state violence / state control

Hannes Westberg, seconds after being shot by Swedish riot police at Vasaplatsen (Gothenburg) June 15th 2001. Some days after, while he was still struggling for his life in a hospital bed, a representative from the Social Democrats handed out red roses to the police working during the Gothenburg EU summit, for a job well done.

and if I'm starving, you can feed me lollipops

Birthday gift for Anna. The quote comes from Manic Street Preachers & the rose pattern from my friend Doris.

with my heart in my hands again

I almost thought I'd lost this cross stitch when I moved to Gothenburg, but tonight when I was roaming around my craft basket it suddenly appeared again. It's actually one of my favorites, so I thought that it deserved to be properly framed.

It's not that it's the most complicated or political work I've done, but I remember being heartbroken & really hurting when stitching it, just coming to terms with the fact that I had to get on with life & leave something/someone behind. Plus, the death of the Gits' singer Mia Zapata (who wrote the lyrics that I'm quoting) is one of the saddest & most upseting ones that I know of. As Kathleen Hanna once put it:

another woman killed and hardly a pout about it / green river killer my fucking ass / the cops have gotta be deaf, dumb, and spastic / to not catch the killer(s) of one hundred woman / i guess it'd be different if they thought we were human

alienation is my nation

The result of trying to take an "arty" photograph of Karl Marx in my kitchen:

This is a birthday gift for my friend Ida, paid by her boyfriend & made by me. I thought about illustrating the post with this video, but changed my mind. Just can't get over the fact that it annoys the hell out of me that they're only mentioning the men of the working class in the song & by default excludes everyone else. Can't shake the feeling that the clip contains two of my least favorite things in this world:

1) Nice commie guys in "ironic" t-shirts, who took an A-level course in political science & decided that the class struggle will liberate everyone in some sort of automagical way, without for a second stopping to think about or problematize their own position as white males of the middle class.

2) Katy Perry.

recycling for the masses

A not so new pattern at the DIY page & a very new post at Zickermans. Here's a very bad pic of what it looks like when stitched. Have fun kids!

a luta continua (this ain't a love song)

Today is March 8, the International Women's Day. Feels like one of those days when I should have something new & witty to present, but I don't. What I do have is a link to all the old posts tagged 'feminism' & some good old fighting songs for you.

come on over & do the twist

Just a short update; I'm expanding my horizons & doing some guest blogging at Zickermans Värld, an online craft magazine named after Lilli Zickerman, one of the founders of the Swedish craft movement in the beginning of the 20th century. Today's contribution is a top five list of craftivist projects so even if you don't do Swedish, you can take a look at the links. Enjoy.

Hopefully it'll be a recurring thing so stay tuned to the site.