Kyprioth Art Yarn - Inspired by Fantasy Novels by Tamora Pierce

I love listening to audio books while spinning. I used to watch TV series, but I always miss something when I'm concentrating on the yarn, so I can only watch things I already know or have to accept that some things will escape me. After finishing the Gentlemen Bastards series (which I wrote about here) I returned to books I enjoyed reading years back - the Alanna the Lioness series by Tamora Pierce. These books are for teenagers, strictly speaking, but I love them and will read them or listen to them over and over! I decided to stay with the author and listen to some of the books I hadn't read before, among them the Trickster's series. As always, new yarn ideas formed in my head, but first let me tell you a little about Tamora Pierce's books and why I love them so much. Photos of the yarn and spinning process will follow below!

The books feature strong female protagonists, on the verge of coming of age. They are diverse, they have believable flaws and problems one can relate to, they have their special skills and strengths, they often have to fight hard for their right to do what they want (something many of us can relate to, too), and they are essentially feminist. There are also many more (different!) female characters in the books, all with their own strengths, and all complex characters - not the single, simple token woman we find in many other fantasy books. There are non binary and gay people (in the Beka Cooper series), the books are sex positive without being in your face, they cover racism (up to a point) and sexism. And the stories are interesting (and sometimes really enthralling) and well written.


I wish I had had these books when I was a teenager! I could have identified so much better with Alanna or Beka Cooper than with the protagonists from so many other books. I only got to know them when I was in my twenties, when I met Twisted and she recommended them - thank you, over and over! ❤️‍
Alanna is still my favourite, and I warmly recommend the series to anyone who doesn't mind it's meant for teenagers (hello, Harry Potter fans! ;-)) and to people who need a gift for a fantasy loving teenager.

But now for the yarn! As I said, I was listening to the Trickster series (the books are Trickster's Choice and Trickster's Queen), which is about Alanna's daughter Alianne who is captured by pirates, shipped off to the so called Copper Isles as a slave and tries to find her way home. She meets the Trickster, the god of the Raka people of the Copper Isles, who are people of colour enslaved by the white-skinned Luarin and their gods. Alianne, who is called Aly throughout the books, makes a bargain with the Trickster to keep the children of a certain family safe until the winter and he promises to return her to her home after that. I really don't want to reveal too much, so let me just say there is a greater scheme and cunning plans, lots of witty dialogues, and many strong female characters (also interesting and diverse male ones).

The yarn I spun was inspired by the Trickster god Kyprioth and the Copper Isles. It fits in my corroding copper yarn experiments (like this one and that one), is also reminscent of the ocean aroung the Copper Isles, and features beautiful copper spirals, handmade by myself of course. And now for the photos!

 Handmade wire spirals, hammered flat and later spun in.

I chose blueish teal for the ocean and resembling corroding copper, and coppery rusty red, and lots of copper sparkle for the fibre blend, and faceted glass beads to match. 

 I didn't thread the spirals onto the sewing thread with the beads, but chose another method instead, fixating them with a kind of knot to make them more secure.

Finished! :-) I have to admit, being in my favourite colours, this one is hard to part from. My camera had slight problems with the teals, as always, but I edited the photos and they look right on my monitor. I love the colour contrast, and the add-ins and sparkle!

I hope to list this yarn very soon - maybe later today, or tomorrow. Thank you for being patient and reading this very long thing! :-)

New Addiction: Avatar (The Last Airbender)

Just a quick update and some photos: I've finally started watching Avatar - The Last Airbender, which I've been meaning to since about forever. Now my chance came when we (that is my chosen family and I) needed another TV series to watch once a week and the suggestion came up. It's such a lot of fun, and I like how the show incorporates feminist topics by letting some character make comments like "that's not for girls to do" or bringing up silly stereotypes in another way, and then showing how he is really an obnoxious git and letting him deal with the consequences. We've finished season 1 now, and I have already spun two yarns inspired by the series:

Aang

If you've watched the show or google a picture it should be obvious why I chose these colours. The yarn is soft and gorgeous, this time without any add-ins, and it's already listed in the shop.

Kyoshi Warriors

Now, these I liked a lot! A group of women warriors, powerful and witty, fighting with swords and fans. I carded a batt about a week ago and then went to look for fan charms which I really wanted in this yarn. It seemed there were none small enough for my spinning wheel orifice, but I ordered a small (and beautiful) version anyway and was lucky - they fit after all, smoothly.

So, the colour choices are based on the outfits (green, black, gold/yellow) and make-up (red eyeshadow / eye lid painting), and I added some gold sparkle, too. The yarn still needs to dry and I will list it as soon as possible.

Harry Potter Yarn Advent Calendar?!

