Monthly Archives: April 2010

You all know the stereotype:  The obedient and subservient wife who could cook a gourmet meal, make her own absolutely fabulous clothes and decorate her home beautifully with things created with her own hands.

The Stepford Wife. Martha Stewart. June Cleaver. The more recent version: Sandra Lee

You know. The stereotypes good little feminist girls love to hate, because they represent a lack of independence, a willingness to define yourself by what services you can provide to your man or your children.  They represent servitude rather than freedom, an obsession with fitting in and being exactly like everyone else, with keeping up appearances and keeping up with the Joneses.

But the face of the woman who loves to cook, craft, and sew is changing. No longer is this only the realm of the June Cleavers of the world, the WASP bottle blondes with the botox smile. Crafts and Cooking aren’t just for boring old ladies or cookie-cutout wives anymore.

No, the only common factor for the new crafty, cooking, home-maker woman is that she is exceedingly uncommon.  She embraces her weirdness and her differences and her independence even as she embraces those things that once defined the “domestic.”

Take a look at me, for example: I am a geeky girl who cares more about the latest video games than in what some celebutante wore to the Oscars, who happily streaks her hair pink, purple, or fire-engine red when she can get away with it, who loves tattoos and punk music and has a mind that is very happily at home in the gutter in which it generally resides, and who has a mouth that could probably make a sailor blush. The only pairs of stockings I own are all fishnet (and mostly torn) and I have to be really in the mood to put on a dress.  Most of the time when at my leisure, I’m found in a snarky t-shirt and unravelling jeans.

The New Face of Home Cooking - Natalie, from Bake and Destroy

I love to sew, cook, knit, crochet, embroider – you name it. I devour recipes and play with them to make them my own. I modify store-purchased clothes to make them better suit my (tending-toward-punky) tastes. I sew elaborate costumes for conventions, and I knit or do cross stitch to relax. I have been known to be an insomniac baker – getting up and baking odd things in the middle of the night because I can’t sleep. (My office loves me for this…)

There’s Natalie, over at a foodie blog I love called Bake and Destroy. Not only does she have some really tasty recipes to offer, she has some of the most beautiful ink I’ve ever seen and shares my love of punky clothes, odd haircolors, and good music.

There’s a forum for domestically inclined punkers over at Punk Rock Domestics that can always be counted on for some good recipes and fun projects. Naughty Needles and Knit Porn have some awesome knitting patterns and advice for knitters, including some gorgeous burlesque outfits to knit and some bondage related crafting advice. (Ever wondered how to knit some cuffs with d-rings ready for the ropes?) There’s an entire section of patterns over on Ravelry for “adult” knitting patterns, and there’s geeky patterns enough to keep me knitting for decades. (My Ravelry Profile).

As far as books, since the new knitting revolution began with Stitch ‘n Bitch, there’s been an increase in books with knitting and sewing patterns that girls (and guys) like me might actually want to make, wear, and/or decorate with, including Domiknitrix, Punk Knits, and Subversive Cross Stitch. Etsy is full of people turning these sorts of crafts into a business, especially with the new popularity steampunk, diy, and maker cultures.

These aren’t your mother’s crafts anymore. For those of us who love to craft and cook, but like things that are just that little bit different – you aren’t stuck with doing the same old samplers anymore, and cakes and cupcakes are no longer required to come with cute doilies underneath and piped flowers on top.

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• Even Alton Brown thinks Sandra Lee is creepy! (anotherwineblog.com)

Well, I made it to my Script Frenzy goal of 100 pages over the weekend, with a whole week to spare. The script at that point wasn’t quite finished, though, so I spent the last few days working on that final scene and uploaded my script for verification today.

Script Frenzy was an interesting challenge and one I’ll definitely look forward to facing again next year. As someone who writes almost entirely narrative prose, it was a bit difficult to adapt my normal writing style to drama.

I found that while writing I tended to focus more on the visual settings and the actions of my characters and not on the internal.  With a dramatic script you are forced, as it were, to obey the old writing rule of “show, don’t tell” in the strictest sense possible.

The mechanics of formatting the thing turned out to be less of an issue than I thought, mostly due to the fact that Scripped made all of that so completely simple, even for someone so unfamiliar with the form. All I had to do was select from a menu whether I was writing action, dialogue, a scene heading, etc.

Now it’s just a matter of getting my script through my initial proofreading and then sending it out to beta readers. Sometime in the next few months I hope to have it up in my writing portfolio here.

