holly | she/they | sunflower and strawberry enthusiest
Yo the guy who wrote "boy bi" is starting a petition to Netflix about heartstopper's soundtrack in season 2 👀
ty for the tag @the-panda-fangirl
also @hollyblogsformae u wanna get in on this?
YES
im having feelings about the uffington white horse again
so essentially there’s this cool horse drawn into the hills in england made out of chalk and it’s like 3,000 years old.
people carved trenches 3,000 years ago and filled them with chalk in the shape of a horse but what’s interesting is that if you fail to maintain the horse by adding new chalk regularly, it will disappear. for 3,000 years, we’ve been filling in chalk in this horse so it doesn’t disappear.
we’ll never know what the purpose of the horse was originally. we’ll never know if it had ritual or spiritual significance or if it was just art. but we do know that people maintained it then, and, even though the meaning of the horse has long been lost to time, we continue to maintain it now.
the people who made this horse are long dead, but they live through us still, don’t you think?
couldn’t agree more we’re best friends now
Sharing this because I also feel as a fibre artist that the prospect of a granny square cardigan being sold for $35 means that someone somewhere is being exploited and criminally underpaid. That person doesn't have to exist in my geographic location for me to care about that.
I did the math abt this over on my tiktok. Didn’t get much traction, so maybe I can push it better here.
I’m a fast crocheter. Very fast. It still takes me a good 9 minutes on average to make one granny square comparable to the ones in targets designs. That’s not including the border, the lining, the pompom, the brim. Just the 4 rounds of clusters for the square. It takes 8 squares to make one of the hats they’re selling. Do the math, and that’s just about 72 minutes of labor for ONLY the squares.
I charge $20 an hour if someone wants a commission. Rounding down with the time outlined above, that’s $20 for just 8 squares. Tack on all the rest? The brim? Lining? Pompom? You’re looking at close to $50 for one hat. And that’s a lowball price, not even taking into account materials cost, or prospective shipping costs or any of that. So to see a whole fucking cardigan for $35? Boils my fucking blood.
And there are two very important issues to highlight here. First, this sets the precedent that people will expect fiber artists to match these prices. Absolutely the fuck not, you pay me what my time and skills are worth. Second, and way more important, like it says above crochet cannot be machine made. There is no such thing as a crochet machine, the stitches cannot be mechanically reproduced. Every single one of those granny squares was handmade. Each one. Each stitch. Now go back up to the math, go back to where I say what I charge for my labor. You think fucking target is paying those workers even close to that kind of wage to be able to sell the finished product for such an obscenely low price? Of course not. And it’s fucking disgusting. That trendy little cardigan was made by human hands in a goddamn sweatshop so some fast fashion bitch could feel a moment of dopamine throwing another piece of clothing on the pile.
Don’t fucking buy these. Let the line flop. Commission your local fiber artist if you want a piece like this. Stop supporting fast fashion, it’s fucking evil
[image description: a twitter post.
user: ohnoitskelley
Target has a bunch of crocheted stuff this season & here's your fiber artist reminder that crochet cannot be replicated by a machine so that $35 granny square cardigan means that someone isn't being paid enough [sparkle emoji] Fast fashion + crochet is an oxymoron & shouldn't be supported.
end i.d.]
It’s funny when I say “we definitely need another lockdown” how people are like “that would tank the economy!!!!1!!” like I give a damn. My life as an immunocompromised person matters more than the economy, so do the lives of everyone else. I survived 2008. I’d be fine.
I don’t give a fuck about the economy, about your social life, about anything but my survival and the survival of other medically fragile people. We are not a reasonable sacrifice, we are not acceptable loss. Ableism is ingrained at the very core of modern society and this pandemic has been a horrific show of it. More people died of COVID in 2021 than they did in 2020. This is simply because able bodied people got tired of living in a pandemic and started pretending it wasn’t happening.
all food is "guilt free" to me because i love foods and treats and snacks and drinks forever and ever amen