I've been thinking a lot about offering mini skeins lately. Or maybe even smaller amounts, such as a few metres to embellish projects and gifts, for example. I often see small embellishment packs on Etsy, with four or five different yarns, a few metres each - but never handspun.
I wondered whether this would be a good thing to offer for Christmas, and I decided to try it out - but this took a whole new direction when I posted a photo of the Christmas mini batts I made for this project on Facebook: two very dear customers jumped in immediately with their own ideas, one dreaming about a mini skein Advent calendar, the other suggesting making said calendar with a Hobbit, Lord of the Rings or Doctor Who theme in mind. This really got me thinking. And planning! (Thank you so much, you two! You know who you are ;-))

If you follow my blog and shop you will have noticed that I've always been a huge fan of the Harry Potter books (though I have to admit I am more and more irritated by the gender roles lately, but I still like the books), and I think they would make a fantastic story Advent calendar. I had pieces and ideas forming in my head immediately - such as the snake in the zoo, Hagrid with his pink umbrella, "you're a wizard, Harry", potions class, "Mars is bright tonight" and lots more. I ended up having over 30 yarn ideas, only from the first book, and I could have easily written down even more, but I had to narrow them down to just 24, obviously. It will still be a huge project with 24 yarns, even though there will be only small amounts of yarn, and there is not much time left if I want to make this happen, advertise it, and ship it out in time. But I am on fire here!

My current plan is to take 24 small paper bags or something like that, write the numbers from 1 to 24 on the front, and put between 10 and 15 m of "scene art yarn" in each of them, writing the title of each yarn in the place where I fold the bag to close it. It's planned as a surprise, so there will be no photos of the yarns themselves in the listing, but I will document the yarns in case someone wants a peek to see if this is the right thing for them. I just don't want to post spoilers, so photos will be shown by request only.

So, what can you do with only 10-15 m of yarn each day? Embellishing gifts and project is one idea, but maybe it would be sad to take the yarns out of context, and don't forget that the whole amount will be at least 240 m! So what about a striped story scarf? You can knit or crochet or weave a bit every day and see it grow as Christmas approaches. You could also add some plain yarn (something neutral, like black or white maybe) and make a larger project, alternating plain yarn and art yarn, making something larger, like a shawl, maybe. A set of striped hat and wrist warmers would also be great, or a bag, or a pillow case - there are so many possibilities!
The yarns will differ from each other in texture and thickness, so they would make a very interesting project. I'm sure they could also be used for needle felting and maybe even emroidery projects, and I bet you will think of lots more to do with them!

Now excuse me, I'm off to start spinning Harry Potter scenes! ;-)

Captain Zamira Drakasha - Badass Pirate and New Art Yarn Project

I am currently listening to the audio book version of The Gentleman Bastards series by Scott Lynch (@scottlynch78 on Twitter). I stumbled upon the first of the books on Amazon years ago, put it on my wish list - mostly because I read about there being a badass woman pirate in the second book - and then kind of forgot about it. I had so much on my mind then, writing my thesis and reading only stuff I needed for that purpose.

A few months ago, a customer who has also become a friend told me she loved the books, and said I should definitely read them. By then I was already hooked on A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin and didn't see myself starting another series soon. But then it came to me: I looked for the audio book, as I always need something to occupy my mind while spinning. Though I do enjoy (re)watching Star Trek, Doctor Who, Torchwood, Buffy, and other shows, it's nice to have someone read to you now and then - and Michael Page, who reads the Gentleman Bastard series, does a fantastic job.

I have finished book 2 now, the book where the aforementioned female pirate captain comes into the story. And I am in love! She is a middle aged black woman, pirate captain, talented at sabre fighting, mother of two, and utterly fantastic. And what do I do when I am so in love with a character? Yes, exactly - I pay homage to them by spinning a yarn ;-)

Here she is, the magnificent Zamira Drakasha, Captain of the Poison Orchid!

 I decided on dark brown, reddish brown and golden brown to represent Zamira's ship and clothes, and teal and turquoise to represent the ocean. Fibres used are merino wool and bamboo.

For add-ins, I chose sabre charms for Zamira's fighting talents, yak bone skulls for the piracy, and coin charms for gained treasure. Also, I added strips of red silk, as in Zamira's universe being a pirate is referred to as sailing under the red flag, the equivalent of the Jolly Roger. The strips are spun in so the ends of them will flutter magnificently from the finished yarn.

The colours are a bit off in these pictures, as my camera has a slight problem with teals and turquoises - they always seem bluer than they actually are.

(By the way, when I googled Zamira I came upon this article, a response by author Scott Lynch to a critic of the character Zamira Drakasha. As always when something is about (strong, independent, powerful) women, the "critics" (read: obnoxious dickheads) come crawling from their sorry dark holes. The response by Scott Lynch is great, though, and you don't necessarily have to know the story or the character to read it.)

If you're interested in the book series, here are the titles:

1. The Lies of Locke Lamora

2. Red Seas under Red Skies

3. The Republic of Thieves

(Four more books to come, according to Wikipedia)

Essentially, the series is about two likeable (male) con artists and their varying followers who plan schemes to get rich. They are also priests of the so called crooked warden, the nameless thirteenth, god of thieves, and as such have certain obligations which sometimes interferes with their actually getting rich. The schemes are clever and sometimes quite funny, the dialogues are fun, the writing is great... Trigger warnings should be given for a certain brutality, though in my opinion it's much less than in A Song of Ice and Fire, for instance.

Though both of the protagonsists are male and there could be more female main characters for my taste, at least in this world women are visible, and work in varying professions. There are female guard and city watch members, assassins, personal guards, alchemysts, pirates, thieves, magi... And after Zamira and her second in command in book 2, book 3 now features another two women who I hope will get more screen time (is there a word for that when I'm talking about books?), and book 1 also had a few interesting female characters, though they didn't get that much time. 

So, all in all - very enjoyable books, fun to read, and even more fun if they're read to you by Michael Page ;-)

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.