Unquiet
Things

Today at Haute Macabre, I chat with Victorian hair artist, historian, and professional weirdo Courtney Lane of Never Forgotten about love, mourning, harnessing the sentiment of hair. 

Harnessing The Sentiment of Hair: Courtney Lane Of Never Forgotten

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[UPDATE: CONGRATS TO GRACE, OUR WINNER! YOUR YARN HAS BEEN SHIPPED!]

Do you like yarn? And weirdness? Those are two of my favorite things! And when I found them  marvelously combined in the gorgeous offerings from DyeForYarn a few years back, I knew I’d lost both my heart and my wallet to these wondrously strange crafters and creators.

With names ranging from the elegant and melancholic (“Rain In A Graveyard“, “Nocturnal Maelstrom“) to the silly (“St. Patrick’s day parade gone awry“) to the absurdly heartbreaking (“Giant clam closing forever“) and the frankly kind of gross (“Cat’s hairball problem“)–you’re almost tempted to spend all your time obsessing over these skeins’ enchanting backstories before you even look at the yarns, themselves! But–you should definitely look at these yarns. Stare long and hard into their subtle shifts and vibrant shades and luminous hues and become totally mesmerized by the outrageous array of options before you!

I’ve long wondered about the humans responsible for creating these silky, squishy, works of art, and was thrilled when, Nicole and Cordula of DyeForYarn agreed to do an interview with Unquiet Things and answer all of my nosy questions! Read further to learn more about the women behind the yarn, and leave a comment for a change to win “Gloomy View”, a gradient set of silk/cashmere lace yarn. ( I chose “Gloomy View” for you guys because I thought it would be appropriate! Right? I know I’m right. More details at the bottom of this post.)

In your former lives you were scientists for biology and molecular medicine at University Erlangen-Nuremberg. Obviously there must be a bit of science with regard to your current work and creating the colors for your yarns, right? (I only vaguely know how science works, haha). But seriously, I’d love to know how your former work in the lab might translate to your current yarn and craft-centric process and practices?

Yes, you’re right. We do benefit from the experience we gathered in different labs. For once we’ve been trained how to organize and optimize workflows. And we’re also trained to work very structured with having everything at hand when we need it. When we try new things like new yarn qualities, dyeing techniques or colors we usually create an experimental series to see how it might work best. Maybe our biggest advantage coming from a lab background, though, was the natural ease in handling chemicals safely. Of course that’s nothing you can’t learn during the process of hand dyeing itself, but it came in handy in the beginning and is still very useful.

THE BIG QUESTION I have been dying to ask for years is how do you come up with these wonderfully strange and unusual names for your yarns? They reference the esoteric and arcane, and the sublimely absurd…and it leads me to believe that between you, you must have incredibly fascinating and diverse interests when it comes to things like art, literature, cinema, music. Can you speak to that?

Basically we’re classic nerds. We love science, comics (in form of Animes), Fantasy and Science fiction literature and movies. We love music, although not the same genres. Nicole for example adores Amanda Fucking Palmer, Cordula loves Muse. These sources as well as our scientific past and the nature around us are a huge well of inspiration. The specific kind of names we use for our yarns originated in the “Dead parrot sketch” by Monty Python. In the sketch John Cleese tries to convince the pet shop owner, that the parrot he just bought
is dead (and was so when he bought it). He uses several synonyms for being dead which is hilarious. I (Nicole) am a HUGE fan of the troupe and thought that particular sketch very fitting for our natural black humor and our brand name DyeForYarn. So we decided to use these synonyms for yarn names: Ex-parrot, Raven being no more, Sloth in procrastinator’s paradise or Violet coming to dust. This led to names like Rotten chestnut cream macaron, Reaper’s kiss or Bat in a dark mood etc.

In that vein, one of my favorite colorways that you create is Very dead Norwegian Blue Parrot! Are there any colorways that seem to be clear customer favorites?

Ha, that’s actually the exact same parrot John Cleese bought in said sketch 😀
Very popular are saturated reds (one of our specialties), deep teals, greens and blues. But also our neutrals (we call them non-colors) and pastels as well as our almost-black shades are very sought-after. What we find very interesting is that over the years one can actually see some preferences between different countries. Germans like very bold, intense colors, Japanese very light pastels, for example.

And what are your favorites?

Cordula: Nocturnal maelstrom (intense dark teal), Fallen Dark Soul (deep dark red), Last Dance (almost black reddish purple)

Nicole: Dead Marshes (muted green-blue), Kingfisher pushing up the daisies (muted teal), Withering Lupin (muted gray-purple) and Rose which must not be named (muted purplish rose)

Do you see any trends in terms of colors that people are interested in? What’s popular now?

