I’m currently reading A History of Their Own and I’m really enjoying reading about kick ass women I’ve somehow never heard of, re-reading about kick ass women I have heard of and reading about a lot of female stereotypes that started with written history and are still living strong today. But also about traditionally female exploits. Making a home with children and a husband is pretty much farthest away from my interests but female traditions outside that (such as weaving, crochet etc.) is something that attracts me more and more. As is probably obvious on this blog, I feel a very strong kinship with traditionally womanly things because I feel very womanly and girly. The space is comfortable for me, because I largely fit in this ideal. That feeling and consequently the acting out of my own femininity feels empowering when it comes with a consciousness of a history of mysoginy. Having that history and forcefully trying to see traditionally feminine things as more than shallow, vain and trivial are important to me. Sometimes it flabbergasts me to read about the first suffragettes who sometimes renounced traditionally feminine things (most notably frills), something much needed and awesome but also something that still lives strong in today’s feminism, and something that points out internalized misogyny in my eyes. I really love this quote on tumblr regarding that. Again, the hate for what is seen as traditionally female, i.e. fashion, frills, emotions, whatever, is something people should examine. By rejecting that because it’s seen as frivolous, weak and cooperative with the patriarchy, what are they negating? To dismiss that is to reject a traditional notion of femininity in place for what is seen more as masculine. This is obviously not to say that traditionally masculine things should be avoided in place for a matriarchy, something I’m also not cool with, but just to recognise those gender constructs and the consequential negative and positive feelings attached to it, to realise that it is bullshit and traditionally masculine and feminine things shouldn’t be for respectively women or men, and aren’t respectively weak or strong.
Basically: celebrate the femininity you feel no matter which gender or non-gender you are and fuck everyone who says it should be stiffled ✿♡☻ ( ~ ⌒∇⌒) ~

This is an unexpected altering bad purchases post, too! And it’s one hundred percent intertwined with my current thought stream. The cardigan I’m wearing was a bad purchase. In the store I saw it as a beautiful orange colour but when I came home I sorely realised it was red, a cardigan colour I already owned. I was set on giving this away until my growing interest in crochet started. The ruffled sleeves were a failed try at a crochet peter pan collar, so at the suggestion of a friend I promptly cut it in half and sewed it on. Recently, I was inspired to create the collar when I came across this kick ass video which explains the reasoning behind a project of crochet corals that spanned over three continents in 2009, and is still ongoing and probably growing, too: