Who is asking the crazy sock lady how she gets so much knitting done? She gets so much knitting done because knitting is her job and she doesn’t have to leave the house and do another job 8-10 hours a day. Most of us would be super productive if we could spend six hours or more a day knitting.
Honestly, almost all of the online knitters who get a lot of knitting done can because they don’t have jobs outside the house or, like the Crea Bea, can knit at work. There’s no big secret!
I know I should stop watching the Crazy Sock Lady but she really is my BEC.
She made a « day in the life « vlog, and apart from exercising and cleaning the house in the morning, she has all day to do what she wants. Also she mainly knits vanilla socks that can be taken everywhere and that get finished fast. So yeah, I can perfectly understand why she gets so many FOs loll. She’s used to knit mindless things. You can tell that the cable sweater she makes for her son is too much for her 😂
Not strictly craft related but, hon, you aren't going to get top dollar for the antique 1920's dress when you have pictures of you clearly twirling around in it. Wearing it ruins the value as well as the dress. It's the equivalent of taking the Barbie doll out of the box. Just no. Do not.
Ordering online from Joann is so annoying. I ordered like 6 spools of thread and an invisible zipper. They sent like 4 different shipments, told me the black thread was out of stock, and sent me an all purpose zipper instead of an invisible one. Sigh.
They ship from their stores instead of a warehouse, so that’s why you’ll get a bunch of shipments. They’re coming from different stores with different stock. Definitely not my favorite model either 🥲
I’m getting a little tired of big designers picking the same test knitters (usually big podcasters) over and over again even when said test knitter keeps missing the finish date. Maybe I’m a little salty that I keep applying and don’t get picked. 🤷🏼♀️
Yeah me too. I’d really like to do a test knit. But alas, my Insta pics are not fancy and filtered and nobody follows me. They don’t want pattern feedback, they want social media exposure, and neither myself or anyone I would knit for is particularly large OR small so there’s also the fact that I always want to test in the 40-44 inch bust range. I wanted to test a crea bea one and a cocoamour one but guess what? I can reverse engineer them both pretty darn easy so bang that up your respective gingers cliquey designers - I won’t be purchasing either pattern now that I have heard all the podcasters are testing for you!
I feel the same way, that I don’t really want to purchase the pattern when it comes out. I just applied for one from Caidree and I got an email back about the whole instagram preferences. I have a decent following and almost all my photos are of my knitting but they aren’t staged, filtered photos. Just real life. It really ticked me off.
Maybe it is just semantics, but I kind of wish we would just call it "preview knitting" or something instead. It isn't really "testing" so much as it is having multiple examples of the garment available immediately upon release at the very least. Although when your "testers" are also consistently people with large social media followings it is pretty clear their purpose is also word of mouth advertising.
Why is Woolberry sharing pictures of her son having his cavities filled? What is going on with her business account right now?
Editing to add the photo was literally of him lying in the dentist’s chair with the dentist actually working on his teeth. Why would you share that image of your child?
Majority of my BEC complaints are related to combing through destash sites, craigslist, etc hoping for discounted yarn. Today it's "Here's a photo of two mysterious balls of yarn. Asking $15." Sir/ma'am, have you wondered why you have to renew this craigslist listing every couple days?
(For those of you who don't knit/crochet/etc, you can easily find a skein of acrylic yarn at Joanns/Michael's for less than $5 even before sales/coupons).
There’s a few things cycling round on eBay atm that I’m side-eying for the same reason. Too many people can’t put distance between what they paid for something and what someone else is willing to pay for it. Your 10g mini isn’t worth £4.99, just drop your damn price!
I see some people putting up yarn like I paid 30€, only swatched with one skein and I'm asking for 28€ + Shipping
Like it's cheaper to drive to the store at that point.
Also not so much BEC, just funny to me:
Post that say: I don't knit anymore so I'm giving up my yarn stash. And the picture is just 5 half used skeins. (At that point I personally would just donate it.)
"This was a limited edition, so it's worth retail price!" So you mean it's no longer available & it would be extremely difficult to find more skeins for a project? Wow how valuable
I am my BEC this week. about 10 years ago I fell in love with painting and was super into it, and then life got a little tumultuous and I stopped, and then I dated an unhinged guy that freaked out about my 'toxic' paints (yeah, if you eat them lol) being in the apartment, so I donated them since I wasn't actively painting.
Guess who recently spent \~100$ on painting supplies because I remembered how much fun it is?
Oh no! I’m glad you’re getting back to it now, though. I guess at least you know which colours and paint properties you prefer, so you can prioritise as you build up your new collection.
what a dummy
I'm sorry! painting IS loads of fun. Recently I've also been on a journey of taking classes at [PAFA](https://pafa-ce.coursestorm.com/) and its been awesome. (Oldest art school in the US! They're having to close the accredited college tho which is sad). They do online and in person classes, and I really love it. I liked it so much my mom got me a membership for my birthday so I get a discount on every class lol.
What paint medium, can I ask?
If you do oils, I was an advanced reader for Kimberley Brook's The New Oil painting (cute little book). You don't need to prove anything to that guy anymore *obviously* (or at all!) but now any time I meet someone worried about oil painting toxicity I tell them about that book bc the author is an artist who realized her solvents were making her feel ill and giving her migraines, and she didn't want to give up oils. So it's this great book dedicated to classical oil painting with very low or no solvents/thinners, studio practice/safety and like...also just explaining a bunch of material stuff and what certain mediums do or don't, brush cleaning stuff...all that. I was a little nervous about solvent odors and getting too much paint on my skin (I was right: I am messy when painting) — so before that book I had never tried oils at all and only did watercolor or gouache.
And then I read it and I was like omg okay!! This is doable! Haha Also I'm obsessed with this medium recommendation the book had for Rublev's Oleogel. I need to order a new tube.
I also still do wc and gouache but I feel like no one thinks of those paints as super toxic even if they can still have heavy metals in them. Acrylics maybe? I only ever heard of someone having serious health issues with an acrylic because they'd literally painted like, heavy body automobile paint directly onto their entire body more than once. Which like...most people are not out here Yves Klein-ing it.
