~note~

Neulakinnastelu for my understanding does not have a standard english translation. I have seen it used in english context with the swedish word nålbinding, or as naalbinding/nalbinding etc. So I’m just finglishing it here and using the finnish word.

My cousin had a baby this year (!!), and I got to meet the new small human while I was in Vaala! Of course, I wanted to make something for the little guy, and decided to make a baby blanket with neulakinnastekniikka. Trouble is, all my knowledge of the technique is making round things, as the technique is, well, for kinttaat (mittens). Hats, tube scarfs, socks, shirts, all very easily understandable with the base knowledge of kinnastelu. But rectangular was for some reason super difficult for me (＃￣ω￣). Not aided by the fact that I refuse to count rows unless

1. They’re super mega necessary
   

2. I don’t need to count more than 30stitches per row

   d(°∀°d)

So. I first tried to simply kinnastella a row, add an extra loop, and turn. Crochet-style, tried and true. Well, eventually I noticed the work growing smaller. Shit. Is my tension off? I tried to loosen up moving forward. Nope, still shrinking. Time to frog, which, if you have ever done any frogging on neulakinnastelu work, you know it is sloooow. You cannot just pull it apart, you must pick one loop at a time to pull the yarn through, and repeat on each and every stitch.

Million undone stitches later

Ok, two stitches when turning? Too many rows later, still shrinking.

Another million stitches to undo.

While frogging again, I decided to search how others have approached making not-tubular shapes. This blogger had made a scarf successfully with the back and forth technique! So I must’ve been grabbing the wrong loop when turning. The blogger also presented other funky ways of approaching a scarf with kinnastelu! So def check them out.<3

Feeling vindicated that my technique should have worked but I just goofed up, I moved on to the next techinque that needed less brain activity; make a row, snip the yarn, and do another on top. I was starting to run out of time if I wanted the blanket to be ready when I went to Vaala, and I didn’t want to risk messing up the the turning again; I didn’t have time to frog any more attempts.

And lo and behold, after tidying up the ends and blocking, we have a rectangular blanket!!

And not a moment too soon. I quite literally blocked the blanket the night before my train to Vaala. My wrists needed a break after the intense needling, but I was so happy to have it ready to gift it in person! The new parents seemed to really appreciate the gift. My cousins partner is also into natural fibers and knitting, which gave us the opportunity to nerd about handcrafts and yarns (✯◡✯)

The yarn I used was 100% undyed kainuunharmas, one of the old finnish breeds of sheep. I got this yarn from Urpolan Tilapuoti, where I have ordered from a few times now, specifically kainuunharmas. I often source yarn secondhand, but when I need to buy new, I try to buy local (and plastic free) yarn. The yarn from Urpola has always been very nice quality, and well cleaned. I have gotten kainuunharmas yarn from another farm before and the yarn was so full of sticks/debris, I need tweezers while working with it even though I cleaned it once already when gathering it into a ball. So two thumbs up for Urpola for good quality and debris-free wool yarn ╰(*´︶`*)╯♡

Wool from a heritage breed plus kinnastelu are this textile-history nerd’s dream combo. As the technique is one of the oldest in history, with local variety from Egypt all the way to Finland, there is just something special making stuff with the technique and tools my ancestors have used. I also really love the herringbone-type texture kinnastelu creates. And with structure that makes frogging terribly slow, the same structural integrity makes the item practically snag-proof. If you get a hole, it will not run, and is easy to patch up. This is why neulakinttaat (mittens with this technique) were a popular outer-layer mitten. So hopefully this blanket will be of comfort and use for years to come!

The blanket was not the most exciting thing for the little guy himself, (a neon-orange life preserver was much more interesting) but oh man was he cute!! Such a social and smiley little guy. Wishing him and his parents all the best.

Now, back to halloween prepping!

<3

M

I wanted to post some behind the scenes, WIP photos on making the fairy wings for ‘Us who glow in the dark’ (2026-). This was such a fun project, and the wings got a rather nice reseption so I thought I’d share some extra pictures on the process. :3

Creating wings with a formidable wingspan without making them too heavy required some trial and error. Third time was the charm, as prototype 1 was too heavy and #2 was pretty good, but visually not what we wanted.

While the prototype 2 was on the right track, having the wire go all around the wing created some unwanted wrinkles and heft. So the third set of wings had a raw fabric edge on the lower half of the wing, burnt to prevent fraying. But ahh, the fun part; texture!! As obvious from the picture above, the second prototype was really dull with almost no texture or colour. I wanted to create some organic texture, and blessed be the crafters and artist of the interned for sharing the trick of bubble-painting.

