My favorite part of the post is where she spergs about how makerspace (3D printers I guess) being male coded then proceeds to rant paragraph after paragraph about how good she is at making yarn and sewing and how that makes her soooo talented and special and better than you.
But I make things. I make my things of cloth and needle and thread, of wool and sticks, of spin and twist, with paintbrushes and inks. I can turn raw sheep hair into viable yarn and can precisely tangle that into a sweater of any size, given the dimensions of the wearer and some basic math, and if I get any further back on the "making cloth" diagram I'm gonna be living on a lesbian farm full of sheep and alpaca. I know what colors to mix together and what concentration of acid and the time frames to make the chemical reaction that makes dye color stick to wool or cotton or other things and stay there without running out. Then I can take my newly made colored string--or other colored string of the same general thickness--and make socks or hats or sweaters or anything, and then write down how I turned it into a pair of socks or hat or whatever. If I use the right codes for how I made my thing, someone can follow my code, and make the same thing I made. I know color theory and balance, so that things look good together.
I got bored while thinking of the next part of my book, popped the cape off my stuffed Pikachu, figured out how to put it back on, and put it back on--all in an hour, the same way someone would take apart a vacuum and put it back together. I used to gut my stuffies and disassemble clothes to fix broken seams the same ways children are encouraged to know the inner workings of a small motor or find the error in lines of code that make a bug.
My makerspace has rulers, fluff, stacks of patterns and books, three sewing machines (even if only one ever likes to behave), fistfuls of knitting needles and crochet hooks, four drop spindles (just got a turkish, that bitch spins like a dream) tons of art supplies, and a spinning wheel. Someday, I'll have a dressmaker dummy and a proper home embroidery machine. I made a whole quilt, bigger than a king sized bed.
Congrats. You made a quilt way too big to be useful. Have fun washing that thing and getting it to dry. I have a king size bed and it is monstrous. I can't imagine a quilt bigger than the type for a king size bed. What the hell was the point of making a quilt that you can tarp an SUV with?
I can look at an outfit, and my brain figures out how to take it apart into pattern parts and I can make those pattern pieces and then make them go together and then write to another person how to put the pieces together and they can get the same thing I made! I can take something from 3D to 2D and then back to 3D again--or an illustration to a 3D representation, for those many of us that turn AG's old illustrations to outfits--and I can do it well, for all that bullshit about women not knowing how to think in 3D proper because I personally can't think about what a box might look like flat or the other side of a shape figure. I am starting to study puppet making and want to, when it's viable, make a decent working puppet and self perform with it, even if it's just for fun..
Lord help us all! Neth wants to become a puppeteer!
Anyone who brags this much about how talented they is either far less skilled than they claim in real life so they just brag online or is so smug about what they can actually do that they are absolutely insufferable to be around in any sort of professional or casual setting. She's probably the type that would look at the sweater you are knitting and start giving you "friendly" advice on how to fix it.
But according to STEM, I'm not a "maker", I'm a "crafter", because the shit I do is heavily feminine coded. And the fuck outta here with that shit. I am disgusted at how how "maker" culture is considered making "proper" techy things using 3-D printers and electronics and wires and LEGO and spark components with oil and dirt and wires and engines, and not that "silly girly" shit of using cloth and string, or string and one or two sticks, and making a shirt. I will die on the fucking hill of "don't you dare tell me my makework of putting together a dress from cloth and paper diagrams is less cool than making a blueprint for a 3D printer to form a figurine." Plus when the power goes out I can still put a dress together, so hah.
Making is to crafting as action figure is to doll. If you're going to devalue my makercraft because it's not coded masculine enough, then I expect you in the apocalypse not to ask folk to make you anything to wear. Go turn your computer into a suit.
But sewing and knitting
is crafting Neth. It has always been crafting. How is it even remotely the same as 3D printing? No one's saying that sewing is less cool than making 3D printed action figures, programming and making elaborate Lego models. We all need clothes Neth. It's just that sewing did not start out as a hobby. For thousands of years, before the industrial revolution started us on the road to mass produced clothing being readily available, if you didn't want to be naked you had to be able to sew, knit and weave. It was a necessary life skill and women had to learn it to prepare themselves for marriage. Because you couldn't just go to Walmart and buy your family new clothes. You had to make them yourself.
3D printing, despite some really useful applications, is still pretty much a hobby. No one is saying that you as a woman cannot use a 3D printer. Women, like men, are free to craft whatever they want to using the tools available. No one is stopping you. By the way, there are plenty of men who knit and sew. And here they are doing this female coded hobby without sperging out about how unfair life is because STEM is about technology and not sewing a quilt the size of a circus tent.
Neth is back to bashing Tenney again. I do actually think that Tenney may have been the original pick for 2017 Girl of the Year unless Neth is lying about accessories for Gabby being thin. But when people cry foul nonstop about dolls of color you end up with a half assed launch because the company wanted to please people quickly. I do think they have a problem with doll diversity. But it probably really does reflect their demographics and what dolls actually sell.
that bird on the shirt just confirms that Gabby's earrings were supposed to be for Tenney and AG cut her short.
I do actually believe this. The designs don't lie.
I actually really like the Luciana doll and would be all over this if it came out when I was a kid. Of course we wouldn't be able to buy it. But I'd still drool.
I think that Neth crying foul over Maker culture in a post featuring a STEM themed doll who has a "Maker Station" accessory available is completely and utterly without self awareness if I ever saw it. Here's a very positive toy for girls but all Neth can do is whine about how much cooler her ability to make doll clothes is compared to those icky boys and their custom made action figures.
If you look at the pictures Neth took you'll see overweight middle aged ladies about. No kids. Maybe Neth just tries to keep kids out of the shots. But I'm thinking when you go to an American Girl store the norm tends to be doll obsessed adult fatties.
