Wild.Unfolded

I admit I wouldn’t be able to spot Mo’Nique in a line up, so out of touch am I with anything that’s happening in the world of hollywood, however she seems to have caused a bit of a bruhaha with her choice to not shave her legs.

Commenters on this here internet have branded her “disgusting” “gross” “a pig” “unclean” “lazy”. Wow. Harsh old internet, innit?

So here’s a news flash for everyone, ever: Women do actually grow hair on their legs. And their arms. And their stomachs, chests, chins, upperlips, feet and infact everywhere. Just like men. Some women grow a fine peach fuzz, some women grow a dark forest – amount and type of body hair depends on things like race, colouring and hormonal levels.

There’s a multi-billion dollar industry based on telling women that their body hair is disgusting and needs to be plucked, waxed, shaved, bleached, lasered etc etc. As a result, western society now decides that a woman who dares to have hair anywhere on her body that is not her head is really just lazy and disgusting, and doesn’t choose to attend to personal hygiene.

Let’s back it up a bit. As recently as 100 years ago, it was perfectly normal for a woman to maintain a crop of hair on her legs.  Then magazines started showing shorter hemlines and sleeveless tops and it all went to hell. I know, it’s a shock to hear that fashion mags were telling women they were fuzzy freaks. That would never happen now. Cough.

Here’s a confession for you, I don’t always shave my legs. I don’t always shave my armpits. I do tend to maintain a smooth upperlip, but that is purely because I find it more comfortable to do so.  I rarely do anything with my eyebrows apart from raise them in disbelief. I have hair on my chin, my chest and my stomach as well as my back. I could, it’s true, spend a good chunk of time shaving or waxing it all off, but frankly I have better things to do with my time.

Is it lazy to not remove body hair? No, I don’t think so. It’s certainly tedious (though to be fair some women love doing it, and that’s their choice).  It’s also painful, even shaving can be painful if you happen to sneeze while doing your shins (ask me nicely and I’ll show you the scar).

However, airbrushed perfection as presented to us in magazines and movies dictates that women need to be 100% smooth 100% of the time. And apparently a lot of men are shocked and disgusted by a women who might have something more interesting to do with her time and money than invest a ton of it in hair removal.

For any men reading this who think “God, hair on a woman is so disgusting, I’d leave a woman who didn’t shave” then I want you to do this for at least two months: Make sure there is NO hair on your legs, chest, underarms, pubic area, stomach, back and hands. I mean it. Shave that shit if you hate it so much, if you think it’s disgusting on women then it’s time to see why some women decide not to bother. Keep it shaved. Even if that means doing it every day, do it. You could also go for waxing. But you’ll probably only do it once.  However you decide to do it, keep it up for a couple of months, then figure out that time spent over an adult lifetime.

Boring, isn’t it?

Body Image

One of our staff members has resigned since she’s finished her training and is off to get a real job as a nurse. To mark the event, I’ve been making this doll for her:

Eventually, she’s going to have legs (I’m in the process of sewing her arms on in this shot) and she’ll be hiding a big nasty scary looking syringe behind her back. She’ll also have pink hair – Janes favourite colours are black and pink, so yanno, working with that.

The head and torso (which you can’t see under the skirt) are worked from this pattern by Owlishly. The skirt is freeformed mostly, but following the basic directions. The arms, legs and hair I’m making up as I go along. I don’t mind admitting I was just having too much trouble with the pattern for these bits, and after starting an arm over for the 30th time I decided to wing it.

Crochet

Now in video form! For this week anyways. People NAG ME.

Video

The State Government has started running adverts saying “Look, we know the desalination plant is kinda touchy on an environmental level, but we need the water because of population growth and drought and stuff, so if you could stop complaining about it, that’d be great, thanks”. Not in those words, of course.

Victoria (my state) has just had the driest 10 years on record, and it honestly doesn’t look as though we’re going to ever return to the old days when rain happened a lot and we were able to sit under a sprinkler on a hot day without worry or care. We are now mostly all in the habit of saving, reusing and catching water however we can, from a bucket in the shower to a sink liner to rain tanks to even bucketing out the bathwater for reuse on the garden. A friend of mine catches the water from the hot tap before it’s hot enough to use and adds it to her drinking water filter (a nifty idea I intend to steal).

It’s turning into a no win situation. Too many tanks equals less vital run off that feeds the creeks and streams, leading to those already suffering eco systems to die out. There’s a required balance which is being lost, but that’s a blog post for another time.

There’s two things to address here with our lack of water. The first is the mindset which was aired on the radio this morning – “I pay for my water, I’ll use it however I want to”. People still consider a nice green lawn to be a thing of beauty and desire, regardless of how much water it takes to maintain. People still, staggeringly, would prefer to hose their paths than use a broom. All that needs to change. Water needs to be treated as the vital and finate resource it is, with as much resuse as possible. My ideal set up would use shower water to wash clothes, clothes water to flush the toilet and kitchen water for the garden. Not to much hassle really, quite a bit of plumbing though.

The other is population. While the government wants more people, lots of breeding please, the country just cannot keep sustaining a growing population. I’m not saying we should institute a One child policy or anything like that, but people should be encouraged to keep families small. We probably have a while to go yet before Australia simply breaks down, but in the meantime a shift in attitude to smaller families and better use of resources will save us a lot of heartbreak in the future. A level population, or a slow growth, will give us a much better chance of making it into a long future.

water

By gosh it is too. The doll, I am sad to say, is still shoved in a bag awaiting my bracing myself and finishing the arms. In the meantime, I’ve jumped into something mindless. This is just repeats of three – three trebles, three chains – so there’s no pattern and I can watch the telly box without losing my place.

I found this yarn on the cheap at Kmart and as it’s my favourite colours ever ever I had to buy it. And like I usually do, I bought it without a project in mind. I decided to use it for this very simple wrap because the colour changes add their own interest without the need for fancy stitch work. It’s coming along really fast, which is good. Though why I’m crocheting a winter wrap in the middle of summer is anyone’s guess.

Crochet

I recorded this yesterday, but viddler had some issues with encoding the format I used, so I had to reupload. It’s kind of an odd shape because the camera was sideways and I had to rotate the picture. Also I don’t know if you can hear me all that well.

Whatever the time stamp may say on this post, I am writing it at 11:56pm, therefore it’s still Wednesday. I know I skipped last week. The reason for that was I has just frogged attempt #1 at this project, and therefore had nothing to show. NOTHING! Nothing but a pile of crinkly crochet cotton. Oh the humanity.

What am I working on? Well, this:

Okay so that kind of looks like Muppet Surgery. What you can see there are the legs of a doll I am making for Jane. I’ve had SO many tries at every part of this doll I am no longer stressing if it doesn’t look like the picture. Right now I just want to get it done. Once it’s finished, it’ll be a nurse in a black dress holding a syringe behind her back. If it sucks, well I’ll just give her a gift card or something.

I had to actually BUY pink yarn for this, btw. I thought I could get away with using what I’d found at Savers, but the thicknesses were too variable. Dammit, now I have three balls of pink yarn.

Crochet, Handmade

Yup, still with the trees. The one on the right is done but for the decorations and the base, the one on the left needs a few more rounds, then the base. You can see on the left one I got smart and added the yarn decorations as I went. This is because it’s SUCKING to do them on the other one, getting the knots tied in the pointy bit is unfun.

Neither of these are the one I posted last week, that was frogged once the new pattern started to work well. These are a little thinner, and I think I’ve figured out a way to give them a nice rounded base.

SO, I have to finish these, then whip up the littler ones, then felt them all, which I hope to be able to do this weekend to get Evie’s out to her on Monday.

Crochet

I posted it to Crafster, but it never made it to the blog proper. My bad! Anywhoo, remember the Eiffel Tower I was working on a couple of weeks ago? Reminder:

Well I finally got it finished (I say finally, but it’s not like I worked on it for 9 years or anything.) It’s been handed over to the new owner, Miss Di, who loves it to tiny bits. Phew! Always hard to know if a handmade thing is going to be the RIGHT thing to give, but she was pretty thrilled with it. So was I.  Here it be:

Looking at it I can see at least 19 different places I’d like to redo, but it’s gone now so I must let it go. LET IT GO.

In other news, the tree from the last WIP post has been frogged since the second draft of the pattern worked so much better. Racing to get them done and felted in time to mail one set is kinda fun!

Crochet, Needlework