After getting a good base texture with the bubbles, I used fabric stiffener and continued refining the look via reflecting elements, hot glue and more paint.

Hand-painting the final touches really sold the wings for me. I defined the cell shapes, added a pop of colour to create a gradient, some white for highlight.. I could’ve continued painting additional detailing endlessly. Thank goodness for deadlines eh

Briefly about the structural stuff;

I knew I wanted to hide how the wings were attached as well as I could, in order to enforce the illusion of the performer becoming a fairy, instead of dressing up as one. This also happens on stage, so no permanent fixtures were an option. Soo, hidden magnets? After checking that 1. the performer did not have a pacemaker or other medical devices and 2. the sound designer was ok with magnets on stage, I made a harness with some semi-heavyduty magnets sewn onto it and secured their pairs onto the wings. And they held beautifullyyyy.

Sointu Saraste dancing with the wings. Video captured at the general rehearsals in Ehkä, Turku. Look at her go!

So this was my blabbering walkthrough of my work process! Def not a tutorial of any kind, but given the limited resources we had on this production, I was very happy with how these turned out.

Thanks for reading!

<3

M

During down time (because of course there has been down time), I have studied hand sewing techiques, in both historical and modern atelier ways. And I so enjoy it! It feels mindful to be present for each stitch, and not to speed through the process. I do need to remember ergonomy and hand stretches though ehe

Last week I visited my family in Vaala, first time in 8 years. During my masters studies I got denied the slower studying pace I had applied for, which stunned both my neurological social worker and myself. Well, I did graduate on time and I am happy that I did, but I was left with little energy to do much else outside of university life and recovering. But after graduating, I have been hitting the gym and lifting weights, and indeed also had the energy to see family and friends more.

Lots of interesting stuff brewing for 2027!

Wishing everyone the very best

<3

M

I got to begin the year with my first ever artistic residency, how exciting! During the residency I’ve been working on ‘Us who glow in the dark’, a contemporary dance piece in which Sointu Saraste (choreography & performing), Aju Jurvanen (light and spatial design), Sarah Kivi (sound design) and I (costume design) research and channel cuteness, monstrosity and (girl)aggression, through ~*fairies*~!

Fairies have a rich history in folklores around the world, often being described as dangerous tricksters who are to be respected and feared. More modern depictions have fairies imagined as dainty, effortlessy beautiful beings who dance between the thin veil of sexy and innocent. Sound familiar? The same description could be used for countless pop culture refenrences of female characters, as the traits listed are often also linked to femininity. The road from folklore depictions of the fairy to the popculture variety can be described as commodifying pagan beliefs into vessels of gender ideals.

This commodifying of fairies can even be seen how the adventures of Disney’s Tinker Bell in her solo movies (2008-2015) have little to do with the at times mean and murderous sprite she was in Disney’s ‘Peter Pan’ (1953). Her personality was retconned to make her more commercially viable for young audiences.

“I tried to kill a child, teehee”

There is so much interesting overlap with fairies and perceived femininity. As a kid, I did not care for all the sparkles and cuteness. Some of this was unfortunately internalised misogyny, but also how young me rejected what I though I was expected to be. Dainty, cute, pretty, frail. The culture around me taught me that these passive traits are girly, and the active traits such as strong and capable, were for boys. Fairies were the personification of femininity that haunted me, laughing how they were what was expected of me, knewing I could never reach it.

‘Us who glow in the dark’ will premiere at the Contemporary Art Space Kutomo, on friday the 13th of March. Come and see what we have been brewing! Get your tickets from the links below:

13.3. (friday) at 19:00

15.3. (sunday) at 15:00

19.3. (thursday) at 19:00

21.3. (saturday) at 19:00

There is a chance this is read by someone unfamiliar to the topic, so I’ll first open the terms “creative accessibility” and crip-positivity a bit:

If something is accessible, it means that there are no obstructions accessing this something. In performing arts, accessibility regarding, for example, audiences, often means a hired sign language interpreter near the stage and/or audio description of the performance that an audience member can listen to during the show via headphones. This can provide access, but if these, or any other implementations of accessibility, are not thought as being part of the artistic process, the result can be compared to an audiobook read by a skilled narrator versus using a text to speech program. To quote myself (hehe),

As art is not merely functional, neither should artistic accessibility be (Craig, 2025).

