Floggers - Q&A

To answer DelFonte's question - and thanks, by the way, for playing:

Are you still making floggers - any new designs?

YES. I still make floggers. Though I'm not exactly what I'd call a master marketer, folks still contact me now and then to make them an original creation and I pour all my love and creativity into it. A wonderful woman contacted me just before I left for a long trip over the holidays and she was patient enough to wait for me to get back before her lovely thing was delivered to her.

She wanted purple, red, and silver. This is what I delivered:

Inspired and enjoying being surrounded by my ropes and dye again, I then crafted what, to my eye, may be the most beautiful flogger ever to have existed. I have not listed it because of the aforementioned lack of marketing skills, but if anyone's interested in it I'm certainly up for negotiation.

 It's a gorgeous, huge, heavy monster. The purple is a bit deeper/darker than I can make photos show, but you get that with purple and cameras. I'm so proud of it I could burst, but again, not so much for the marketing.

Seriously, DelFonte, thanks so much for the question. It seemed like Q&A was a good way to dive back in.

I'll get to Fiona's questions in my next post, and if anyone has any more questions, feel free to ask!

Flogger Friday - June 21, 2013

I make floggers.

It's what I do. It's something that I sort of fell into as a consequence of my veganism, and then I discovered  I adore it - actually veganism has done that for me in a lot of areas. Funny how a change in perspective can completely shift your entire life and lead you to joys you'd never have expected.

Gardening, cooking, baking, and now making floggers. Who knows what other wonders are to come?

I've recently caused myself a bit of harm that's still healing, so I took the opportunity to do a lot of sitting with my materials and to eyeball some new possibilities. I've crafted three new floggers, all fairly different from each other, and I thought I'd share them because I think they're pretty amazing.

Still-chained blue cutie

Most recent one first! This blue cutie is on the slender side, but delivers a sort of swishing sting/thud combination that's really very nice. The falls are chained loops of light blue nylon. The handle is smooth navy blue.

We have our favorite colors in this household - they show up a lot. Blue and purple make the both of us happy, so my next creation shouldn't come as a surprise.

Purple, silver, and white.

This one's a bit of a monster compared to my usual, but I found the ring attached to it and it was begging to have a flogger made to hang from it. 

It's heavy, thuddy, and completely gorgeous. The purple may lead to it sitting around for a while, but that's actually okay because I like looking at it.

Next, I have a green and black beauty. While it still follows the more standard form/weight of what I've been making, it definitely has a spin all its own.

Green, black, gold accent.

It's another case of a ring inspiring the whole project. The ring is marbled green and black with a gold accent at the top, the falls are black, the handle is dark dark green, and the bottoms of the falls are black striped with mint.

Hard to believe how difficult this was to photograph and get the colors to come out properly. It's even lovelier in person.

I love crafting floggers and I love sharing what comes of my efforts. I especially love it when I hear how much other people enjoy the results. It's total validation! If you are interested, the purple one is listed for sale sold; I will list the others soon.

Have a great weekend!

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Update: Wow, readers! What a response! The purple one is sold - wow.

The others are all listed now, plus one more!

Long distance, body parts, and craftiness: Q&A

From wingbowl (no link): I love reading through your blog. Based on your most recent post, how long were you involved "long distance" before you reestablished physical connection?

Thank you!

The word "reestablished" here gives me pause, as it implies that Husband and I were an in-person couple who had to endure separation for a brief time before we could be together again. But no. We met online, as so many people do these days, but not so many people did back then. There was an ocean between us, but we were drawn together. It's really quite a good story.

To answer the question, though, we were involved for just shy of two years before we managed to get married. We had long visits (4 weeks, 6 weeks) where we got closer and closer, and the times apart were desolate wasteland nightmares where (I at least) just held on to the moments we could spend chatting on AIM. He proposed after one of his visits had ended and he'd gone back home.

From fiona: What's YOUR favorite part of your body? What's your favorite part of Husband's body?

Not sure what favorite actually means here. It could be one I like the best or one that appeals the best to me in a visual sense. I love my clitoris because insane amounts of pleasure come from it. I think that qualifies as a favorite part?

As for my husband, it's a hard call between his legs and his hands. His legs are long and lean and they wrap around me just so, but his hands do so many wonderful things, from stroking my hair while we're watching a movie to making all the magic happen in bed.

Yeah, hands. ♥

From Riley: what gave you the idea to start making floggers? And since you're clearly crafty and talented, have you made anything else kinky or vanilla?

I'm vegan, and many many floggers are not - animal hides depress me. I don't want to be depressed during a joyful time, or really support sales of animal hides, even though the animal was probably killed for food. (Because yes, being hit with things makes me happy.)  After doing a little research, the few floggers that I found for sale that were vegan seemed either badly put together (cheap), ugly, too intense (rubber), or far, far too expensive for me to pay for something I wasn't even sure I'd like.

