Image Description: a title-post picture with the words Arts and Crafts written in the centre of the picture in rainbow word-art with a clip-art picture of a red rose in each of the corners.
Articles to read before I begin:
~Neurowonderful: Ask an Autistic #6 – What’s Wrong With Autism Speaks? by Amythest Schaber
~Autism Women’s Network: Is Autism Speaks a Hate Group? by Amy Sequenzia
~The Caffeinated Autistic: Why I am Against Autism Speaks (and you should be, too)
~My Autistic Point of View: April is Autism Awareness Month, Autism Acceptance and #RedInstead
One of the problems with working in Retail is that you quickly lose your faith in humanity, especially when you see people do questionable stuff in the name of profit. Take hot-cross buns, as far as I’m concerned, supermarkets and bakeries shouldn’t be selling them until at least March. But on January 1st, year after year, the supermarket I work at has hot-cross buns ready to go at 06:00 am when the store opens.
The first day of the year, the Christmas season has only just finished and yet, the desire to shove Easter in our faces is clearly a temptation some corporations clearly can’t resist. Now, you could blame the customer for buying in the product, after all no one is forcing them to buy hot-cross buns on January 1st, but my experience with customer service has taught me that convenience is the key.
Unless the customer has come in for a specific item for a specific purpose, if the product isn’t there on the shelf, the majority of customers won’t bother, they only want the item because it’s right there. This is why, in my personal view, I feel that boycotting a product because the company displays unethical behaviour doesn’t achieve much in the long term.
Sure, it makes me feel better not to purchase items from Nestle (reasons why here) or Lindt (reasons why here). But the reality is that I know that by the end of the Easter period all those chocolate bunnies and chickens are going to be sold and consumed, and there’s not much I can do to stop them.
I understand that boycotting and choosing to abstain from certain companies and items is the only form of protest some people can participate in, this isn’t a judgement of that, I just dislike grappling with the feeling that I should be doing more.
Eventually, I got an idea, what if I could combine Neurodivergent traits like crafting and hoarding with those little bells that accessorise the chocolate Lindt rabbits and chickens and use them as part of a beaded lanyard? Behold!
Image Description: from right to left, a chrome key-ring and lobster-claw clasp, attached to the key-ring is small gold-coloured bell. Also attached to the key ring is a long beaded lanyard made of black elastic, with four different types of beads (hourglass, pearl, acrylic, transparent) displayed in nine colour-variations of beads (light pink, dark pink, red, orange, yellow, green, light blue, dark blue and purple), with a pink-glittery-star-bead as a stopper at the end.
Image Description: from right to left, a chrome key-ring and lobster-claw clasp, attached to the key-ring is small gold-coloured bell. Also attached to the key ring is a long beaded lanyard made of lavender coloured elastic with with four different types of beads (acrylic, transparent, pearl, hourglass) displayed in variations of purple with a transparent-glittery-star-bead with silver glitter in between each group of beads, with a transparent-glittery-star-bead with silver glitter as a stopper at the end.
Image Description: from right to left, a chrome key-ring and lobster-claw clasp, attached to the key-ring is small gold-coloured bell. Also attached to the key ring is a long beaded lanyard made of robin’s egg blue coloured elastic with with five different types of beads (acrylic, transparent, pearl, glittery, hourglass) displayed in variations of light blue with a blue-glittery-star-bead with silver glitter in between each group of beads, with a blue-glittery-star-bead with silver glitter as a stopper at the end.
Image Description: from right to left, a chrome key-ring and lobster-claw clasp, attached to the key-ring is small gold-coloured bell. Also attached to the key ring is a long beaded lanyard made of pink coloured elastic with with five different types of beads (acrylic, transparent, hourglass, glittery, pearl) displayed in variations of light pink and dark pink with a pink-glittery-star-bead with silver glitter in between each group of beads, with a pink-glittery-star-bead with silver glitter as a stopper at the end.
Image Description: from right to left, a chrome key-ring and lobster-claw clasp, attached to the key-ring is small gold-coloured bell. Also attached to the key ring is a long beaded lanyard made of black rat-tail cord with eight pearl beads (pink, red, orange, yellow, green, light blue, dark blue and purple), a transparent-glittery-star-bead with silver glitter, another group of eight pearl beads (pink, red, orange, yellow, green, light blue, dark blue and purple), a transparent-glittery-star-bead with gold glitter, another group of eight pearl beads (pink, red, orange, yellow, green, light blue, dark blue and purple), with a pink-glittery-star-bead with silver glitter as a stopper at the end.
So while I’m aware this might be a bad idea, if I had to pick one, I’d probably pick the last one. I love pearl beads and rainbows and that covers both. It also might not be obvious from the picture but the pearl rainbow lanyard is slightly shorter than the other ones, which I’ll admit are ridiculously long. I bought the black rat-tail cord off Ebay, I paid AU $2.00 in shipping fees (the seller is UK-based), but I honestly didn’t care. I’ve noticed the black rat-tail cord is thinner than the black rat-tail cord Kim obtained for me from Lincraft, but I felt this worked for me, the hot-pink wrap-tail cord I bought is too thick for me to use with my current collection of beads, which is super frustrating.
So what do readers think? Are the bells a good addition? Or just another one of my shitty ideas? I would offer to sell these and donate the profits to AWN or ASAN, but seeing as my Diverse Books Giveaway didn’t really take off (who had thought it would be difficult to tempt Australian and New Zealand book bloggers with free stuff?), I’m beginning to think I’m not as persuasive as I thought. Let me know what you think in the comments section down below.