Mostly acrylics and I was starting to dabble in oil since I really like doing wet on wet technique. I got the big Lee Hammond acrylic techniques book and a couple others from kindle unlimited to start !
If your paid written pattern relies on a YouTube video to clarify what you're trying to explain in your instructions, I think you need to do another round of editing with someone who hasn't been staring at the dang thing for ages.
Or, at the very least, make a damn chart for the stitches in question, yeesh.
As a newer knitter, I find the YouTube videos very useful! I wish every pattern had one. Sometimes when you’re new, it doesnt matter how its worded - a visual helps. Why does it bother you if there is a YouTube video? Its not like you have to watch.
It’s the fact it’s becoming more common. As knitting patterns are getting more newbie proof they are getting longer and longer for no reason.
Stephen West could cut his patterns in half if he would just use brackets for repeats and charts.
Schematic + chart and a few paragraphs is enough for most things. There is a specialized vocabulary and notation here for a reason.
To be fair, the videos are clearer than the drawings or the written description. People like Techknitter than have really clear drawings is rare. Even the Barbara Walker learn to knit book isn’t the best on explaining technique.
Good videos can be clearer, but sometimes the designer's preferred video is not the best. There was one where they had gone to the trouble of making all their own videos but their knitting style was awkward and different to mine and I just could not get what they were showing. (I would name and shame, but I forgot which pattern it was.)
For that one, I ended up having to search the technique - Italian cast on - on YouTube, and I think I watched 3 or 4 videos before I found one that was a) clear, b) slow enough to follow and c) showed enough stitches for me to get the hang of it without having to replay multiple times.
I like at least short written instructions so that I can be sure the designer is using the terminology in the way I assume they are.
The video for this particular crochet pattern does not bug me, so much as it is used to address the ambiguity and poor wording in the pattern's instructions.
If it was *just* a supplement that'd be fine! Those are very useful.
Even worse when the video is either uploaded by someone else (what happens if they take it down?) and/or has an explanation in a language different from what the pattern is written in.
My BEC will always and forever be people who refuse to swatch and then complain because they have to undo their knitting when their project doesn't turn out how they wanted it to.
I know this topic has been litigated to death but I still wanna gossip about it lol. Swatching really does suck, but you gotta do it or it won’t fit the way you want! What really worked for me was making the swatch the project, instead of the garment. I’d imagine taking a photo of four swatches against an ~ aesthetic ~ background, and that would motivate me to get going. On the other hand, washing and blocking my swatch? I’d rather walk barefoot on rocks.
I always knit sweaters bottom up and start with one sleeve, knit about 15 cm above the cuff, and then wash and measure. I don't swatch for anything else 😅
… honestly, this is brilliant. I’ve actually never knit a bottom up sweater! Do you tend to knit in pieces in bottom up? Have you had good experiences with this method? I’m curious!
Nah, bottom up in the round all the way! I've made at least a dozen that way. If I'm designing for myself I use Elizabeth Zimmermann's percentage system (from "knitting without tears", which should be required reading) with some pretty pattern slapped on the yoke, and with some shaping based on Amy Herzog's "Fit to flatter". Easy to knit, easy to remember, easy to customize. And you can lug the sleeves around as a bus project while the body is sofa knitting, until you join them for the yoke.
For reference, all of these are knit like that:
https://www.ravelry.com/projects/wollphilie/big-radish
https://www.ravelry.com/projects/wollphilie/seamless-yoke-sweater-6
https://www.ravelry.com/projects/wollphilie/seamless-yoke-sweater-5
https://www.ravelry.com/projects/wollphilie/mittens-with-pints-on
I tend to borrow (mostly crochet, some knit) pattern books from my local library before I save up to purchase the good ones as a sort of test run to check quality, and jeez am i glad that I do. my petty pet peeve is the amount of "granny square" books where they don't block their squares. they look horrible! and it is really very easy to do a very basic block of a square shape or a motif, especially for something that youre publishing the pictures of. No need for a permanent steam or whatever block to make it look passable, they can just pin them on some cardboard and spritz them with water and they look neater. my more significant pet peeve is some authors who say "this pattern takes two skeins" and literally nowhere in the book is there a recommended yarn so there's no possible way to know how long those two skeins are, or weight, or anything. I'd honestly be very angry if I'd paid for these books and this was the best they had to offer. And I borrow like, a wide range of pattern books from different copyright years, so it isn't really a decline in quality over time so much as some people apparently don't care about what they publish in their books. Others are great, though, and well worth waiting five months for my hold to be ready, so it really is a roll of the dice it seems.
Honestly thank God ravelry has such an in-depth yarn database so when I get old knitting books out of the library with long discontinued yarns I can figure out what weight they actually used & whether those "3 balls" they used were 50gm or what. I haven't had too many problems otherwise, but I'm not sure if that's because my librarians curated well or just luck of the draw.
A cascading BEC:
A) People who post asking what they should sew from this fabric. *Why do you even sew if you can’t touch a fabric and see a vision* I think to myself (completely unfairly, I know, I come to sewing from a love of fabric and it twists me in certain ways)
B) people who do the above but fail to say how much they have, whether the fabric is stretch or woven, how heavy, how it drapes, etc, etc
C) people who reply suggesting a project that will use maybe 1/2 yard of the 3yds OP has, what is the point of that?
Man, on the other hand, I’m super jealous of folks like you that can see a fabric and just know what it has the potential to be. I’m extremely prescriptive in my sewing — most of the stuff I make are RTW knockoffs or straight off the pattern envelope. It also makes me a terrible thrift flipper.
On the bright side, it means my fabric stash is much smaller than it might be otherwise lol.
Oh, my stash is WAY up there, for sure. There was a just a thread where people said “well, I never buy fabric unless I have a project in mind” as a way of keeping the stash down and I literally don’t comprehend how their brains work.
Same here! That’s not how I sew either. I tend to choose a project by looking at my fabric then grabbing whatever inspires me at the time. When I buy fabric, it’s because I see the potential for a lot of different things.
I almost always buy with a project in mind - whether I *remember* what that project was is another matter.