We sometimes can make out a correlation between current “in”-colors and what sells well, but
because our customers are from all over the world it’s not a very clear correlation. Currently we sell different shades of turquoise and deep blue plus more yellow than usual.

I have seen people who are not knitters (or crocheters) fall in love with your gorgeous yarns. Do you have any alternative craft ideas, incorporating your yarns, for people who do not wield the needles or hooks?

Definitely weaving! Both of us have an Ashford rigid heddle loom, which is very easy to handle and doesn’t take much space (you can hang it on the wall when not needed, even with the warp attached). The only drawback is that it doesn’t fit in a hand bag like a knitting or crocheting project would. We mostly use our Tussah silk lace and fingering, Merino/Silk fingering and Silk/Cashmere lace for our weaving projects, all suitable for warp and weft.
Nicole just finished several weaving projects with our Silk/Cashmere gradient sets. Her ravelry name is Kalessin, in case you need some weaving inspiration ;D

Is there anything else that you would like people to know about your yarns, or your process, or DyeForYarn/DyeForWool?

It’s important for us that our customers know that, even though knitters/crocheters all over the
world are familiar with our brand, it’s still just the two of us, Cordula and Nicole, who dye all the yarns you see in our two Etsy shops. Two days a week our lovely helper Silvia supports us with skeining and winding the hanks, hand-tagging them etc. and our husbands support us with their particular expertises as well. But basically nothing has changed much since we founded DyeForYarn back in 2011. Doing what you love and are passionate about is the best job you can have and we feel very blessed to be able to do that. DyeForYarn has made our lives so much richer and fuller and we hope to get that feeling transferred into our colors.
And you have no idea, what a great and crazy feeling it is to know, that there are actual, real human beings on all (habitable) continents who create wonderful things with the yarns we dyed.

Thanks for your time, Nicole and Cordula, and for putting your exquisite creations out into the world!

Find DyeForYarn: website // etsy // facebook // instagram // twitter

Info from DyeForYarn: “Gloomy View” is a gradient set of silk/cashmere lace yarn. You get a total of 5 Silk/Cashmere Lace skeins (50g each), one of each color, as pictured. All skeins together add up to a total of 1670 yds (1525m), enough for practically any large shawl (or two regular sized shawls, for that matter). Together they give a very muted and dark gradient from bluish green over blue and purple to cacao brown, each color itself being solid to slightly semi solid.

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I don’t think I have the words available to share with you my intense delight regarding the arrival of the newest member of my ghoulish menagerie, brought to uncanny life by the wonderfully talented hands of Han of Handsome Devils Puppets. But I am going to give it a try….

I have long loved the writings of Sei Shōnagon: her elegant lists, her acerbic observations, her beautifully intimate and wonderfully catty diaries–all of her anecdotes and opinions and inner dialogue, from the excruciating minutiae of everyday life, to the exquisite poetry she composed connecting and expanding these trifling, fragmented instances to the broader aspects of lived human experience; these strangely random and tangential stories have informed and inspired my own writings for many, many years now.

Translator Meredith McKinney writes in her intro notes to her translation of Shōnagon’s infamous Pillow Book, “she so engages us because she engages *with* us, we meet her eyes across 1000 years,” and I think that assessment of her ability to connect with us, now, today, through vast stretches of time–a totally different time than that in which she lived– is so eerily and excellently spot-on.

Sometimes, though,  I can’t meet my own eyes in the mirror after reading a selection from The Pillow Book. McKinney further writes of the “spontaneity and intimacy” of Shōnagon’s writing, that “…draws the reader into a warm complicity, even when we find ourselves appalled at her frequent snobbery and occasional cruelty.” Shōnagon is basically a Heian era Mean Girl blogger, you know? And as someone who considers themselves to be “a very super nice person”–probably too nice for their own good– it is this mean streak that appears throughout her beautiful, clever writings that fascinates me endlessly.

Is that weird? I don’t understand the mindset of the mean. Except…I suppose…when I do. I can be rather scathing in my own thoughts about something I didn’t enjoy, or someone I don’t care for, and I must often remind myself that while cleverness is an admirable trait, cleverness can often come at the expense of kindness…and even if I didn’t say whatever means-spirited thing aloud, I still thought it. Or wrote it. Even if no one saw it.

