Saavik's Scribblings

I made this quite a while ago (re: during my fall semester exams; to be specific on the eve of my pysch exam) to send to my own Watson because I am a little bit of a sadist a good person, and even more importantly, constantly neurotic and schizophrenic in character xD Anyhoo…it’s pretty much word for word from the book, with a few small editions of my own… The paper was dyed and treated, the envelope made by hand and all that jazz xD

Here is the watercolour page, sorry about John’s scruff… I’m not very good at painting it xD

A view of the letter, written with a fountain pen, for old timey’s sake

Unfortunately, the seal got all wrecked when i accidentally threw a sketchbook on it… whoops…but ahh well, it was an experiment with a new recipe for sealing wax and I didn’t really gauge how long it would be in the “smooshy” phase for…

Believe me to be, my dear fellows,

Very sincerely yours,

Sherlock Holmes

Soooo my rather talented photographer friend texted me saying that he was going to do a 1940’s shoot and asked if I wanted to help out.  So of course I just had to make a hat.  Fortunately, my Greek Myth class spent a while going over the syllabus and basic background stuff, so I had enough time to come out with a quick sketch xD  and I went by dollarama on the way home to get supplies…

For anyone who’s interested: here’s a How to:

First things first: A concept sketch

Doesn’t have to be good, just a very basic idea so you know what materials you’re going to need

2nd step: Finding cheap wonderful things

Everything in this hat (‘cept the cheerios box…i had that because i likes breakfast cereals) was bought at dollarama…  The basic fabric from the hat was cut from a scarf, the pearls were bracelets, some feathers from some weird stick things and a hair pin… that’s it…super cheap eh?

3rd Step: Prepping the materials

The “tail feathers” I chose were actually plastic, and were only cut a few times, so I shaped them a bit and made many more “feathery fluff pieces”

Here’s all the items separated and ready for hat construction

Step 4: Basic Cardboard shape

Cut out the structure from an old cereal box, you could use any sort of cardboard but it has to be flexible enough to be shaped without having weird creases.  I chose to taper mine. 

Trace out the inside of the loop and then draw a bigger circle around it.  Cut out some wedges so that you can easily bend it down to make the centre stand up.

Step 5: Shaping the centre piece

To make the centre curve inwards, make a slit down the middle and score around it.  Secure everything with packing tape.  It looks a little bit like a vagina right now, but whatever, vaginas are cool xD

Step 6: Weldbond time!

So I guess you could use any white glue you want for this, as long as it has a strong hold it will be fine.  I personally love weldbond, it’s like magic; it’s thick, and dries quickly, is waterproof, and has an amazing hold… I swear by this stuff…

Anyhoo, so you want to start gluing from the top down, working with thin layers of glue so it doesn’t seep through and stretching the felt to minimize wrinkles.  A few wrinkles on the main part are fine because it’s going to be covered in feathers, but the outer ring should be smooth. 

Step 7: Feathers

Using a small amount of weldbond, carefully glue the feathers to the centre section starting at the middle of the front and move backwards. 

Step 8: Gluing together and finishing touches

Using a glue gun stick the centre and the outside pieces together.  Put the tail feathers pointing backwards and then glue pearls around the outside edge, making sure that the holes aren’t facing upwards. 

Step 9: Finishing Touches

Right now, when you look underneath the hat, it still looks a little bit like lady bits, so cover it up with some felt. 

Make a strut out of cereal box cardboard, cover in felt and attached some hair clips to it.  Depending on the angle of the hat you might want to attach clips or pins and different places. 

To make the veil, get some black tulle and cut to the size that you desire (full face, half face, etc).  Now, many veils from that time period had little dots, so I just filled in the occasional cell with black fabric paint.  Once dry, attach to the hat, enjoy!

So, I know that the new episode of Sherlock has been receiving a lot of flack about its portrayal of Irene Adler, but I quite liked the episode on a whole.  I thought that the character development of Mycroft was wonderful and that it had many sparkling moments such as the summary of other cases and the awkward Christmas Party. 

As for Irene herself, I’ve read a lot about how people feel her character was betrayed by falling for Sherlock and needing him to save her in the end.  When I watched the episode, I personally didn’t interpret that way; here are two characters, one who is implied to be gay, though disinterested in sex and another who is admittedly a lesbian, both are brilliant tacticians who are able to see many moves in the future and I think that it is highly unlikely that they would actually fall for each other in a romantic sense.  They are both attracted to others intelligence and are intrigued by each other but not romantically.  When he is moping around playing sad songs on the violin I don’t think it’s because he is emotionally affected by her “death” because he has fallen in love with her but rather because he would mourn the loss of such a marvelous mind. 

As for the end scene, I don’t think that Sherlock came in at the last moment and saved her, rather that they had planed this out for a considerable amount of time with them both bluffing and acting their way through their “attraction” and that he helped her because he didn’t want someone so brilliant to die.  I don’t think that it invalidates the character for him to help her when she needed it, but rather shows his respect for her, if she was anything less he would have let her die. 

One of the things that bothers me considerably about manic feminists, particularly internet ones is the mentality that when a female character accepts help it becomes anti-feminist.  As much as it loathes me to say it and while I would much rather be completely self-sufficient, everyone needs help sometimes.  Men need help, women need help, people need help.  It’s a humany wumany thing. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, I think that the damsel of distress stereotype is still rather strong in contemporary cinema and television (I’m giving you a glare romantic-comedies), and it does bug me a considerable amount.  But I just don’t think that Irene counts as falling into the damsel trope in this episode.  Sure, she gets help, but so does Sherlock, and Watson, and Mycroft. 

As for her dealing and working with Moriarty, I’m pretty sure that that was only thrown in because they had to deal with the cliffhanger from Season one and they wanted to do so without having him play a major part in this episode.  The BBC Sherlock is not the complete cannon of the books and it has already been established that all the villains are somehow connected to Moriarty so it didn’t really bother me that he would be the one to nudge her to Sherlock. 

Am I saying that her character was flawless; no, it could have been a lot better, there were moments where she seemed quite lost, but on the whole I don’t think that it was quite as abysmal as a lot of people are making it seem. 

It all hinges on how you read the episode, if you go for it at face value, then yes, it was a sexist awful melange of confusion.  But I think if you consider some of the motivations behind a lot of Sherlock’s behaviors then the story becomes much deeper and much more palatable…

anyhoo, hope I haven’t offended any of my deeply feminist friends <3

On a quick art related side note: I really enjoy drawing with pens without sketching it in pencil first.  I like the feeling of knowing that if my pen slips there is no way of removing it, I like the sense of permanence it gives. I do apologize for this drawing however, because it’s a bit shitty… xD