of the dark and mysterious black, the stone grey and the eerie blue/teal. The silver bats fit right in, and I think this will make a gorgeous piece for any comic fan or bat lover :-)

I also ordered some golden bats, and I plan on making a Batwoman yarn. I already blended the fibres, so I'll start this some time soon.

I have many more ideas, some of which I already started to put into action. I spun a Necromancer yarn with skulls and bones in it, and a Polyjuice Potion yarn. I already carded many batts for more yarns, so keep your eyes open! :-)

Zombies, Ghosts, and Pumpkins

I've spun three sets of the creepy-fun polymer clay things I made the other day into gorgeous Halloween art yarns. There's still one left which I hope to process today or tomorrow. I've already prepared hand dyed red Bluefaced Leicester wool and black wool/silk blend, so I am ready to go :-)
Anyway, here are the freshly spun Halloween art yarns:

Pumpkin Cult


Death Day Party



Zombies on the Road



The zombie heads and ghosts even glow in the dark. I've taken pictures, but I'll have to try again, they're really bad. I'll show them to you anyway, though, to give you an idea of how the things look :-)



The yarns will be listed as soon as possible, so there'll be enough time for you to order them before Halloween arrives.

The Strange and the Divine

I promised photos of my latest yarns which you have already seen on the bobbin, during the spinning process - and here they are :-)

Luna Lovegood


108 m / 97 g
I used fine merino wool of yellow, peach and light blue, as well as white mohair for a fine halo and white Bluefaced Leicester wool for extra softness. I spun in sunflowers and wonderful handmade glass radishes Potzblitz made for me:

Aren't the amazing?

And here's the other yarn:

Athena

191 m / 90 g
I used a wonderful merino/bamboo blend I had dyed quite a while ago. It was sitting in my dyed fibre box and for a long time, I couldn't decide what to make from it. Sometimes, when I like some supplies a lot, I don't want to use them too quickly, I usually wait for the perfect project. Now that I found it I am very happy that it turned out as beautifully as I wanted it to be :-)
I spun in two types of a kind of leaf garland, the green one clearly alluding to the olive branches associated with the Goddess Athena, and some silver-coloured owls - Athenas associated birds.
Athena is - besides other things - considered the Goddess of spinners and weavers.

Both yarns are to be listed in our shop very soon :-)

Luna Lovegood

Just a quick peek :-) I'll post more pictures in a few days.

So Many Ideas

I've not even spun up all the batts I carded the other day and I have already got so many ideas for new yarns, I can hardly keep up ;-)

I've been wanting to spin some more Harry Potter inspired yarns (I must have listened to the audio books about 20 to 30 times so far, I always start from the beginning when I'm through with book 7 - do feel free to call me crazy ;-)) and I like my new ideas: I plan to spin a Trelawny yarn and since the descriptions of the first divination lesson offer so much I will also spin a "Welcome to Divination" yarn, the materials for which I've just assembled:


The room is described as lit with a crimson light, the lamps draped with red scarves (hence the colours I chose), the students sit in chintz arm chairs and on fat poufs which I imagine as somewhat furry or fuzzy (so I chose eyelash yarn and mohair curls as add-ins), and the shelves are filled with feathers and crystal balls, among other things (I found some real feathers and rock crystal beads). I don't have any tea cup charms, but I chose some metal leave charms alluding to the tea leaves we can read quite a lot about.

And now excuse me, I have to start spinning ;-)

First Funky Christmas Yarn this Year!

Yes, I've started! You can't begin early enough ;-)
I spent some time felting little glittery baubles this week, and today I carded two gorgeous, also glittery batts. The baubles will dangle from the yarn like the felted pumpkins, the yarn will be green with a bit of red - and, yes, that's right: TINSEL! :-D


I had lots of fun already, and I'm really looking forward to spinning this yarn :-)

Ocean of Zombies - Creepy? Fun!

