On the Solar Eclipse we launched the Gilded Strumpet Collection. Gilded pieces in gold filled and gold plate–from vintage one of a kind earrings and necklaces to delicate gold moons paired with semi-precious stones, you are sure to find something here to warm you!
Today is the Queen of Tarot’s birthday–the legendary Pamela Coleman Smith!
To celebrate, we’re offering a FREE Witches Tarot Necklace (an £18 value) with every purchase of £45 or more at feralstrumpet.com through Monday, February 19th.
(Simply add The Witches Tarot Necklace to your cart with your choice of vegan suede cord along with your other selections totaling at least £45.)
I’ve been reading Tarot for forty years, and my first deck was the Smith Deck–at the time people called it the Rider-Waite deck–and even though Pamela Coleman Smith was the principle artist and thinker behind the deck, she was almost erased from its history. Thankfully this new wave of modern witches have embraced and celebrated her–placing her story at the centre of the history of modern tarot where it belongs! I’ve gained so much wisdom from this tool she devised–I’ve created the Witches Tarot Necklace to celebrate this.
Happy Birthday, Queen Pamela! 
If you are curious to learn more about Pamela, this recent podcast about Cat Willet’s new graphic biography of Pamela is pretty interesting,
This 14th century painting depicts Mary finishing up the neck on a garment that’s been knitted seamlessly. This is my favourite way to knit! Over the last thirteen years, I’ve designed tools and jewellery for knitters. Feral Knitting is all about fluid ease—from adorable stitch marker sets specifically for top down knitting to brooches for cardigans without buttons, I’ve made things for knitters that I use myself and swear by.
I’m a feral knitter. I’ve gone rogue and hardly ever use a pattern—but I got to this point by learning certain concepts ‘by heart’. There are great resources on the internet that teach you seamless knitting, which is my favourite way to go, (and clearly Mary’s, too! It’s literally divine.)
Here are some pattern ideas to get you in the mood to customise and wing it, seamlessly, using a Feral Stitch Marker Set and Brooch with the finished design.
Stacy Perry’s Easy Cardigan is designed to close with one of my brooches. You can find the pattern here: https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/three-rectangles-two-triangles
Here’s Stacy’s Video showing you how to wear one of my brooches and how to knit her beautiful pattern. (If you’re wondering how these pins work, Staci shows you at around 3 minutes in.)
Knitting a top down raglan is one of my favourite methods to knit on the fly, and there’s websites by amazing knitters out there to help you:
The Simple Sweater from Tin Can Knits is so good.
Super Cardigan pattern from Tin Can Knits takes you step by step through the process from planning to blocking. It even has a cute pocket how-to. Instead of a button band, you can always close your cardigan with one of our pennanular brooches.
KT’s slow closet takes you through the process with lots of pictures:
Here are some classic books to inspire your seamless knitting: Barbara Walker’s Knitting from the Top and Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Knitting Around and Knitting Without Tears–with her conversational style–approach knitting in a fluid narrative way.
For the past couple of decades, I’ve only knit seamlessly. I make it up as I go along, and I call this method the Sweater Story. I’m working on a PDF download that I hope to offer in the future which will be all about Sweater Stories!
What’s on your needles?
Here’s a few photos of Feral Knitting from long ago–though it feels like only yesterday:
At a Feminist Circle full of posh academics I was asked what I do. “I have a handmade business,” I said. I was proud of my wee Etsy shop, called Feral Strumpet. I earned me more peddling jewellery on the internet than at University lecture gigs in the USA. I had a better quality of life than when I was working the soul-deadening job I had in London processing expense reports for an investment bank in the City. My handmade business meant freedom and autonomy, but this academic with a Mulberry handbag dismissed it as “Victorian Piecework.”
What did she know? I was a self-taught metalsmith with a room in my house devoted to my workshop, yet I was also a joke, my vocation an airhead’s ambition. And yet, I had enough business acumen to support myself for over a decade, allowing my husband to quit his job and join me.
A lot can happen in fourteen years—that’s how long I have had an Etsy shop. I opened the shop after being unemployed for six years—my visa status allowed me to work, but it was difficult to convince a potential British employer of this. I was too educated, too foreign, too sick to work a regular job in the UK. Eventually my CV looked like something a stranded time traveller might put together.