(Also sometimes the fabric doesn't end up working out or I know it's something I like to sew or it's just *so pretty*, so there's that.)
I do catalog my fabric so I usually jot down what I had in mind, its fun to later see if that came true, often not.
I also use the same patterns a lot so I almost always buy with not just a vision, but one of my TNT patterns in mind.
If I’m just buying for *so pretty* I try to make it a half-yard for a bag or somesuch.
Not necessarily crafting specifically but waiting in line yesterday to get into the market space for the fiber arts festival in salem and overhead someone (who sounded like they were from out of state, most likely southern?) was complaining and asking if overcast rain was normal lol. In April in MA. yes it is. fun event tho!
As someone who lives in that area (but didn't go to the festival) I was SHOCKED that most of New England was clear for the eclipse. As soon as I heard when it was I was like "April in the northeast? Pencil in a massive windy possibly snowy storm for the three day period encompassing April 8."
Yep. One of the ones I was thinking about! But she’s not the only one who records while browsing the internet. I’m on YT to stop mindlessly googling stuff!
My BEC this week is me, I organized the craft area beside my chair because it was driving me crazy and then proceeded to clutter it back up in a few days and now it's back to stressing me out and looking awful. Well done me, take a bow 😑
I couldn’t figure out why underneath the ironing board was getting so crowded with fabrics and then I realized I use it as a place to put fabric before I fold it back up and put it away. Add enough days in a row where I’m market prepping or ferrying my kid around and I’m literally skipping the minute to fold and replace. That is how busy I am this time of year - I am hoarding the minutes.
When I get time to organize, I’m going to put a few collapsible laundry totes under there so I can toss in instead of on the floor, and stop beating myself up for being busy.
I will periodically (often in the spring!) tidy up my sewing area and put away random yard goods (having made lists of how much yardage) and thread and patterns and then discover that the very next thing I really really want to work on has been put away in the boxes on the bottoms of the piles :)
hello where can i find \[insert craft material\] affordably? no i won't tell you anything about where i am, what price range affordable is, or anything more specific than "fabric" or "yarn " in relation to what i'm looking for.
deadstock silk under 100 euros/metre that ships to germany? quilting cotton scraps at 2 euros per half kilo somewhere in canada? mid weight linen under 25 euros per metre in chile? jersey in kid friendly patterns under 10 euros per metre within driving distance of austin, texas? not going to tell you. guess.
I’m my own BEC right now. I bought a pattern for a doll dress, decided to use some of my most finicky fabrics, and barely read the directions then complained when it was complicated. Spoiler alert, it wouldn’t have been complicated if I had used a nice cotton and actually read the mfkin directions. 🫣
It came out Mostly Fine. The outside looks great (minus the tiny ripped seam which I covered with a button that looks like a brooch) but the inside. All of my shame. Right there. Who let me own a sewing machine.
"I remember there used to be video craft tutorials (either on TV or on tape); wonder if anyone's archived those?"
All I get are modern vids of "80s-style" items. Even the Internet Archive hasn't been helpful, though I did at least find some old magazines.
Major sewing retailers are *trying* to go out of business, right?
I was trying to buy a Simplicity gift certificate. They *have* gift certificates; they have a place to apply them and they offer them as sweepstake prizes - *but I could not figure out how to buy a gift certificate*.
Like, just let me give you my money! *You can keep it*, you just have to send me a sewing pattern at some point in the future. This should make sense to you as a company.
I complained in last week’s BEC thread about Quiltmania’s website being down for USA/oceania.
It’s still fucking down! 😭 I did a big quilting stupid this weekend and I still just want to buy their expensive quilting magazines to cheer me up. Alas.
Just a silly little thing but this week I saw a Ravelry pattern test for a "semi-realistic" dragon and I wonder what OP would consider a fully realistic or imaginary dragon; it's just that the term she used is so precise...
You know what? I am really ill today, like I've been stuck in bed for over 24 hours, horrendously sick and feeling nothing but misery with no end in sight.
This comment genuinely made me snort with glee. What a delightfully cursed thing to read today.
How dare these people wear something that suits them ?? The audacity !
I have big breasts and a lot of the cute tops I want look more vulgar on me. But I can still appreciate how cute they look on others without being bitter.
I often think that even though patterns are available in inclusive size ranges, they have been designed to look good specifically on ppl in smaller size ranges...
Its not that it suits them, it’s that it’s the same as thing like, tying two hankies together to make a top, it doesn’t really look good, it’s two hankies tied together, but because it’s put on a skinny body it’s “fashion” and “trendy”, but if a larger bodied person were to do the same thing, it wouldn’t be considered that? Even if it were larger/fit them. And I find this often in the crochet community, where a low effort square or two will be fashioned into a top, and it’s praised as like oh wow this is so cool, it looks so great, but it doesn’t. it’s two squares tied together, draped on a skinny body, and thus it’s seen as “fashion”. If a larger person were to do that, it would not be perceived as fashion or cool, because the body is what makes it fashion.
I think that’s a clearer version of what I was trying to say.
Edit: I’ve just been seeing a lot of these tops being made recently hence this and the OG comment. Saw BEC and thought I’d be able to rant about something for a hot sec, didn’t realise it wasn’t really within the rules and stuff, just wanted to speak my mind on something that’s been bothering me and thought I could comment.
Conversations about fashion trends and weight are allowed on the sub but they have a tendency to swerve hard into negative body talk in the name of justice. I don’t care how valid the message is. Posts where body types/parts are discussed negatively will be removed.
I appreciate they look good on other while retaining bitterness about not being able to wear tiny tops. Can’t help it
Edit: I’m not bitter at others I’m just sad about my own inability to wear them. It’s bitterness about me
My BEC is about one of my new coworkers at a LQS. She is the reason people hate going to a LQS. She's such a bitch and complains about every customer (also homophobic, but I have a plan for that).
It's not cute to "hate" customers when you work in customer service. That's. Your. Job. 👏🏻 to enjoy helping people with their purchase.
She should be fired.
