Reclaim the day is a day in which witches of color post photos of their practice. This includes all aspects of it, be it your altar, grimoire, selfie, etc. As long as it pertains to your craft, you can post it.
the fact that transphobes can follow me without any sense of fear is unbelievable. this is not a transphobe/terf safezone absolutely fuck off
Bisexual culture is being primarily attracted to nice gentle boys and girls that could probably kill you
This fake yarn is supposedly better for sheep.
Aimed at people who don’t know where wool comes from, it’s 100% plastic. Yes, plastic.
So any garment you wash will release microfibres into the sea. It’ll never decompose.
You’re supposed to believe that sheep shearing is violent and cruel. There are imbeciles out there that work in an unprofessional manner while shearing, but that’s not the case overall.
Sheep don’t suffer from having their fleece removed.
Left on, the fleece can become a home for fly eggs and the subsequent maggots which can eat the sheep. Chemical treatments are available to prevent that happening. It’s much better for the sheep, the land and the farmer to avoid chemical use.
Don’t be fooled. Wool is a sustainable material, one we should make more and better use of.
ALL THAT! ^^^
And ya know what? I’m passionate about this kind of stuff, and I adore sheep, so buckle up, we’re talking about wool. Humans through history have bred modern sheep to have this impossibly thick wool coat that can become moldy and fly infested and gross and heavy and locked up if they aren’t sheared. They can overheat and die if not shorn. They’ll get maggots, as stated above. They will become nearly immobile and more susceptible to predator attacks because they can’t run away or even really move. So what’s the “humane” solution here? To castrate all sheep and let them die off as a species while individually rotting and overheating and dying under their unshorn coats? Or to take care of the animals our species bred and use the wool that has to come off for the sheep’s health because otherwise it’s just sitting around?
Not to mention how amazing a fiber wool is! It’s one of the few (if not the only, I can’t recall currently) natural materials that will still keep you warm even when wet (which is why sheep don’t need barns, necessarily). It’s naturally water resistant, too, and that can be upped by simple treatment with waxes or oils. It’s very sturdy, lasts a long time, somewhat cut-resistant, and moderately flame resistant. (Plastic based yarns like the above will burn and melt quickly, adhering to your skin and making the burns worse.) And sheep produce a lot of this amazing stuff for not a ton of input. Sheep are happy grazing and don’t need special food to still make their wool (unlike cows that need a specific diet to make tasty milk), so as long as you keep them safe they’re pretty much going to just munch whatever they can and grow their amazing fluff.
There’s a reason our ancestors in sheep country relied on wool over plant fibers like cotton and flax. Sure, they have their place, but wool is super sturdy, warm, easily renewable, doesn’t require very specific growing conditions (just a healthy sheep), and one fleece will give you a crapton of fiber to spin. And you aren’t hurting an animal to do it, you’re just giving them the required haircut! Nobody would advocate that you never get a cocker spainel groomed because it might stress the animal, or they might get nicked in the haircut process. Your spaniel will get nasty and matted if you don’t treat its coat correctly, and that is much worse than the momentary stress of a surface nick or a grooming salon. Sheep aren’t harmed or even that stressed by the shearing process.
I know it can look very scary to see a sheep being picked up and moved around while someone holds big scissors or a giant hair razor, but it’s not that bad for the sheep. They just kind of sit there and go “Oh, time for haircut, ok, can eat after?” And the person shearing isn’t in it to hurt the sheep. Why would you want to harm the animals you rely on for a living, at the bare minimum? And even if they do get nicked, it’s not really different from you getting a nick while shaving, except that sheep naturally secrete lanolin, which soothes skin irritation and has some mild antibacterial properties. So their little nicks and scrapes, even if they bleed and it looks scary on their white peach fuzz, don’t hurt that bad and heal up super quickly. And for those who are worried about the sheep being cold without their wool–shearing is done in spring/summer, not winter. So the sheep are nice and cool for the hot weather, and they’ve grown back their coats by the time it’s getting cold again. Any sheep shorn in winter are kept in warm, indoor barns with the climate carefully controlled. But because sheep prefer to wander and graze than stay inside and eat hay, most production is done as it was in ye olde days: spring shearing, overwintering in their wool, roaming the great outdoors for munchies.
And no, lambs don’t get sheared. The babies don’t have enough wool to make it worth it, let alone the fact that most lambs are born right after shearing time. By the time it gets around to the next shearing season, they’re a year-old sheep and are ready to be shorn for the first time.
I’m sorry for the infodump, I just have a lot of feelings about natural and sustainable living, and sheep are an incredible resource, not to mention incredibly adorable. I also hate misinformation. Don’t be fooled, gathering wool from sheep doesn’t harm the sheep, and the wool produced is amazingly useful and is far more sustainable and ecofriendly than plastic!