I had a box of broken vintage jewellery, beads and findings and a table in a rented house. I decided I would make jewellery and peddle it on Etsy. This went so well it sustained me, three cats and a man for over a decade. But it’s over now. I won’t bore you with the details. Etsy fees and draconian surveillance have crippled handmade businesses as the company answers to pressure from investors, and I’m just one of thousands who had to flee.
I knew I’d have to shut the Etsy shop sooner or later, but I was so attached to it, so goddamn sentimental. I thought I could outsmart the Etsy Overlords in a Saul Goodman kind of way. For years, I did—bouncing back after many challenges: the algorithm stranglehold on social media, the loss of my European customers after Brexit (a third of my customer base, gone.) The suppliers I worked with for a decade—independent, ethical and small—went out of business. My chronic pain reached critical mass so I paced the work out and taught my partner to make some of the designs. There was the Royal Mail cyber attack and the pandemic, and still I bounced back. Yet now the only way to survive on Etsy is to churn out repeatable designs at low cost or become a reseller of mass produced goods. This is the business model Etsy rewards.
As a disabled person I rely entirely on the gig economy—making jewellery, teaching online workshops writing on Substack, and selling a next book if I can. All require constant promotion and rejection cycles, the antithesis of creative joy.
Fourteen years ago, before the online marketplace went public, Etsy was different. My very first sale on Etsy was an pair of Edwardian filigree chandelier earrings I’d refurbished, sold to a dear friend of mine from High School. I’ve sold pieces to strangers whose names I recognised and whose work I have loved—doom metal rock stars, queer poets, feminist screenwriters and even once to Peaky Blinders’ costumer. I modelled as a pirate queen for the label of a fellow Etsy seller’s perfume. Sellers shared ideas and knowledge and my success is down to the shared grit and resilience of the community of artists on Etsy in those early days.
I’m lucky though that I have had so much excitement and happiness being an Etsy seller, and this will continue on my independent shop, in new and exciting ways.
I’m lucky though that I have had so much excitement and happiness being an Etsy seller, and this will continue on my independent shop, in new and exciting ways. My independent shop remains open! I’m freed up; I’m mourning. Perhaps these two things are inseparable.
Nicole Piar’s magical Spirit Cats and Witch Cats oracle decks are now available in gifts sets at Feralstrumpet.com.
There are gift sets for all magical cat lovers–chose the Witch Cat Set, the Spirit Cat set or a set with both for an All-the-Cats mega deck! Each gift set comes with a custom wooden gold crescent moon card stand for your altar and a beautifully lined, embrodiered magical cat bag that can hold most sizes of tarot and oracle cards, and just happens to be perfect for the witch cat decks–the pouches can hold both decks at the same time.
The moon stand and your choice of sun or moon pouch are also sold separately in my shop.
We are proud to be the UK and European seller of Nicole’s beautiful oracle decks.
Have a look at these videos for a walk through of each deck.
Strumpets, it’s been quite a journey bringing three cats and our studio across the Pentland Firth to settle in Kirkwall.
I’m excited to find out how the wild, ancient landscape of Orkney will inspire future designs.
As I write to you, the Orkney wind is whistling through the laundry line and our wee studio is all set up.
We are truly back! Orders will be shipped out once a week from Kirkwall.
Thank you so much for your patience and being with us on this new adventure.
Feral Strumpet is moving to Orkney! All orders placed this weekend will be posted next week; any other orders will be shipped in late May. Our Etsy shop will be in temporary vacation mode. Any questions just contact us! We will be in touch again when the shop is up and running later in May.
Cantrip is a Scots word meaning spell or trick. It can also mean a spoken incantation that is the same read forwards or backwards. It may be from the from the Gaelic canntaireachd, a mnemonic chant used by pipers to learn melodies on the Highland bagpipe.
My cantrips are playful groupings of shapes, stones and lore. They are the same backwards and forwards–most are designed to be double-sided. They are a tactile aid, ready to be infused with your own memories and charms.
Our moody spring continues in this weekend’s shop update, which is all about melancholy roses. We have new Glasgow rose necklaces and earrings. New versions of the momento mori and black hearted love rosary necklaces are our modest nod to Good Friday & Easter. These one of a kind pieces are complex, beautiful and dark, perhaps like you.
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