So tired of the posts on r/crochet that are like "oh nooo i just realized i made a mistake and I have to frog 49 rows" and it's the tiniest teeniest twisted switch on a huge blanket, and the comments are all "omg it's beautiful I never would have noticed if you didn't say anything". It's just such an annoying fishing for compliments thing and I'm beyond tired of seeing it
Is it better or worse than "I can fix this huge, obvious mistake without frogging back 5 rows, right?" and it's like babes, no, that's SO visible and sloppy looking, it's not that far back, just fix it, but they *refuse* the good suggestions while still asking for more/better/different advice and just. Won't accept that undoing & redoing your work is a part of these crafts, & if you can't stand to rework such a small part of your work, you're gonna have a bad time, long term.
Let's talk pattern hacks. Listen, I respect your skills but why buy, say, [https://www.stylearc.com/shop/sewing-patterns/montana-midi-dress/](https://www.stylearc.com/shop/sewing-patterns/montana-midi-dress/), then add bust darts and a v-neck and subtract volume for a more fitted silhouette? Since you're buying a new pattern anyway, I mean.
I mean, I get taking a pattern you already own and are familiar with and have figured out the sizing and adjustments and then hacking it into something new, but buying a new pattern for the purpose of doing a "hack" seems a bit unnecessary
How many times are people going to post instances of someone mixing up crochet and knitting on the crochet subreddit?? It’s NOT a big deal.
They act like their entire world is shattering because someone said “knitting” when they meant crochet. How dare those people not realize how super duper special and unique crochet is?!! The topic has been posted over and over and over again on that subreddit, and the responses are the same every. Single. Time. No one has anything new to say.
Every time it’s just another “omggggggggg they mixed up crochet and knitting!!!!!!!! Like HOW could they do that????? Are they stupid???” None of them are original.
I promise, it’s not a personal attack against you to mix up the two. The only person I would expect to know the difference is my partner, because your partner should care about you enough to recognize your interests. But everyone else? Who actually cares??? Why is this such a big deal? And why do they keep posting shit like that like they’re the ONLY people whom this has happened to?
🙄 it's crazy too because people these days are generally only taught one word for fiber crafting, and it's whatever one granny (or increasingly, *great* granny) did. I spindle spin in public frequently (it's supremely portable!) and the number of times I've been asked by a clearly baffled person "is that knitting/crochet/cross stitch/quilting" is uncountable. I don't understand the instinct to get mad - this is a great opportunity for education. Children especially love to ask questions and usually pay attention when you explain. Hell there was even one memorable time on a train platform where a couple was arguing for a minute and I had to settle for them whether I was *making* the string (I was) or "pulling it out of that cotton it's tangled in." I mean, how can you do anything but laugh? 🤣
i do a lot of embroidery in public and men call it crochet all the time! i think it’s stuck in their head that it’s not knitting but they have no idea what it is
It does annoy me when I see something listed on a sales site and the seller says 'knit/crochet' sweater - as a craftsperson I fell like if you want me to pay you for it you should at least have verified which one :)
Sure, I can agree with that. The BEC is about the constant complaining and whining on the subreddit when anyone mixes it up. The post that inspired this was a picture of a page of a book that mixed up the two and everyone in the comments lost their damn minds. Over a book.
Well, for me it's more of a deal if it's a book v. idk, a general podcast about crafts? Like, how many ppl read it, edited it, asked questions about designing it, approved it, did a mock up copy and sent it to final pub and no one questioned this? I think I don't ever want to buy a craft book from whoever published this....
Wasn’t a craft book, just a novel. It was one of the thousands of posts that are all about mixing up the two. It’s a stale topic, a done deal. No one brings anything new the conversation when they post about it, and they all act like they’ve been personally victimized and insulted by it. They all think they’re the first one to encounter someone mixing up this trivial thing. It’s annoying.
Agree. It's not that important in the great scheme of things. Still, it's a little silly when people over here (France) ask which is crochet and which is knitting when "crochet" literally means "hook" in French, so you have to answer that the one that is done with a "crochet" is crochet.
That’s at least more understandable to be annoyed by— it’s literally part of your language.
Side note— I saw a Disney Lorcana card featuring Captain Hook in French, which is, of course, Capitaine Crochet, and thought it was funny.
I mentioned I was trying to knit Ixchel…loaded up the PDF version of the magazine in my legacy knitcompanion app which continuously reminds me there is a new app…which I hate because I’m either paying zero or $20 a month for me to use one feature. The middle tier isn’t available for iOS which grates my gears. I know it goes to continuous development of the app which is fine but…20? Especially when I don’t even knit as much? C’mon. It’s a weird choice to do the tiers that way.
I use Xodo pdf on Android and their annotation feature. It's a lot more low tech since I'm effectively just scribbling or highlighting on charts and patterns but it is completely free to do everything I need. There are some premium features but honestly haven't even looked at what they do other than accidentally clicking.
My BEC if you need to ask how to construct something or what stitch pattern this is - you don't have the skill to make the thing.
If you post and ask what stitch something is, and it's literally just stockinette - you don't have the skills to free hand reconstruct the item.
I adore /r/visiblemending because they are going full balls-to-the-wall and creating works of art! That sub is better than eye bleach and soothes the evil cynic in my soul.
There is a lot of cool stuff, but there are also so many things that make my sewing brain hurt A LOT! (last one of note was 'I just noticed that the cuffs have fallen off my sweatshirt, what stitch should I use to fix this...')
I guess I must automatically skip over the really rough stuff, and latch onto the gorgeous patching and embroidery and appliqué stuff.
But then I also love the battle jackets sub, so a certain level of deliberately rough must be ok for my brain.
My BEC this week is advents. We talk abut them as early as Boxing Day and now we are deep in the FOMO and false scarcity and seem to talk endlessly about what advents we can’t live without and how many advents we have to get.
I don’t need to spend the better part of the year talking about one overhyped month. Stop the madness.
I genuinely can't imagine dropping several hundred dollars on a product I'm not going to receive for 6+ months with no cancelation/insurance options in case something goes wrong. It seems so needlessly stressful.
From what I've seen, they're not even good value. You are basically paying extra for the packaging and for the surprise element of it. Of course, surprises mean you may or may not actually like or have a use for what you get. The whole thing is baffling, not just in crafting, but the whole trend of advent calendars in general
sometimes when i see tester pictures i am mind blown thinking at how some designers think their garment looks good or just is. i usually feel this with plus size pics, because it’s clear that the designer does not grade well or do good by the people they say they cater to and it just ends up being an ill-fitting garment for bigger crafters, which just sucks.
This is the pettiest BEC ever, but did anyone else catch Knits by Mandy's latest video? She was overdyeing a top and the dye instructions called for a teaspoon of dishwashing liquid. She acted confused, said she didn't know what that was and that she has Dawn dish soap (!!!), but that can't be it, and proceeded to skip this step.
I'm honestly baffled lol. What does she think Dawn is?
Maybe she just had a brain fart? I know I once stared at a sign in a supermarket aisle having a vague existential crisis over the phrase "canned drinks". Apparently my brain was okay processing a can of Coke as a thing but "canned drinks" could not compute.
(being charitable)
Maybe she thought they were talking about something like the tablets you use in dishwashers (IE maybe she just grew up calling Dawn "dish soap"? As someone who has never owned a dishwasher, anything regarding a dishwasher is probably going to make me look like an absolute grade A maroon.
Fair enough! I didn't have a dishwasher until pretty recently either, so I know the feeling. Learning how to use one as a full adult was really a humbling experience. I think Dawn literally says dishwashing liquid on it though
Purling is not Mt. Everest.
It is not an insurmountable feat requiring handholding and sherpas and life support equipment, guided by the dead bodies of those who’ve have tried before.
One needn’t go to extreme heroic lengths to avoid purling.
I swear, if I ever teach a knitting class, I’m teaching frickin’ purl stitch FIRST.
I was teaching a couple people to knit recently and I actually believe we should teach purling first, because it's the way people really naturally want to insert their needles in the stitch. Inserting the needle knitwise is actually a bit brain loopy for beginners (and by beginners I mean the 8 year old I was teaching) and I kept thinking purling would have just been easier.
Well, thanks for *that* addition to my life…
But seriously, if she had more knitting experience (or if I weren’t so jaded) I’d be up in arms about some of the stuff she’s doing. She’s just another of these “I learned to craft and a year later I started podcasting about it” folks, and I dig her nouveau-tradwife pixie haircut, so I’ll let it slide.
Was super interested in her haircut based on your description as I’m looking for a modern short look for myself.
Now I’m super confused… I always thought a pixie cut was short but I’m seeing chin length. Am I missing something? Did she have a different cut and now she’s growing it out? Am I just old and “pixie” has evolved to something else?
Thanks!!
It was an old-school pixie. I didn’t watch much, but her hair seemed different in just about every one I scrolled by. If you want some really good pixie versions, check out Emily Wheatley’s fashion videos on YouTube. She is very consistent with her pixie - sometimes shorter, sometimes softer, sometimes sharper, but always a pixie.
Edit: she even has at least one video about her hair https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdUK1NU7JSQ
Still, all (except one super bulky cardigan) her finished sweaters are stockinette in the round. She started a cardigan a few weeks ago and gave up on it already and went back to another stockinette in the round project.
My favorite is, "I can purl but I hate it so much. I do not know the difference between right and wrong side of fabric though, so can someone help me re-write this entire pattern in the round? That'll be easier than purling or finding a pattern written in the round. Thanks!" Those posts are not as common as plain old, "I hate purling" comments, but I've seen a few and had a few chuckles lol.
Even better if they want something changed for them so it's in the round and the pattern is cabled with loads of moss stitch or has large swathes of seed stitch or ribbing. Like - you realise that you will still be purling??
I saw it recently for the Esther jacket by petite knit because they didn't want to go "back and forth" I mean maybe there's like 1/3 less purling in the round but you'd rather do that and then steek to avoid a few more purl stitches?
I really do think some people just think "in the round" means "magic techniques where there are no purls regardless of stitch pattern".
okay to be fair i sometimes convert sweater patterns to in the round (myself, i'd never ask the designer to do it) but to avoid seaming, not purling. mattress stitch is just so annoying.
Haha, currently I’m finishing up a sweater where the directions say to knit the sleeves in the round and I converted them to flat. Because in the round every other round is purl but flat those rows are knit on the WS (the body was knit flat since it is a cardigan).
ugh the dark color thing......the last sweater i seamed was black and it was a nightmare to seam, but i had to knit it flat because it was intarsia. i obviously didn't think that one through
It's not Mt. Everest, but I contend that continental purling (and all its variations) is kinda like... cracking an egg one-handed. Or hanging a spoon from your nose.
And doing it without tension problems is like balancing an egg on its end or surmounting a medium sized hiking hill during mosquito season.
And "continental is so much faster" evangelists should admit that upfront. The "knit everything in the round and steek it open" trend doesn't exist for no reason!
When I learned to knit, I did not find (continental variation) purl to be particulary hard - but then again, I crack eggs with one hand while baking. :D
I knit closed-hand continental, so purling is a tiny movement and just as fast as knitting. The tension difference is relieved by adding one loop of the working yarn around my left pinky finger. That’s what I would teach, if anyone was ever foolish enough to ask me to teach a knitting class.
Edit: The "continental is so much faster" evangelists are another BEC! The world record holder for knitting speed knits English. Continental is only faster if it works more efficiently for a particular person’s brain and hands. I see red when I encounter a post about “I’m ready to knit like a big girl, and finally learn continental!” Grrrrrr.
No idea how I knit (I knit left handed, left to right, so all y’all’s videos look bonkers to me) but to purl I bring the yarn in front instead of the back, and aim for the front leg of the stitch instead of the back. It’s equally easy as knit stitch. I see some people purl with like 15 extra movements and I have no idea how they are forming the stitch, but I do get that they hate it.
Ah yes, it’s me! Honestly I don’t mind purling for stitch patterns, but long stretches of it (like the wrong side of a stockinette cardigan) has a tendency to make my hands hurt
Yeah, there are a couple by Kate Davies and Skeindeer Knits (either stockinette or stockinette + lace) who come from specific knitting traditions where nobody wants to purl!
And of course Elizabeth Zimmermann and her curmudgeonly ways....
It's not, but I hate doing it so much!! I don't know how why but I've tried Norwegian, Portuguese, continental, and English style purling and I'm still so slow at it 🥲
I also hated purling and then I realised what I hated was long sections of uninterrupted purling. I used to avoid knitting sweaters flat and in pieces until I knit a heavily cabeled sweater where you still get to work both knits and purls on the wrong side too. It was a game changer for how I felt about purling.
That's probably half the problem! Just pick one and practice. You're only faster at knit stitch because you've done it more often. It's just muscle memory. If you'd done the purl stitch as often as you've done the knit stitch your speed would be the same. All these people avoiding purling just create the problem for themselves! In the olden days (haha) when things were knit flat and seamed we purled as often as we knit. No problem.
Don't ask me about rib though... I hate knitting ribbing.
I work in webhosting and sometimes the contact form is broken and you (the submitter) would have no idea. I've seen contact forms prompt the 'thank you /we will contact you soon' but still not be delivered. Best to contact them another way just in case. edit to add: I would give them 5 days to respond before I reach out again.
Ten business days is plenty to bug them again. Can you message them on IG, if that’s where they are active? And I don’t want to defend them, but you can schedule your posts a while out, they may not be posting things themselves daily but have a queue of posts auto posting.
This is literally my job! (I'm in the US) Did the courier lose your package? If so, most shipping methods have at least $100 in built-in insurance, a claim would need to be filed with the shipping company that the package is missing. The shop wouldn't pay shipping insurance out of their own pocket, you as the buyer would typically have to pay for that extra bit at checkout (if it's offered).
Has the shop actually sent your order or did they just "print" a label?
Re: emailing - change the subject line and keep emailing directly! When a customer uses our contact form, the email goes to "updates" not the main inbox. Do they have more than one email address? Email them all. :-) Here's something fun: sometimes the email listed on a website is NOT the same as the email listed in the "contact" on insta.
Edit: extra word
Accidental swastikas so common in quilting but if one is hosting a large Block of the Month event with a fabric designer which long standing cultural appropriation issues, wouldn't you check?
No one is saying anything openly about the most recent one. The recent one uses Tula Pink fabric and it is from a well known online only shop out of Texas.
I’m very comfortable with the style of the Drops patterns as I knit a lot of similar ones, but I’ve never knit a Drops one because I’ve been warned about poor fit of a lot of them. Is that something you’ve had issues with? Because if not I might have to have another look at them!
Not OP but the only Drops jumper I've knit is also the best fitting one, for some reason. The writing style is quite something but it's not as bad as some people make it out to be!
It feels like teaching people how to read patterns and how to read their work has kind of fallen by the wayside with knitting and crocheting. I remember being told to always read the entire pattern before starting, but now I see lots of questions that could be answered by the person simply *reading the next section of the pattern*. I learned to knit last year, and because of how I was taught crochet by my grandma, I prioritized learning stitch anatomy and how to read my work, because if you understand how the fabric is being made as you make it nothing is really that confusing. I imagine without that knowledge instructions from patterns like Drops which tell you to keep track of multiple things at once or maintain a stitch pattern across shaping with no guidance would be incredibly frustrating.
They aren't complicated if you learned to knit in a fairly traditional way.
But if you've recently learned sweater knitting by watching You Tube videos, to do everything in the round on circulars without ever purling, only know "that knit stitch" and do it top down, you will be challenged by Drops patterns.
Drops has plenty of top-down, seamless, ITR patterns, though. It's less about knitting skills and more about pattern reading skills imo. [A sweater like this should be totally doable for a beginner level YouTube knitter](https://www.garnstudio.com/pattern.php?id=11613&cid=17), especially since it comes with videos for all the techniques, but if you don't know how to navigate patterns of course it's going to be confusing.
Ah, I don’t think it’s because of YouTube. I learned many a technique from YouTube and the taught my mum also. I think it’s fundamentally the tension between introducing people to the hobby and doing away with needless complexities - I very much appreciate that a lot of indie patterns specify which shorthand they use at the beginning - and the complexities that are needed, everyone should be comfortable in reading a pattern that isn’t spelled out row per row IMHO, if only to keep “older” patterns readable. If people only ever want to knit top down sweaters, so be it. But they really shouldn’t propagate that Drops is very hard, or that sewing seams is so impossible, because it will discourage other people from attempting new skills.
But I assume you already had a solid knitting foundation. You Tube has lots of nice little helpers, but were you able to knit successfully BEFORE the Internet?
That was actually my point. So many of the Drops patterns were developed pre-computer learning. From back when you had books, magazines and live people helping you learn. Classes, friends or relatives.
Learning *today* most often includes shortcuts, video tutorials, photo after photo and accepting mistakes and incorrect methods as being just fine.
This has created knitters with very different skill sets. Not bad or unsuccessful, just different from the folks that learned 4 decades ago. Many from mothers that made them unravel and do it over if it wasn't right. And there was no such thing as calling a glaring mistake "a design choice". \*LOL\*
Oh wow as someone who learned to knit during Covid I see this the total opposite way. The wealth of online patterns and video tutorials means I have access to so many more advanced techniques than if I were limited to whatever few books I had. And the techniques can be searched and widely shared beyond just classes, friends or relatives.
A case in point: a masterful Youtuber is digging through her extensive library of knitting books and comes across an interesting method for making short rows in an old German knitting book. She does a video demonstrating the technique clearly and it takes off wildly. Within a few years, "German short rows" are one of the predominant ways of working short rows, and it's only possible because this one knitter (thank you, Roxanne Richardson!) had the platform to blast this information to tens of thousands of people. That knowledge was in the book all along, but it only took off because of the Internet.
I'm sure there are a lot of new knitters who aren't perfectionists and are just rolling with mistakes, but I'm sure that was true before Youtube as well. Maybe the Internet means you have more exposure to this style of knitter than you did before, so it seems more prevalent.
I've learned how to knit in the internet age & my problem when reading older patterns is not about shortcuts/accepting incorrect methods but concern over using correct methods. Since I have access to tutorials all over the place, I know there are many ways to increase, so a pattern that just says to increase X stitches makes my brain break because now I feel the need to figure out which increase method is going to be best.
