by Renée Rigdon and Zabet Stewart

History
We were deep in the clutches of a weeklong absinthe binge when the Divine Hand of Brilliance touched us in an inappropriate place. When this vision came, we knew we must create a haven for all the sinister crafters of the world. No more would we be cowed into silence by cheerful scrapbook stickers. Never again would we be forced to gleefully execute a sweater of intarsia puppies. The green fairy had blessed us with an exotic vision we were powerless to deny. We madly scrambled for pen and paper with which to compose our opus. Finding none, we took up our knitting needles and carved text into the walls. With an old tube of Vamp we illustrated our glorious creation. Upon release from the hospital, we returned to our lives with renewed direction and embarked upon this project with the fervor of a snake-kissing Pentecostal who has an anti-venom kit.

But not really. Really, we were thrilled that crafting was de-grannified; we just got tired of it having to be so dang perky all the time. We suppose that's what happens when you take something old into the marketing department for cosmetic surgery. Some things get sucked out, some things get porcelain veneers, and some things get, um, perkier.

Philosophy
Creation from chaos is natural. We've come to a place where we've realized that we have this actual, physical need to create things. We've discovered that we hate people en masse, we're sick of homogenized culture, and these realizations have left holes in our hearts. We create to fill those holes, to be able to sleep at night knowing we've done something, even a small something, to confront the manufactured culture that is currently being churned out.

The point then is not that you should craft just like us. You should craft in the medium that understands you. This is just a place to let your eyes rest, find some inspiration, or scream yourself hoarse. We're all outcasts and refugees from the mainstream here. We're strange girls, tactless and profane in the face of the sacred, obsessed with mortality and the things you find under flesh and over bone. Our personalities are in this (can you tell that one of us likes puns?), which makes it personal. We want you to help us carry this along, which makes it political - a stand against the current trends in society to sanitize grief, drug sadness, hide obscenities, stigmatize sex, and take everything much too seriously.