And perhaps Shonagon thought that her writings, her pillow book, would never see the light of day? I don’t know. So while I started this rumination up on my high horse, with the statement that I find such cruelty and unkind thoughts alien to my personality…perhaps in exploring it a little, Sei Shōnagon and I are more alike than I would care to admit, and it is less a fascination with behavior foreign to me, and more that I am recognizing a kinship.

There’s not a great deal of imagery to be found with regard to Sei Shōnagon, and so we took some liberty with her appearance, adding some subtle, gothy touches to her sweeping robes, instead of what otherwise might have been a more brightly colored ensemble. I think she is utterly, gloriously perfect, from her lips and brows and inky cascade of hair, to the tips of her tabi-socked, be-sandaled feet, I am awestruck at the thought and research and inventiveness that went into her creation.

Shōnagon wrote of “Things That Make One’s Heart Beat Faster”, and the rare beauty of this marvelous, hand-sculpted, one-of-a-kind piece of art is most certainly at the top of my list of such things. Thank you, Han. She is amazing, in the truest sense of the word.

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At Haute Macabre today, a new feature: Needful Things!

We had such a blast sharing our year-end favorites with you, that we decided to make a quarterly(ish) thing of it, wherein we chat about the assortment of odds and ends that we currently love and recommend.

This is a series that I am super excited about; I love suggestions and recommendations from like-minded folks, I think that’s so much more useful and valuable than just a random link-dump of stuff that looks pretty but with which the sharer has no experience, you know?

At any rate, Maika and I have the floor today, so be sure to peek at our current Needful Things, and check back for Sam’s and Sonya’s selections later this afternoon!

Pictured above is not one of my Needful Things, exactly…it’s a dress that I was able to shove myself into after donning one of those Needful Things. I got it from eshakti, and I am not sure if it is still in stock, but lordy be–they have so many amazing black dresses!

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Overlooked Plants Printed With Found Images by Miranda van Dijk

Oracular Creatures and Arcane Spaces: The Enigmatic Art of Jenna Barton

Portraits of Women in Film Noir

† The Visual Aesthetic of Dario Argento’s ‘Suspiria’

† The Myths and Realities Behind The Exorcist

† Final Fantasy VII’s Cosmo Canyon Sequence Is A Meditation On Family, Sacrifice, And Existence Itself

† Do Nothing Unless It Feeds You

† 11 Poets Beyoncé Should Feature on Her Next Visual Album

† Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination

† Remembering Photographer Laura Aguilar’s Empathetic, Queer Art

† The Outlawed Secret Masonic Society of Pugs

† How Poetry and Math Intersect

† What, Prithee, Is A Poetess?

† Elsa Lanchester, Herself (Interview And Book Giveaway)–Ends Today!

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A Walpurgisnacht agenda: fly east from the dying sun over spring fields to conduct unholy business under the deepest shroud of darkness. Rule the night skies with an unruly entourage of familiars, demons, and unbaptized children. Gather at Brocken’s peak for nameless rites and deeds, review and/or renew a pact with The Devil, flood surrounding forests with wild magicks, terrorize ignorant villagers. Check, check, check.

…hold up. Drop that sacrificial baby. What’s this? Are we dancing naked around this goddamn bonfire? Are we frolicking frockless? What the actual fuck, Satan? Were we not promised we’d live deliciously? Did you not specifically spell out that we were to have new dresses?

Listen, witches. Walpurgisnacht is an important event on your calendar and it just won’t do to go starkers, no matter what those antiquated copper etchings and Faustian carte-de-visites reveal. Don’t wait for Lucifer to deliver on that dress promise; that guy is the prince of lies, you know that. A witch worth their salt has got to make this shit happen for themselves–I mean, what’s witchcraft for, if not extravagant sartorial gain?

Mirror the cloak of night in your evening’s ensemble, festoon yourself in potent symbolism, swath your bod in shadowy silhouettes. Accessorize with winged creatures and woodland-inspired jewels. Leave an infernal fragrance, redolent of spices, herbs, and venom in your wake. Incorporate the sabbat’s myriad magical motifs, as seen below, into your ensemble and next year you’ll be sure to bring the Hexennacht hotness to your wicked Walpurgis revelries.