So I bought some rope (which wasn't cheap), and started making my own. I had some leftover materials after that first round, and made another, which a few bloggers urged me to sell. And then I discovered I was addicted, because the only thing better than making beautiful thing after beautiful thing is not having to find somewhere to store all the beautiful things. (there are only so many floggers a couple can use). They don't sell so fast as to making a living at it, or really do more than just support the habit, but it's soul-refreshing to make them and have other people enjoy them - vegan or not.

I have crafted since I was a wee thing. I used to crochet, do needlepoint, taught myself to knit, do plastic canvas. Later, my need for creativity was met by writing programs, by planning flower and vegetable gardens and growing plants from seeds. It's amazing how godlike you can feel just by encouraging a seed to do what it was always meant to do anyway. Moonflowers are especially gratifying.

Even later, I started working on an old house. There are people who will tell you that sewing and sawing are worlds apart, but it really is just a letter.

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March is question and answer month! If you have any burning questions (or things you're mildly curious about) feel free to ask!

Flogger recommendations: Q&A

From dancingbarez: Also was wondering if you could make a recommendation for a first purchased flogger. We only have the heavy homemade one so we wanted to try something a little different. To be honest the one we have now makes me shudder and not in a good way. The straps are braided leather with tied knots at the end so floggers freak me out a little. 

So, first off - I make no claims to be a flogger expert. I genuinely love floggers and flogging and all things that involve flogging in my little corner of the world (the one where dead animal bits don't go in the bedroom). Since I make floggers, I get this question quite often, actually, but usually it's in reference to true beginners who have zero experience with floggers and want one of mine. What I recommend to them, pretty much without fail, is one of these:

I recommend these because they're inexpensive and very, very sensual. I only make these custom order, so people can choose the handle color they want. They can build to a slow burn, but there is not anything to be freaked out about. In fact, with the exception of some of my braided and paracord types, I'd put all my floggers into the thumpy/silky/delicious category.

I can't in good conscience recommend any of the hide-type floggers to you - but I know the typical hides used to make the standard garden-variety floggers are a bit more intense than I'd want applied to my bare skin. I've seen photos of the kind of braided leather you mention and they make me shudder too, in a not-good way.

I wind up sounding like an ad, but I really recommend any of my knotted types if you're already experienced with a flogger and not completely put off by the experience. They're a bit heavier than the "beginner" type and really feel fantastic. The knots are like smooth little fists that pummel you.

Like this one. Yummy.

If you're interested in talking more about either type, feel free to send me an email or drop me a comment.

Something I'm very curious about, but haven't tried so I can't recommend one way or the other, are rubber floggers. Like this one from The Stockroom.

March is question and answer month! All through the month, I'm answering questions about almost anything! Feel free to email me or leave a comment on any of my posts.

A bit of business

If anyone who reads here is thinking of ordering a custom flogger for the holidays, please do so within the next week or so. At the minimum, email me to let me know what you want so I can go ahead and make it. I'm easy like that. I am going out of town for a very, very extended period and won't be able to make custom floggers until late January.

I will bring my current stock along with me, so if you have your eye on one of those, everything's good.

Flogger Friday 10-12-2012

Yep, so here I'm starting my very own weekly post wherein I feature my favorite flogger of the week along with a little story.

I spent last night and today making this:

I met the lovely Shelby Cross for lunch yesterday, because I am fortunate enough to be in her vicinity. On our parting, she mentioned she likes red - and black. As fate would have it, when I got home that evening I found my order of dye waiting on the steps. While I didn't make this for her, because I quoted her a price that counted on far, far less work than this entailed, she did very much inspire it. Even though I don't like red so much - I'm a blue and purple sort of girl - I'm very, very proud of how well it's turned out. If I could I would show it to everyone I meet.

Only now I've burned out all my creativity and have no idea what to call this beauty. Suggestions from the crowd are welcome. 

Have a fantastic weekend, everyone, and may all your flogging dreams come true!

Browsing the wares HNT

Caution: This post contains images that will incite flogger envy.

As my husband ran our gorgeous flogger over my body, he said "I should get a new flogger."

I sputtered. "You should get one??"

"Well, you should make me one then."

More sputtering from me. "I.. I.. make them every day! I told you if you ever wanted one, all you had to do was say 'I want that one!' I show them all to you, you say 'Very nice, love,' and then give them back to me." I presented him with a pout.

At any given moment, there is a selection of floggers in our closet that have not been listed for sale. I make them faster than I have time to photograph and list them all properly. Yesterday, when he asked the question, there were four.