Creative, or artistic, accessibility, then, is making the performance and its artistic language accessible by various means, by various people. It is also about questioning the norms, and asking who is excluded and why. All this regards to both on the stage and off the stage. Who do we see represented, and by whom? To whom are they performing? Excluding disabled people, as it is with any minority, from creating and experiencing art, creates an art field that does not reach its full potential.

Crip-positive is a term I defined in my master’s thesis (to be plugged later) as such:

Crip-positive approach to something, then, would mean allowing for the variety of human experience to be present without expecting it to fit into the “norm”, whatever that might be within the cultural context of the present time and place (Craig, 2025).

The artistical potential of accessibility was explored in the 3 year TIKSI project, spearheaded by DuvTeatern. Within TIKSI, multiple meetings, workshops and two fully realised performances were created, one of them being ‘Livsfarligt på allvar!’, as seen here in my portfolio and here on DuvTeaterns website. 'Livsfarligt’ employed accessibility consultants for easy to follow language, audio description and sign language, all of which were languages used on stage. For my work as the costume designer, I co-hosted workshops that investigated the sound of costume, and I studied ways how the visuality of costume can enhance accessibility. I documented these aspects in my thesis ‘Costume Design and "Who Gets to Get it’, which you can read here! There is also lots of discussion on crip theory, which is wildy interesting and eye opening theory. If you are interested in the topic, feel free to give it a read, or check the bibliography for the absolutely great works cited. I owe so much to Robert McRuer’s work.

The guest speaker at the seminar, Michèle Taylor, was a delight to listen to and to be around with. Taylor works as the director of change for Ramps on the Moon in the UK and works as a disability equality trainer, as well as a consultant. She is vocal about not wanting to be granted access to an ableist system, but for the barriers that create the inaccessible and ableist system to be removed entirely. Many of her words have resonated with me deeply, and I am clearly not alone, for TIKSI was inspired by Taylor’s and her colleagues’ work in Ramps on the Moon.

The seminar, held around the 3rd year mark of the TIKSI project, felt like those series finales where the show reminiscences the road so far, with the main characters enjoying each other’s company, looking to the horizon for tomorrow. New and familiar faces gathering to learn, to appreciate work done and to face the future with optimism for better, but also determination to make it better. Truly, a crip-positive day.

I believe nurturing accessibility through a Crip-positive lens would benefit us all, no matter if you are disabled
or not yet disabled (Craig, 2025).

Links mentioned above, listed here again for convenience:

Craig, M (2025): Costume Design and Who Gets to Get it: Adopting a Crip-positive approach to costuming. Available here

duvteatern.com (n.d): Accessibility as artistic strategy and inspiration (TIKSI). Available here

duvteatern.com(n.d): Livsfarligt på allvar!– a hard-to-interpret murder mystery. Available here

mericostume.com (2024): Livsfarligt på allvar! Available here

Ramps on the Moon(n.d): Ramps on the Moon. Available here

It has such a fun pattern of tigers, mountains and waterfalls with the most lovely of colours. The material is natural fiber, I would guess wool by smell/feel/burn test.

The reason it was sectioned under “to be worked on”, is due to the fact that it is utterly too small for me to be used as it is meant to. I had been meaning to add a section on the shitamae to make this wider, but I had to face another, rather obvious, problem:

this fabric is just too cool to hide as an underlayer never to be seen!

And therefore, I scooped up the juban, measured a little, picked a matchy eri fabric from my stash and got to work. It was a chill job, consisting mostly of undoing old seams and ironing, which was a perfect project for a few evenings while too sick for anything too brainy but wanting something to do.

Happi october! (Get it? Happi, hehehe)

<3

~~~

I cut off ramblings of how art and capitalistically insentivised algorithm go together like toothpaste and orange juice. The rambling kinda ties in to my point here, but I shall skip right to it; I want to give more conscious time and appreciation to things I like. And while that means being more mindful of what I watch or listen to, it also means giving more time for documenting what I do! I too have the very human want to share and document stuff important for me. And I would like to do it in a way that serves me best, and not some spooky unseen shareholders of META.

So! In addition to my portfolio hosted here, I will start a less formal blog where I can dump works in process, works I have finished (gasp!), behind the scenes stuff, maybe thrift finds, maybe inspiring shows/films I’ve seen.. Not sure yet how curated I want this space to be! Going to be some learning, but hey, nobody is probably going to read this stuff for a while hehe. I also want to finally understand what an RSS feed is.