Glitter! And Sugar! And Skulls!

I love glitter. Pink glitter. Red glitter. Black glitter. Gary Glitter.

Ayah, so maybe I draw the line at Gary. But I still like glitter.

How joyful then to find Madison, Wisconsin's premier purveyor of all things glittery (and something that are not) The Glitter Workshop. The Glitter Workshop bills itself as "cottage industry for the 21st century" and that's pretty accurate. Imagine an entire store filled with crafty things made by crafty girls, an emporium of craftsters' craftiness. You never know what you are going to find at the Glitter Workshop--Ikea curtains repurposed as skirts; evil dollies; hand-made valentines; skull and bone earrings and hair pins; and, of course, glittery things.

I love the idea of crafty girls having an outlet to sell their crafty things. When I was a super crafty girl, there was no internet (this was before the Deluge, my pretties), so even had I thought of selling my crafty things there would have been no where to sell them. Glad I am then, that Internet aside, a place like the Glitter Workshop exists, turning super crafty girls into hard-headed businesswomen, using glitter and imagination to take over the world. Look out NASDAQ--here they come!

Now, one thing I might just possibly like more than glitter is skulls. (I know that should be skull since thing and is is singular, but don't that make the sentence sound funny?) And so when I was doing some Christmas shopping at the Glitter Workshop last year, I was thrilled to find there the most cunning little fabric card case made out of fabric printed with a sort of weird relief of skulls, and which I quickly snapped it up. This cunning little card case was made by Sugar Kitty, who also makes hand-bags, jewelry and other cleverly cute, yet slightly ominous, stuff. "Sweet as sugar, but tough as nails" is Sugar Kitty's motto and that's a motto I can get behind. In addition to accessories, Sugar Kitty also makes corsets, or as Flora would call them: "stays".

Today corsets have a pretty bad reputation--most people think they are terribly uncomfortable, more an article of torture than an undergarment. I have worn stays, not only worn them but chopped wood in them, boiled laundry in them, cooked over an open fire in them, hiked in them, and even ridden in them. And I have this to say: a properly fitted and properly made pair of stays is more comfortable than the modern alternative.

We'd all be better off if we went back to corsets. Straighter posture & sleeker stomachs. We'd just have to remember, when dressing, to put our shoes on first!