"That was a long time ago! The ones you make now are so nice... Well, then, let me go look at the ones you have now," he said. We went to the closet, mostly naked. I moved all the ones that were listed to a separate hanger and handed him the hanger with the available ones on it. After extensive debate, he wound up selecting the (amazingly beautiful) one I made yesterday, and placing an "order" for a mini one to match the one we already have.

Something came over me

I did something a little odd today.

I sat down and I made a flogger. That in itself isn't odd; I do that most days - you should see my closet. However, this time, I had no grand ideas of what was going to happen, but it turned into an all-day project. I was thrilled with the beauty of the result (subjective, I know) and then I realized "Wait. No one's going to WANT this but me..."

And what do I need with a thirteenth flogger, anyway?

Such are the hazards of being creative. 

Some things are just too pretty to not be created.

Free time

I have none.

But with family time ratcheted up a bit, there's lots of idle hand time, with a munchkin who isn't paying attention to what I'm really doing. So I've put my hands to work while we watch movies.

This one is actually for sale.

"So, what, you going for one a day now?" my husband asks.

The blue and white one turned out so spectacularly beautiful that I gifted it to my husband, whose favorite color is blue. I will probably make another one later.

Lessons learned

But it's such a pretty flogger. 

1. Don't start making a flogger if it's after 9 PM.
   
   Thanks to a wonderful lurker's request, I made a new flogger, and the next night I wanted to make another one since the first one was purchased. There's a limited time window in which I can make a flogger, though. It takes a couple of hours of uninterrupted, hand-aching holding after all the initial prep is done, and I can't put it down once I start until it's finished. So we may wind up not going to bed until after 11, which leads to my second lesson.
   
   
2. I need sex.
   
   Seriously, sex. Kinky, dirty-talking, hip grinding, perhaps body-part-slapping, nipple twisting sex. I need it. Going to bed after 11 on a weeknight is not a good idea because either I get what I need and we're both exhausted in the morning, or I don't... and not getting what you need isn't good.
   
   
3. My husband loves me
   
   Okay, so maybe I knew that one already. But he was really spectacular last night, helping me with the flogger, covering for me when people who were supposed to be asleep walked into the room, and doing stuff for me. Not to mention the sex. Body part slapping, hip grinding, nipple pinching.. yeah, we did too. More about that up next.

I love floggers

The swoosh, the impact, the glide. I think I'm addicted to making floggers.

My husband says I should sell them, or something. Otherwise we'll have way TOO many.

I made this one last night, on a whim. I actually dreamed about making a flogger last night. I couldn't get it right, it kept falling apart in my  hands, and invisible critters kept cutting my cords. Thankfully this one came out beautifully.

I call it "Strawberry Ice Cream." It stings. It thuds. It strokes. It tickles. It draws the eye and makes me want to display it.

I love it.

I have enough stuff to make another one. I think I'll give it a go.

So pretty

I made this flogger for my husband's birthday. The photo doesn't quite do justice to the way the light gleams from the falls.

I can hardly wait to have it used on me.

DIY: Make a flogger

To start with, you'll need rope.

This stuff is what I bought to use. 100 feet gave me enough to make my two, but you'll want the 100 for just one as well - I used more than half of it.

"It is great for camping, tie downs, emergency and survival uses," says the description on a different listing for the same product. Heck yeah. Flogging emergency, years without a flogging over here. Survival definitely at stake. Lovely purple paracord to the rescue. Of course you can choose whatever color you fancy, or use a different sort of rope altogether. If you choose a different rope, or a thicker one that you'll need to unravel, you'll want a smaller cord as well for the handle. With this flogger, I bought some small white cord at Lowe's for the handle so it would show up better in the photographs - I previously just used the paracord for both. It could look quite.. striking if you wanted to splurge and get another color for the handle.

I wondered what kind of person buys nylon paracord as a gift.
I had a good giggle out of that, my husband chuckled as well.

DIY Demonstration

Despite not being a workaholic, my husband does still sometimes take his work home. He was working past 10:00 last night, and I gave up on waiting alongside him and made my way to bed. I waited there for a while, but eventually the hour got the better of me and I drifted off.

Sometime later, I was awakened by him stroking me. I made some happy noises to feel him, and he asked me softly, "Who told you you could go to sleep, huh?"

Floggers

Before I begin this post, I feel the need to warn my readers that I will say some unpopular things. I also advise discretion for the video links in the first part of the post. I feel the need to link to them because they illustrate what I mean, but by all means feel free not to look at them. The first part of this post is not sexy. Nothing I say is meant as a value judgement against anyone who may feel differently. These are my informed opinions, and I hold them dear.