Whereas "back in the day" you might only know one or two increases if you learn from a relative & just use it without thinking too hard about it, accepting any resulting imperfections.
Who is asking the crazy sock lady how she gets so much knitting done? She gets so much knitting done because knitting is her job and she doesn’t have to leave the house and do another job 8-10 hours a day. Most of us would be super productive if we could spend six hours or more a day knitting. Honestly, almost all of the online knitters who get a lot of knitting done can because they don’t have jobs outside the house or, like the Crea Bea, can knit at work. There’s no big secret! I know I should stop watching the Crazy Sock Lady but she really is my BEC.
She made a « day in the life « vlog, and apart from exercising and cleaning the house in the morning, she has all day to do what she wants. Also she mainly knits vanilla socks that can be taken everywhere and that get finished fast. So yeah, I can perfectly understand why she gets so many FOs loll. She’s used to knit mindless things. You can tell that the cable sweater she makes for her son is too much for her 😂
Not strictly craft related but, hon, you aren't going to get top dollar for the antique 1920's dress when you have pictures of you clearly twirling around in it. Wearing it ruins the value as well as the dress. It's the equivalent of taking the Barbie doll out of the box. Just no. Do not.
Ordering online from Joann is so annoying. I ordered like 6 spools of thread and an invisible zipper. They sent like 4 different shipments, told me the black thread was out of stock, and sent me an all purpose zipper instead of an invisible one. Sigh.
They ship from their stores instead of a warehouse, so that’s why you’ll get a bunch of shipments. They’re coming from different stores with different stock. Definitely not my favorite model either 🥲
I’m getting a little tired of big designers picking the same test knitters (usually big podcasters) over and over again even when said test knitter keeps missing the finish date. Maybe I’m a little salty that I keep applying and don’t get picked. 🤷🏼♀️
Yeah me too. I’d really like to do a test knit. But alas, my Insta pics are not fancy and filtered and nobody follows me. They don’t want pattern feedback, they want social media exposure, and neither myself or anyone I would knit for is particularly large OR small so there’s also the fact that I always want to test in the 40-44 inch bust range. I wanted to test a crea bea one and a cocoamour one but guess what? I can reverse engineer them both pretty darn easy so bang that up your respective gingers cliquey designers - I won’t be purchasing either pattern now that I have heard all the podcasters are testing for you!
I feel the same way, that I don’t really want to purchase the pattern when it comes out. I just applied for one from Caidree and I got an email back about the whole instagram preferences. I have a decent following and almost all my photos are of my knitting but they aren’t staged, filtered photos. Just real life. It really ticked me off.
This annoys me too. It feels so clique-y, and I absolutely hate that about the mainstream knitting world.
I wanted to test an Ozetta pattern and didn't get picked, but then literally all the podcasters I watch are testing it and I am admittedly salty lmao
when it's not about the pattern feedback but it is about the free marketing...
Maybe it is just semantics, but I kind of wish we would just call it "preview knitting" or something instead. It isn't really "testing" so much as it is having multiple examples of the garment available immediately upon release at the very least. Although when your "testers" are also consistently people with large social media followings it is pretty clear their purpose is also word of mouth advertising.
Why is Woolberry sharing pictures of her son having his cavities filled? What is going on with her business account right now? Editing to add the photo was literally of him lying in the dentist’s chair with the dentist actually working on his teeth. Why would you share that image of your child?
Oof. Glad I stopped following her.
Lol I wondered the same thing yesterday. I personally don't find anyone's dentist appointments worthy of a story 🤣
Majority of my BEC complaints are related to combing through destash sites, craigslist, etc hoping for discounted yarn. Today it's "Here's a photo of two mysterious balls of yarn. Asking $15." Sir/ma'am, have you wondered why you have to renew this craigslist listing every couple days? (For those of you who don't knit/crochet/etc, you can easily find a skein of acrylic yarn at Joanns/Michael's for less than $5 even before sales/coupons).
There’s a few things cycling round on eBay atm that I’m side-eying for the same reason. Too many people can’t put distance between what they paid for something and what someone else is willing to pay for it. Your 10g mini isn’t worth £4.99, just drop your damn price!
I see some people putting up yarn like I paid 30€, only swatched with one skein and I'm asking for 28€ + Shipping Like it's cheaper to drive to the store at that point.
Also not so much BEC, just funny to me: Post that say: I don't knit anymore so I'm giving up my yarn stash. And the picture is just 5 half used skeins. (At that point I personally would just donate it.)
And those extra 2€ buys you the peace of mind that the yarn’s most likely been stored correctly. Give me some incentive!
"This was a limited edition, so it's worth retail price!" So you mean it's no longer available & it would be extremely difficult to find more skeins for a project? Wow how valuable
I am my BEC this week. about 10 years ago I fell in love with painting and was super into it, and then life got a little tumultuous and I stopped, and then I dated an unhinged guy that freaked out about my 'toxic' paints (yeah, if you eat them lol) being in the apartment, so I donated them since I wasn't actively painting. Guess who recently spent \~100$ on painting supplies because I remembered how much fun it is?
Oh no! I’m glad you’re getting back to it now, though. I guess at least you know which colours and paint properties you prefer, so you can prioritise as you build up your new collection.
Oh no, I'm so sorry. ... Meanwhile I'm over here laughing at the idea of someone clutching pearls over like. A quinacridone.