(Also, here is a quick video showing the shearing process on hybrid hair/wool sheep, and here’s one showing how it was/is done with hand shears.)
Arinaitwe Gerald, an Batwa indigenous organizer I talk to regularly who lives in southwestern Uganda, is currently having trouble providing for orphaned children he and his wife have taken in in addition to their own children after their mother passed away a bit over a month ago.
One of the children, a 12 year old girl named Immaculate, is in serious pain due to having a cyst caused by goiter. She had been recommended for surgery all the way back in October, but because $700 is nowhere near an amount her late mother or Gerald and his wife can afford, she has still not gotten the treatment she needs and they are even having difficulty getting the $85 needed for an injection that would potentially help decrease the pain and size of the cyst temporarily.
Please spread this fundraiser and donate if possible! Immaculate and her siblings, as well as the Batwa people at large need all the help they can get, and no 12 year old should have to go through all that she is currently dealing with.
They’re still like $400 away from their goal. Like if you wanna donate donate to this
musekicker asked:
42 for Elias/Wonder, or 39 for Krysta/HDL?
42. This is for you
Had anyone told Wonder when she first gained sentience, and later a body, that “hey, you’re going to end up dating a dragon” she would have laughed and called a statistical improbability. And yet, after everything, there she was. Granted, how they met and actually started dating wasn’t a fairytale or as romantic as one would hope, but as time went on, it really was nice.
Elias was kind and doting, and made her and her family, though maybe one or two would never admit it, feel safe. Not to mention he was a softie, despite the scales when he was a dragon. They had somehow fallen genuinely in love, not that she was complaining.
“Wonder?”
Wonder found herself snapped from her mind by the object of focus and affection.
“Elias!” She exclaimed with a smile, trying not to leap from her chair to his open arms. “When did you get - wait, where did you get that scar?”
There was a small sliver and a few feathers missing from his cheek, just below his eye. She traced just below the area with a worried chirp.
“It’s nothing that I can’t explain,” Elias responded, grabbing her hand and pressing a kiss on it. Letting her go, he reached into his coat pocket, he pulled out a small box. “This is for you.”
Wonder looked up at him curiously as she took the box, only sparing him her gaze when she opened it. Inside was a necklace with a golden chain and a bright crystal scale. She held it up and it glittered in the light.
“One of your scales?” she murmured. “Elias-”
“I wanted to,” he replied, taking it from the air. She turned, brushing her hair to the side as he clasped it in place. “Back home, gifting a scale is an important moment in a courtship. I trust you with a part of me…”
“I’ll treasure it forever…”She brushed her hand against the scale, warm against her feathers. “I’ll assume its an equal exchange?”
“Usually, but it’s not necessary-” Elias began to say, but Wonder had already grabbed a pair of scissors from her desk and snipped a lock of hair from her hair. “Wonder!”
“I wanted to,” she repeated as he did, braiding the hair and tied in together in a loop. She took one of his hands and slipped it onto his wrist. “I trust you with a part of me.”
Elias smiled with a laugh, gently brushing her cheek before pressing a kiss to it. “I’ll treasure it forever…”
Anonymous asked:
13 + fenro if you're still doing the prompt thing?
13. I brought you food
(Pre-Fenro)
Most of the time, Gyro would get into a snit and go hours without eating, only pounding coffee after coffee until what he was working on was at the point he was willing to stop, or until someone broke his train of thought. Hunger would hit and he would go and grab food from the vending. That is until Fenton started to stop his train of thought with food, knowing that as soon as he did, Gyro would be hungry.
It was a rare event when Fenton was the one in a snit over a project, hunched over a desk or a computer or a build, oblivious to all else around the lab unless it was an emergency. He was just as bad as Gyro then, ignoring meals and drinking lukewarm lab coffee.
So when Gyro nudged a to-go bag at his arm, snapping him from his project, Fenton was startled. Looking up, he saw Gyro standing by and was unsure of what to really do. Did he miss something? Was Gyro-
“I brought you food,” Gyro said simply, pushing the bag closer. “You’ve been at this for a while.”
“Oh- Oh! Thank you, Gyro,” Fenton said, closing his computer. He pulled the bag closer “I didn’t realize how long it had been.”
It smelled like his usual from the diner a few blocks over - he always went there to grab food for himself and Gyro when he was…when he was overworking.
“No problem,” he replied. They both went quiet, unsure of what to do with themselves. “I should…get back to work myself…”
Fenton nodded, and Gyro returned to his own desk. Before tucking into his food, Fenton looked over, watching as he scrawled on a blueprint, and absentmindedly sipped a coffee. With a grin, Fenton turned back to his desk, confused by the flush in his cheek over a meal.
“It was just before you were hatched, your mother, your Uncle Donald and I had been going on an amazing adventures for years! And things were grand!”