Hi Everyone,
Ariel and I got back from a blissful couple of weeks away last week and I’m still struggling to catch up on jobs, especially on getting back to emails. I promise I’m not ignoring you, I’d hoped to clear the backlog by the end of this week but it looks like it’s going to take a bit longer because of other disruptions. Apologies, I will get back to you as soon as I can, please bear with me.
Hywel
Hi Everyone
UPDATE: SilkSoles.com server update should all be done and we think we fixed the three bugs that came to light from the upgrade. If you experience any problems please let me know.
Hywel
Hi Everyone
Over the years my work email address (webmaster @ restrainedelegance.com) has got more and more unreliable, with more and more emails not getting through to me. I believe this is because of shadowbanning with some mail routers just swallowing any emails to “porny” domains. It’s annoying to say the least, and came to a head this morning when MY OWN WIFE couldn’t send me an email of her appearance on Irish TV to my work address and had to resend to my personal one.
It’s clearly got out of hand, so I have set up a new secure email system using protonmail and a custom domain.
So from now on if you need to email me, please send to webmaster@restrainedelegance.help.
Hopefully that will prove more reliable!
The old email address will still work as well or as badly as it is right now, and it’ll take me a while to change all the “contact us” links and so forth. But hopefully the new address will be more reliable.
Hywel
I have been selfish in keeping this to myself. But OMG bamboo silk rope! I’ve been buying from Reborn Ropes on Etsy. The rope has a bit of bite (less than hemp, more than nylon) and does have quite a bit of elasticity, so not for suspension. But the colours! And it is so soft!
I find it an absolute pleasure to tie with. Even with tied rather than whipped ends and having to hide the tassels. I may get around to whipping all the ends someday (yeh, right). It’s displaced nylon in every colour I own it in. Hemp’s only staying for load bearing purposes.
I’ve just put in an order for another four standard Hywel sets in the few remaining common colours that I didn’t have. So once I’ve selfishly got that order you can all bombard them with sales
It’s honestly the nicest stuff to tie with I’ve tried in 25+ years of rigging.
If you wonder what a standard Hywel set is, it comes from measuring and cutting ropes in “Hywel arm spans”, which turn out to be 1.3m. We use 2’ers (=2.6 m) for wrists and ankles, 3’ers for frogties, 4’ers for chest & crotchropes, 6’ers for decorative stuff/ropes to ceiling etc.. Their standard length is 8m, which is just exactly wrong for that – it cuts down to 4m (not quite a 3’er) and 2m (definitely too short for a 2’er). But they kindly made me custom 10m lengths, which cut down into a 2’er and a slightly over-length 4’er (which is fine) or 2x3ers.
So 7 x 10 m lengths make 4 x 2 ers, 2 x 3 ers, 4 x 4 ers, 2 x 6’ers, with the longer lengths running a tiny bit long rather than short (which was REALLY ANNOYING cutting down the 8m ropes).
It’s not cheap but I’ve absolutely fallen in love with tying with it.
I may have a go at whipping ends or maybe dipping or taping. It’s not the knots I mind so much as the tassels, which can spoil the look of a really neat rope rig a bit. So I might try taping past the knots and see how that works. Trouble is with 12 ropes in each standard set, 2 ends per rope, and 20 or so colours, we get up to 500 or so rope ends needing treatment! So I’ll have to be sure I’m doing the right thing because it’ll probably take me a full work day to do them all.
Wow, it feels like a huge achievement. My little website that I launched to help pay for fun bondage photoshoots is 21 years old today.
No, it’s not an April Fool’s joke!
I wouldn’t have chosen April 1st as a launch date – in fact the site was supposed to launch on April 4th. But when I checked how the site set-up was doing, from next to the swimming pool in a Los Angeles motel whilst waiting for Stacy Burke to arrive for what would have been something like my tenth photoshoot, I discovered not only had the site and the billing gone live, but the site already had its first member. So 1st April 2001 it was, a few days early.
I’d spin you a long tale about the adventures we’ve had in those years, from hobby to hobby-covering-costs to second job to making more money than being a physicist to making TWICE as much money as being a physicist. Quitting my academic career and going full-time. Getting a photo studio. Getting rid of the photo studio at the very earliest opportunity. Finding a new partner, running the business together. The friends and colleagues made along the way, location trips and bondage and spanking and BDSM and bastinado and all manner of kinky good things. Government crack-downs, billing company woes, PayPal blocking my business account, ATVOD, credit card company rules, the rise of social media… it’s been quite a ride and it shows no signs of stopping yet.
But I don’t have time to go in to all of that, because I’m backing up everything we shot on a two-day shoot with Lauren Louise and I’m getting ready for a marathon cosplay D&D BDSM shoot next week which I’m SUPER EXCITED about because Zoe posted one of her character/costume creations on Twitter last night and it looks bloody awesome.
So I’ll leave you to look through today’s bumper crop of archives which tell a bit of the story of Restrained Elegance. If you’ve missed out on any of our updates from the last few years, I’m running a 50% off sale on our eStore this weekend only. I’ll run a discount on the Classic store for older sets later on this month.
Thank you all for your help and support and enthusiasm. You’ve made all of this possible, and your continued support is what lets us tie up hot girls and film them for you for a living to this day!
Hywel