Ciao Lucia dress // Alaia laser cut sandals // Gucci dome bag // Christian Dior Aurora palette // Underprotection bralette and panties // rings: Atelier Narce, Jamie Joseph, antique cameo ring, Maiden Voyage // Jennifer Behr circlet // Jacquie Aiche necklace // Jimmy Choo sunglasses // Marissa Zappas Flaming Creature Eau de Parfum

Kiki de Montparnasse silk slip dress // Jimmy Choo Koko snakeskin lace-up heels // Fleur of England briefs // Maison Michel lace veil hat // MYKITA Eartha sunglasses // Manokhi lace-up leather gloves // Astara & Tone rings from Unearthen // Desire Inner Glow Pigment from Rituel de Fille // Prada Cahier Moon & Stars velvet crossbody bag // Polly Wales Snaggletooth skull ring // Loree Rodkin snake ring // Bloodmilk Weeping Woman mourning strand // Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Hexennacht perfume oil

Ann Demeulemeester Short Dress $235 // Mise en Cage Ionesco High-Waist Harness Brief $148 // Mise en Cage Aldridge Soft Bra $112 // Sergio Rossi Elastic corset suede thigh high boots $1145 // Zana Bayne SS15 Mini Signature Bag $575 // FabMeJewelry 3D Printed tiara $50 // Burial Ground Pentacle pendant from $45 // Kathula blackened ring by BlueBayerDesignNYC $100 // Burial Ground Seer ring $165 // Kat Von D Everlasting Liquid Lipstick in Witches $20 // UNUM Symphonie Passion perfume Extrait de Parfum $220

Elie Saab Lace-paneled silk-blend georgette gown $3450 // Damaris Da Vinci High Waist Knicker $100 // Damaris Da Vinci Triangle Bra $140 // Fluevog Pilgrim $299 // Derercuny chain clutch $890 // Elaine Ho Brutalist pendant $90 // Ann Demeulemeester 5 Signet ring set $730 // Dolce & Gabbana Satin-twill and lace veil $966 // Urban Decay Moondust eyeshadow $21 // Serge Lutens La Religieuse $150 // HVNTER GVATHERER Sybil necklace $250 //  HVNTER GVATHERER X Lycanthea cuff (limited) // Rituel de Fille Forbidden Lipstick in Shadow Self $23

BONUS ENSEMBLE (sorry for the lack of details, blame polyvore*)

(This content was originally published at Dirge in 2016. The site no longer exists.)

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A gathering of death related links that I have encountered in the past month or so. From somber to hilarious, from informative to creepy, here’s a snippet of things that have been reported on or journaled about in or related to the Death Industry recently.

This time last year: Links of the Dead {April 2017} | {April 2016} | {April 2014}

💀 A Good Death
💀 Eulogy For A Creepy Uncle
💀 It’s Going to Be Okay, and It’s Not Going to Be Okay
💀 Erosion on Hart Island Exposes Human Remains
💀 Grief, Joy and Spilled Rum at the World’s Death Festivals
💀 The internet loses its mind after mother posts photos of her stillborn online
💀 Grave gardening: Tending more than just flowers
💀 The Year of Action Resource Guide From The Order Of The Good Death
💀 Remembering When Americans Picnicked in Cemeteries
💀 Marina Abramović reveals plans for her funeral, ‘the artist’s last piece’
💀 MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

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Drawn to the fringes of the odd and the mundane, Tom Blunt is a brilliant writer, producer, and performer who was absolutely instrumental in the recent reprinting of the outstanding memoir, Elsa Lanchester, Herself. Head over to Haute Macabre for Tom’s wonderful insights into this striking and unusual Golden Era entertainer and his quest to ensure that so many decades later, she finally finds her people.

Read the interview and be sure to leave a comment at hautemacabre.com for a chance to win a copy of the book as well as some tie-in scents from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab! ⚡️

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[PRETEND LIKE THERE’S AN IMAGE HERE]

Oh yeah, I can’t actually create the titular outfit of this post, because the website that I used for over a decade to create these ensembles shut down with no warning, and either purged all of the accounts or sold them off to a site which either purged them or is mining them for user data.

The website I am referring to is the former Polyvore, a fashion moodboard/collage making space on which I have spent some portion of literally every day for the past 3,650 days.  Its mission was to “democratize style and provide its community with a new way to discover and shop fashion, beauty and home.” The platform allowed fashion lovers to “play” designer by creating collages, or virtual mood boards, of their favorite products from retailers like Net-a-Porter, Asos, Farfetch or even amazon or eBay, as well as independent designers or Etsy sellers. (Etsy wasn’t always easy to work with on polyvore, an issue which actually led to the creation of my tumblr in 2009, but that’s a different story. Just watch, tumblr will up and close with no warning next.)