As I mentioned a short while ago, I was quite tempted to spin a very different ocean yarn, wich I did. It's for a monthly challenge on our new (German) community over at www.spinnkult.de, as well as the second yarn I'm also about to show you. But first, let me introduce the zombies ;-)

I do like very textured yarns, as I've probably also mentioned before. For this one, I used a wonderful, hand dyed merino/bamboo blend, some glow in the dark thread, some snail-shells, mother of pearls discs, angelina and, of course, the zombie heads made from glow in the dark polymer clay. It's 146 m, 138 g and about 10 wpi.

Here's a glow photo, but since I've taken it with my mobile you can't really see how nice the thread glows, only the zombie heads:

(More pictures on my flickr page)

And then, there's a very nice (and not so strange) corespun yarn, also with snail-shells and angelina, made from kid mohair fibre (also hand dyed) that has been spun around some glow in the dark sewing thread:

I don't have a glow photo, though, since my mobile is not good enough for that. I really need my shop partner (or my fiancé) to show me how to use the real camera with glow in the dark stuff. My last attempts were not as good as they could have been, though passable ;-)

Has it really been a year??

Not quite, but nearly.
I am talking about Halloween preparations.
Since we want our customers to be able to knit something from our (planned) Halloween yarns before the actual event, we have to start spinning Halloween yarns again. What did I say - have to? WANT to is more like it, we just love doing it, of course ;-)
So I went and made some new weird beads, remembering all the fun I had last year.
All the white/light parts glow in the dark.

The unidentifiable beads in the bottom row are supposed to be eyes for a special project - but I'll tell you more about that when there's more to see.

I also dug out my easter egg colours, which are more easily to use (and require less time, I can do that along the way, using the microwave) than acid dyes and dyed some kid mohair and some merino/bamboo blend.

The kid mohair will become another fluffy glow in the dark yarn and the blend is for another ocean-themed yarn - though I have to admit I am quite tempted to use the blend in combination with the white heads in the picture above to make an unusual halloween yarn, such as a drowned corpse or something similar vivid ;-) (Would fit into the ocean theme nicely, don't you think? *g*)

A Pirate's Treasure

I needed a small and quick project the other day and came up with a simple little pouch for jewelry or other small items.
It's really not a big deal, but I do love what I added to make it more interesting ;-)
That's a tiny skull of real bone, a facetted red glass bead and a blue variety of (synthetic) goldstone I don't know the english name for.

My next pouch will feature a more interesting fibre mix and some glittering angelina - I've already carded some batts and started spindling ;-)

Stoned ;-)

I know, I know - couldn't resist ;-)

I've finally managed to make key chain rings from the beach stones I ordered a while ago. They have been finished for about a week or two, but since some of them were intended as gifts, I couldn't write about them earlier. Now I have given most of them away to dear friends I meet once or twice a year and I am finally able to post some pictures.

I had decided to put my studies to good use and create egyptian "magic" pendants to use as key rings or bag clingers. I looked for some hieroglyphic words like "magic", "seeress", "might" (and many others) and painted them onto the stones. I am quite satisfied with the outcome :-)



I wanted my friends to know what word they had chosen, but only after choosing a pendant, so I wrote the hieroglyphs, the transcription and the German meaning on narrow strips of parchment and rolled them around the wiry bits. This way, everyone was able to choose from looks and then get a nice surprise ;-)


There are a few left (I had ordered more stones than I needed, greedy me ;-)) and I am currently thinking about listing them in our InnerTwilight shop. Or I might keep them to have a small gift handy when I need it :-)

The Dark Side

I have already mentioned one of my new yarns - the one I'll probably have to keep, since I am very much in love with it (and it would have to be so expensive that no one would buy it, anyway ;-)). It has been spun from handcarded batts of black alpaca fibre, hand dyed merino/silk blend of a subtle, blueish grey, shiny white bamboo and silver angelina. I used the corespinning technique again (spinning the fibres around a core thread with an angle of (mostly) 90 degrees), which is probably the most time-consuming spinning technique - with the exeption of supercoils. In the end, I had 150 m/104 g of the most gorgeous yarn I can imagine. It cost me a lot of time, but was very well worth it! But let me tell you a bit more ;-) Apart from the bone skulls I've spun in, there are also various semi-precious stones and other fancy stuff: iolite discs that match the merino/silk blend, lava beads, drops of labradorite and freshwater pearls of dark red. I've seldomly used such a large amount of embellishments.

And nooooooow.... Photos!




A few more photos can be seen on my flickr page.

There is only one problem with me and this yarn: I have no idea (yet) what to make from it. Somehow, I don't want another scarf (I have too many already, I can't wear them all and end up with my favourite one, which is all right, surely, but then I don't need any others - and if I made a scarf from this yarn, I couldn't wear my now-favourite one, since the new one would be even better. You can see my dilemma, I am sure ;-)), somehow a hat seems to be to mundane for this beauty (and I don't much like wearing hats, anyway) and I have no further ideas. I will have to forage for ideas and patterns on ravelry. With 150 m I will be somewhat limited, but I am sure I will find something in the end.
Another problem is that the yarn will be gone as soon as I've knitted it up - which is normal, and I know I am acting silly. But what if I knit it up into something and then I find a better use later? I suppose that's why knitters accumulate so many yarns; there has to be the perfect project for a specific yarn and until you find the right one, you have to knit something else ;-)

New Earrings

Just a quick teaser in passing ;-)




Both pairs are made from silver (935) and semi-precious stones. I hope I will be able to list them on Etsy soon - but since this week is very busy, it might be some time until I get my chance ;-)

Dark Atlantis (Triangular Shawl) - finished!

I promised pictures of the Dark Atlantis triangular shawl - and here they are! :-)
The shawl can also be worn as a scarf which makes this beauty even better and more practical. I am so very happy with it :-)

Lots of new stuff

We have to admit there hasn't been much new stuff lately, neither here nor in our art yarn shop on Etsy. We have both been busy with work and studies and there wasn't much time for crafty things - but we'll do our best to change that. In fact, we had a nice get-together yesterday - a whole day of spinning and wire bending and knitting :-) Snowberry&Lime delivered some wonderful new fibre, like Cashmere and Gotland lambs wool, and also some very strange fibre, like this glittering fleece of merino wool and sparkling nylon fibre:



I had to test this immediately, and I also spun the Gotland lambs wool and some alpaca-silk yarn during the meeting:


The glittering stuff really looks like artificial turf (though it is a lot softer, thank goodness ;-)), so that's what I will call the yarn. I also started spinning some cashmere last night, which is incredibly soft. Maybe I'll dye the yarn after spinning, but I still have to decide about the colour.

And then there is my new favourite yarn, the first one I spun on my new Ashford Traditional (which I got for Christmas and still haven't told you about - shame on me!) WITH the new jumbo flyer (which I should have gotten for Christmas, as well, but which I only received a few days ago) and the only one (at the moment) I think I really can't part with: Dark Atlantis


It has been spun from black merino, mixed together with hand dyed lambs wool of shades of greenish blue, blueish green and turquoise (hard to describe, really) and glittering fibre. There are some hand crafted spirals and lots of facetted glass beads in it and it sparkles and is dark yet a little colourful and I really think I have to keep this one for myself ;-)

Another thing I made for myself is a new orifice hook for my new spinning wheel. It's the second one I made, since the first one was rather crappy, and I really like how it turned out:


As you can see, I am really into wire bending at the moment. It started with some harmless stitch markers for the crafts fair last year - and then I had to buy a book or two and some tools and try to do other stuff - and now... well, we've already opened another shop and let's just say that stitch markers won't be the only wiry things in there ;-)

Can't get enough!

I never thought I'd fall for something like polymer clay, since I normally prefer glass, wood, gem stones and the like - but I just can't stop myself making more beads ;-) It's amazing to be able to make just the stuff I need for a project, and especially for Halloween, I don't care if they are made from plastics (or whatever exactly), they are far too gorgeous :-D So there will be some new yarns soon, I suppose. I might keep some for the crafts fair in October, but some of them will make it into our Etsy shop. The first batch of ghosts has already been spun in and the yarn is drying, setting the twist. Now I'll need some good weather to take good or maybe at least acceptable photos, but it's been raining quite a lot for the last few days and there was not enough light for good pictures...