Inspirational women, kittens and puppies thread

[PricklyBall]

Because we need something that will lift us up, rather than send our blood pressure soaring.

Thread rules:

Women who've done bloody amazing things.

Soothing pics (fluffy animals, beautiful landscapes, flowers, wonderful craft creations, fabulous cakes... the list is open ended).

...and a chicken hatching some kittens.

at Germaine Fucking Greer.

I sure could use a glass of gin with her tonight.

I’m giving you all Victoria Wood. So very missed. She’d be quietly destroying all this shit.

This thread is actually lovely.

Looks great, Badger.

badger well done you, no matter how hard I try I cannot bloody crochet.
I’m going to post a lovely tent instead, can’t wait for camping weather.

Another one who loves the "Germaine Fucking Greer" caption!

Since you've mentioned the late, great Victoria, here is one of my favourites of hers:

Love Barry and Freda

Well done badger

s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/0d/8e/c6/0d8ec66867a02ebed625707753cff44e.jpg

Earliest surviving picture of a literate woman.

Germaine Greere, obviously and Agnes Baden Powell who started the girl guides over 100 years ago, and was roundly criticised for "this pernicious sport" where young girls could actually run or even "raise their arms above their heads".

Then my two goldies proving that two into one does go.

My dear departed blind doggo, enjoying a rucksack ride because he was too old to manage big hills but he still liked to come with us

Barbara Castle.

I met her in the mid eighties during an important local election, in her EU constituency. She said she loved campaigning and getting out on the streets to talk to people and debate. She said that was what it was all about.

She was tiny, but she was like a powerhouse.

I think of her when I remember Mr Brown's unfortunate Bigot-gate incident. She would have loved to debate. It is what made her tick.

I don’t think the picture posted

I don’t know who the first few women are!!

Sorry, I forgot to attach names to my post

First pic

second

Aww, that's just gorgeous, Badger

Mary Shelley - who wrote Frankenstein when she was just 19 and had already endured the death of a baby, the birth of another (who died later) and her husband’s philandering with her stepsister. Later she endured multiple almost fatal miscarriages while Percy Byshe Shelley dicked around with Byron performing “heroic feats”. Fortunately people now recognise her as an enduring literary voice.

Backingvocals god. Men have been shits through the ages. I always think of Wordsworth, nobody ever acknowledges his sister Dorothy who lived with him most of her adult life. He pinched a lot from her diaries and used her writing for his guidebook without giving her any credit!

badger good job on the granny square! You will be on it now, if you can crochet a granny square you can crochet anything!

backing Victoria is awesome. I read some amazing VW fanfic by a mnetter

Sylvia Plath, who wrote the poem Mushrooms, which is a timely read.

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.

That poem is wonderful Absinthe thank you.

Quentin I want to get good enough to do an octopus so I can join in with Octopus for a Preemie. It’s such a fab charity, I wish my son could have had some woolly tentacles to pull while he was in NICU.

octopusforapreemie.com

Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Rosalind Franklin from me. Both inspirational women scientists whose accomplishments were claimed or subsumed within those of their male colleagues.

And a rose at Blenheim for balance.

Ooh this is a good thread, I got these for DD for Christmas - inspirational women flash cards! ashmae.com/products/we-brave-women-cards

Cornelia Hesse Honneger

She couldn't get her work published as a scientist and was rather vilified by the scientific community. So she turned to art to get her message across. I believe being a woman was part of the vilification.

www.treehugger.com/energy-disasters/paintings-mutated-insects-nuclear-power-cornelia-hesse-honegger.html

www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/chernobyls-bugs-art-and-science-life-after-nuclear-fallout-180951231/

(I think bugs are cute - healthy ones that is)

Light of my life, Frida Kahlo, who suffered such pain both physical and mental throughout her life but forged such a path through her art. And my darling doggo who I get to take to work with me and he brightens everyone's day.