I found out about Polyvore in 2008 or so, and it sparked an immediate obsession. I loved the idea of creating outfits for all sorts of make-believe occasions, the more outrageous and nonsensical, the better. My creations on Polyvore eventually gave rise to my How To Wear collections that I have been featuring both here at Unquiet Things and, more recently, over at Haute Macabre. I loved the functionality of the Polyvore platform, how you had a “closet” where you could store all of the clothing, accessories, accoutrements that you either “liked” from other users on Polyvore, or “clipped” from various places on the internet–I always found this latter feature extraordinarily helpful when searching for unusual things like mourning jewelry or taxidermy hats or what have you; these were items that, while you and I might not actually think they’re all that unusual, you certainly couldn’t find a lot of them already on Polyvore! So with the “clipper” function you didn’t have to rely on what was already on the site–you could add it into your virtual closet from almost any website that existed. My Polyvore closet, which I have been filling for over ten years now, contained thousands and thousands of items. And sometimes I went beyond just playing around with them for pretend wardrobe purposes–I actually purchased them!

Polyvore was a grand escape for me for a very long time, especially while I was living in New Jersey, lonely and terribly unhappy. I made some lovely friends through Polyvore; in browsing the creations that other users made, you’d often find that people had similar tastes to you, and you’d strike up conversation and realize that in addition to a love of Alexander McQueen, they were hilarious and brilliant, insightful and kind. Many of these users became friends. Many of them I still speak with today! Or, rather, I did, until Polyvore sold the site and locked all of the users out of their accounts. Polyvore was a safe space for me. A community of kindred spirits. And a creative outlet for someone like me, as well as many others, I am sure–someone with creative instincts but who didn’t quite know how to harness them or what to do with them. I am not an artist. But my creations on polyvore felt, a little to me, like art. And I derived profound satisfaction from that feeling. (Also–ladywimsey, kitten, alibee, sadiesue–if you ever read this, leave a comment, or drop me a line– I don’t have any of your contact information!)

Apparently there was some warning as to the situation. The Polyvore team posted about it sometime on Thursday, April 5th, 2018. I had not seen that, though I had used the site at some point that day. On early Friday morning I was still able to access my account, but early Friday afternoon it was utterly gone. When I typed polyvore into the address bar and it redirected to ssense I was at first confused, and then when the redirect persisted, a little panicky. I did a quick google search and was utterly shocked to read, in a slew of articles, that Polyvore had been acquired by ssense. And ssense is really just an online retailer of avant-garde (read: fug) fashion. They are just a shop. Not any sort of polyvore-esque functionality, not even the slightest bit. Which is ridiculous because as far as I know, most of the hundreds of thousands of polyvore users used Polyvore because they CAN’T AFFORD the sorts of things that sites like ssense sells. So they acquire the polyvore platform and all of its user’s information and then they immediately shut the whole thing down. Which is a dick move that makes absolutely no sense to me, but you know, it’s not even ssense I am angry with. It’s Polyvore.

Polyvores users loved that community. Many of them, just like me, had been using it for a very, very long time. I am not saying that the creators of Polyvore owed us anything, but I can’t help but to feel so very hurt and betrayed. If they wanted to sell their creation and make some money, that’s great, I can’t fault them for that, but…couldn’t they have sent out an email a week or so ahead of time? Give people time to back up their creations, find (or create!) alternate options to the platform? It was just so shocking and sudden, and I know to some folks this must seem like a piddly think to be upset by, but I am upset. As angry as I am, there’s now I polyvore-shaped hole in my heart that I am not quite sure that anything else can fill–there was honestly nothing else like it. So laugh if you will (but please don’t, I am feeling really sensitive) but I’m bereft. I’m going through a bit of a mourning period.

If you were a polyvore user, they have given you the option to download your data; I have done this already. I received my link in 24 hours, and it is ….not very helpful. Your data consists of a zip folder with several folders and spreadsheets. The spreadsheets link to urls which no longer exist. The image folder contains low-res, untitled images. It seems they are chronological, earliest creations to most recent. Nowhere are there links to the items used, so if you are someone like me, for example, who puts together How To Wear sets on a blog, you can’t link to the designer or the website where the items can be purchased. If you repost to instagram, you can’t tag the designer. Wow. Thanks, polyvore.

This sounds like a bunch of whining about some seriously superficial stuff, but I’m not going to apologize! But instead of continuing in this vein, I will instead share the last two sets I ever created on polyvore. You’re out of luck if you’re curious as to where any of this stuff came from, though. Sorry guys. This isn’t the end of my How To Wears, though! I’ll find a solution. Stay tuned.

How to Wear Seance Perfumes

How To Wear A Blog Post About Making Bread

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