My Boobquake Guinea Pigs

So today is Boobquake 2010, the great scientific experiment to see if, in fact, immodest women can cause earthquakes.

You see, this Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, a senior Iranian cleric, has this theory. It goes something like this:

“Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes,”

And, well, since there are a great many female skeptics and scientists out there, and we all come well equipped, as it were, to test this theory, Jen McCreight over at the Blag Hag (who I adore!) proposed that we do so.  She put a call out for women to gather together in a day of Immodest Behavior, pulling out our wonderbras and v-necks to see if, in fact, we can cause an earthquake by the Showing Of The Boobs. (Facebook Event Page: http://bit.ly/bMxo11)

So, in the nature of true scientific inquiry, I have pulled out my best bra, and my most low-cut (and yet still appropriate for work) blouse, and am donating my heaving bosom to the cause.  If, in fact, this sudden increase in exposed cleavage today also comes with earthquakes and horrible destruction, we will know that this cleric was indeed correct in his assumption that Boobs Cause Earthquakes.

Really, I’m not expecting any major earthshaking to happen in my little world today . . . the BF is at work an hour away after all . . . but I am doing my level best to ensure that this is a properly conducted experiment. Perhaps later in the evening, I will even put on a tight tank top and go for a run, to see if jiggling them about has any bearing on whether it is earthquake worthy cleavage or not.

This test, of course, is of a sort that works best the more women get involved, so unbutton another button, put on that low-cut and slightly too tight sweater or t-shirt,  and show the world just how powerful a woman can be!

I expect at least an 8.0 on the Richter Scale by the end of the day!

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• ‘Boobquake’: Can Cleavage Cause Disaster? (abcnews.go.com)
• ‘Boobquake’ to test Iranian cleric’s claim (ctv.ca)
• Today is Boobquake Day! (tea-and-politics.blogspot.com)
• ‘Boobquake’ student’s answer for Iranian cleric’s earthquake claims (nationalpost.com)

The Tenth and Eleventh Doctors together on the TARDIS (Matt Smith & David Tennant)

To say I’ve been crazy busy lately would be an understatement. I’ve got Script Frenzy going on, and it’s going well. I’m actually close to hitting that 100 page mark (though the script will probably go a bit past that).  Work’s been crazy busy, which is a good thing. See, I work for an attorney who deals primarily in real estate, so when the real estate market died, our business pretty much died with it.  The fact that our business has suddenly gone crazy busy is a good indicator that the economy’s beginning to come back.

This, of course, is a good thing for everyone. But with my days spent scurrying around the office trying to Get Things Done and my nights spent clacking away at the computer on my script, I haven’t been able to fit in my usual blogging schedule.

Which is a bit sad, because some awesome things have happened while I’ve been away from the blog working on my silly script.

First of all, the new Doctor Who premiered. You all know that I am particularly fond of David Tennant, but Matt Smith has taken up the mantle of the Doctor even better than I could have hoped.  He had me hooked at the custard-and-fish-fingers.  If that first episode was a test – a “Can I believe this new kid is the Doctor?” test – he passed it with flying colours. And I’m hoping that his tenure will be another long one, like Baker’s or Tennant’s, because when you get right down to it, well, the Doctor doesn’t really have many regenerations left, if they’re going to stick to the Time Lords Have 13 Lives rule.

For some even better news, Obama has extended healthcare rights to gay partners, allowing visitation rights and forcing hospitals to recognize the rights of same-sex partners as next-of-kin. This should (hopefully) end one of the worst problems facing same-sex partners, something that has kept even those with the proper documentation (healthcare powers-of-attorney, etc.) from being able to be with their loved ones during their most difficult times. There is more that needs to be done, of course. There’s always more that needs to be done, but this is a big, important, and very needed step in the right direction.

So there’s my update! I haven’t forgotten about my blog, and I’m not being lazy (anything but!) – but hopefully I’ll be able to get back to my normal schedule once Script Frenzy is over.

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• Into the Frenzy! (nanowrimo.org)
• Doctor Who sets BBC America viewing record (guardian.co.uk)
• Obama Extends Healthcare Rights to Same-Sex Partners (TIME)

It’s Day 9 of Script Frenzy, and I’ve got 50 pages written…halfway there and way ahead of schedule! Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to post pages 5-10 on Wednesday because I was on the road all day for work. Scrippets, also, loses a good bit of the formatting when copy-pasted, but at least keeps the text readable enough. Comments are appreciated – but remember, this is a rough draft!

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