Swants!

Swants = Sweater + Pants

From Urban Dictionary: "Swants occur when you transform a sweater, turn it upside down and seam it into a pair of pants. A Swants tutorial was posted and popularized by knitting designer Westknits."

Stephen West also made a video wearing his swants.

I got a crazy 80's sweater from Goodwill, and my friend and I set out to make a pair of swants.

They look a lot better than I thought they would.

And they are very comfy.  Thinking about adding elastic to the waistband.  

Everyone gets swants for Christmas this year?

How to Make a Vagina Pillow

Two years ago I started making vagina pillows to sell at The DC Vagina Monologues (buy your tickets now for the show this Friday and Saturday!!).  I got my inspiration from this and if you don't mind a less fancy one, they take very little skill to make.  Here's how to do a really basic one:

Get some craft/wrapping paper.  I use the stuff that amazon packs their shipments with.

Fold the paper in half and draw and cut out a half-circle.  When you open it up, it will be a symmetrical circle/oval shape.  I like a big fat vajayjay but a narrow one will work, too.

You will need two colors of fabric.  With the first (I use a darker one), cut out one full circle.

Fold your circle pattern back in half and cut out two half-circles out of the first fabric.

Cut two half-circles out of your second fabric.

Line the fabric1 half-circles up with the fabric1full circle.  Sew all the way around the edges.

Line the flat edges of fabric1 with the flat edges of fabric2, right sides together.  Sew along the straight line.

If you want, you can place lace between the two flat sides of fabric1 and fabric2 before you sew them together.

Line up the two curved edges of fabric2, right sides together, and sew almost all the way across, leaving a small opening.  You will have an inside-out pillow case.  Turn it right-side-out through the remaining opening.  Stuff the pillow.  Sew the opening closed.

Optional: I sewed the fabric2 lining down to look like a vaginal opening.  You could add a clit or whatever else you want at this stage.

You can make different sizes by making your pattern bigger or smaller.

Using different fabrics can give different effects.

The Poonani Projects

I am totally going to regret this post one day when I run for public office/my future children google my name and "poonani" is the first ting to come up, but......

My room is a crazy arts and crafts studio on a good day, but lately has taken on the air of a workshop run by a bunch of vaguely odd, feminist elves who make not Christmas presents but instead yonic trophies for the slightly more courageous gift-giver.

And by elves, I mean the cast and crew of the 2011 Vagina Monologues in DC.  We have been making jewelry, pillows and other items to sell at our show.  All proceeds, as with the ticket sales, go to the DC Rape Crisis Center, a favorite organization of mine.

As the crafters showed up, they were offered the option to make greeting cards, pillows or jewelry.  All were a little timid at first, but after getting used to the idea of making Coochi Crafts, they got real talented real quick.

There were VA earrings.

Peepee, poopalu, and piche pillows

Vajayjay jewelry

Hooha heart necklaces (see how they used my disaster hearts to making something beautiful?!?!)

Labia lapel pins.

And nappy dugout (yea, I said it) greeting cards.

I warn you now: there will be vagina-related goodness all week in honor of our shows happening this weekend (buy your tickets now!!).  There will be a tutorial on how to make the pillows, the vagina pendants, chocolate vaginas (yes, edible, yonic goodness), and more.  You (and my future political opponents) can thank me later.

Neon

Some people's mothers like neutral colors (taupe, nude, beige, eggshell), and decorate their homes in those colors.  My mother had a period once when I was seven when I think she liked light blue and white, and think we had a light peach bathroom for a while.  Five minutes later, though, she declared lime green and hot pink "earth tones" and destined my sister and me to a lifetime of shockingly bright home decor decisions.  There was a period in high school where if you walked up the stairs in our house, you would be accosted by my lime green bedroom, my sister's bright turquoise bedroom, and a hot pink bathroom (with cow print accents) in quick succession.

So no one should be surprised about what happened this weekend when I was faced with a ridiculously bare new bedroom to decorate.

Ridiculously bare new bedroom.

I made an ill-advised (because it is college-dorm-replenishing season and sort of like hell on earth at any big box store anyway) trip to Target to see if they had any cheap bedding.  After realizing that I must be the only person under age 93 that uses a duvet cover, and as such could not find one in any color but beige and navy blue, I stood in the bedding aisle for an embarassingly long time as worried mothers and hysterical college freshman grabbed twin XL sheets from the shelves around me.

I stood there trying to decide between making my room outreageously loud to the point of annoying anyone who enters or yawn-yawn boring (there didn't seem to be any in-between in the sale section).  Then I realized that unlike in grade school when you had slumber parties and/or random let's-go-over-to-JoAnna's-and-paint-our-toe-nails events and unlike in the dorms where the simple act of opening your door let 70 other individuals examine the contents of your room, there may be a total of five other people that will ever see this new room.  I am allowed to make it as outrageous as I like.

So I got this rainbow comforter on Saturday.

Tried it out for a day and decided that it wasn't nearly bright enough.  So I went back to Target on Sunday and got the matching sheets and made them into curtains.

I ironed and pinned even though I hate doing it.  The curtains are just twin top sheets turned upside-down with a five inch hem at the top for the curtain rod to slide through.  Took a total of an hour to make three of them

One blue curtain, one green curtain, and...

one pink curtain (it really is hot pink and not red like it looks here).

Still trying to work out how to tie them back (I think I am going to cut up the fitted sheets and make ties for the curtains as well as throw pillows for the bed), and the room is still in obvious need of a book shelf and work table, but I think the brightness makes a huge difference.

Thanks for my sense of color, Mom.

Other things I did this weekend:

Pizza toppings that I swear were eventually made into a pizza.

• Listened to an opera recital in an old folks home in Tenleytown. No joke.  When the singer hit the first high note, 70% of the audience reached up to turn down their hearing aids.
• Knit a sweater in 90 degree weather.
• Made pizza, taking a picture of the toppings but not the resulting pie.  I will give out the recipe for the crust if you ask nicely.
• Realized, as I crawled head first down the stairs with a dust rag to clean the baseboards, that nothing in my new home has been dusted since mastadons roamed North America and that I may be a tad OCD when it comes to cleaning.