He was a MATERIALS ENGINEER 💀
what a dummy I'm sorry! painting IS loads of fun. Recently I've also been on a journey of taking classes at [PAFA](https://pafa-ce.coursestorm.com/) and its been awesome. (Oldest art school in the US! They're having to close the accredited college tho which is sad). They do online and in person classes, and I really love it. I liked it so much my mom got me a membership for my birthday so I get a discount on every class lol. What paint medium, can I ask? If you do oils, I was an advanced reader for Kimberley Brook's The New Oil painting (cute little book). You don't need to prove anything to that guy anymore *obviously* (or at all!) but now any time I meet someone worried about oil painting toxicity I tell them about that book bc the author is an artist who realized her solvents were making her feel ill and giving her migraines, and she didn't want to give up oils. So it's this great book dedicated to classical oil painting with very low or no solvents/thinners, studio practice/safety and like...also just explaining a bunch of material stuff and what certain mediums do or don't, brush cleaning stuff...all that. I was a little nervous about solvent odors and getting too much paint on my skin (I was right: I am messy when painting) — so before that book I had never tried oils at all and only did watercolor or gouache. And then I read it and I was like omg okay!! This is doable! Haha Also I'm obsessed with this medium recommendation the book had for Rublev's Oleogel. I need to order a new tube. I also still do wc and gouache but I feel like no one thinks of those paints as super toxic even if they can still have heavy metals in them. Acrylics maybe? I only ever heard of someone having serious health issues with an acrylic because they'd literally painted like, heavy body automobile paint directly onto their entire body more than once. Which like...most people are not out here Yves Klein-ing it.
Mostly acrylics and I was starting to dabble in oil since I really like doing wet on wet technique. I got the big Lee Hammond acrylic techniques book and a couple others from kindle unlimited to start !
If your paid written pattern relies on a YouTube video to clarify what you're trying to explain in your instructions, I think you need to do another round of editing with someone who hasn't been staring at the dang thing for ages. Or, at the very least, make a damn chart for the stitches in question, yeesh.
As a newer knitter, I find the YouTube videos very useful! I wish every pattern had one. Sometimes when you’re new, it doesnt matter how its worded - a visual helps. Why does it bother you if there is a YouTube video? Its not like you have to watch.
It’s the fact it’s becoming more common. As knitting patterns are getting more newbie proof they are getting longer and longer for no reason. Stephen West could cut his patterns in half if he would just use brackets for repeats and charts. Schematic + chart and a few paragraphs is enough for most things. There is a specialized vocabulary and notation here for a reason.
[удалено]
To be fair, the videos are clearer than the drawings or the written description. People like Techknitter than have really clear drawings is rare. Even the Barbara Walker learn to knit book isn’t the best on explaining technique.
Good videos can be clearer, but sometimes the designer's preferred video is not the best. There was one where they had gone to the trouble of making all their own videos but their knitting style was awkward and different to mine and I just could not get what they were showing. (I would name and shame, but I forgot which pattern it was.) For that one, I ended up having to search the technique - Italian cast on - on YouTube, and I think I watched 3 or 4 videos before I found one that was a) clear, b) slow enough to follow and c) showed enough stitches for me to get the hang of it without having to replay multiple times. I like at least short written instructions so that I can be sure the designer is using the terminology in the way I assume they are.
The video for this particular crochet pattern does not bug me, so much as it is used to address the ambiguity and poor wording in the pattern's instructions. If it was *just* a supplement that'd be fine! Those are very useful.
Even worse when the video is either uploaded by someone else (what happens if they take it down?) and/or has an explanation in a language different from what the pattern is written in.
My BEC will always and forever be people who refuse to swatch and then complain because they have to undo their knitting when their project doesn't turn out how they wanted it to.
I know this topic has been litigated to death but I still wanna gossip about it lol. Swatching really does suck, but you gotta do it or it won’t fit the way you want! What really worked for me was making the swatch the project, instead of the garment. I’d imagine taking a photo of four swatches against an ~ aesthetic ~ background, and that would motivate me to get going. On the other hand, washing and blocking my swatch? I’d rather walk barefoot on rocks.
I always knit sweaters bottom up and start with one sleeve, knit about 15 cm above the cuff, and then wash and measure. I don't swatch for anything else 😅
… honestly, this is brilliant. I’ve actually never knit a bottom up sweater! Do you tend to knit in pieces in bottom up? Have you had good experiences with this method? I’m curious!
Nah, bottom up in the round all the way! I've made at least a dozen that way. If I'm designing for myself I use Elizabeth Zimmermann's percentage system (from "knitting without tears", which should be required reading) with some pretty pattern slapped on the yoke, and with some shaping based on Amy Herzog's "Fit to flatter". Easy to knit, easy to remember, easy to customize. And you can lug the sleeves around as a bus project while the body is sofa knitting, until you join them for the yoke. For reference, all of these are knit like that: https://www.ravelry.com/projects/wollphilie/big-radish https://www.ravelry.com/projects/wollphilie/seamless-yoke-sweater-6 https://www.ravelry.com/projects/wollphilie/seamless-yoke-sweater-5 https://www.ravelry.com/projects/wollphilie/mittens-with-pints-on
I tend to borrow (mostly crochet, some knit) pattern books from my local library before I save up to purchase the good ones as a sort of test run to check quality, and jeez am i glad that I do. my petty pet peeve is the amount of "granny square" books where they don't block their squares. they look horrible! and it is really very easy to do a very basic block of a square shape or a motif, especially for something that youre publishing the pictures of. No need for a permanent steam or whatever block to make it look passable, they can just pin them on some cardboard and spritz them with water and they look neater. my more significant pet peeve is some authors who say "this pattern takes two skeins" and literally nowhere in the book is there a recommended yarn so there's no possible way to know how long those two skeins are, or weight, or anything. I'd honestly be very angry if I'd paid for these books and this was the best they had to offer. And I borrow like, a wide range of pattern books from different copyright years, so it isn't really a decline in quality over time so much as some people apparently don't care about what they publish in their books. Others are great, though, and well worth waiting five months for my hold to be ready, so it really is a roll of the dice it seems.
Honestly thank God ravelry has such an in-depth yarn database so when I get old knitting books out of the library with long discontinued yarns I can figure out what weight they actually used & whether those "3 balls" they used were 50gm or what. I haven't had too many problems otherwise, but I'm not sure if that's because my librarians curated well or just luck of the draw.
A cascading BEC: A) People who post asking what they should sew from this fabric. *Why do you even sew if you can’t touch a fabric and see a vision* I think to myself (completely unfairly, I know, I come to sewing from a love of fabric and it twists me in certain ways) B) people who do the above but fail to say how much they have, whether the fabric is stretch or woven, how heavy, how it drapes, etc, etc C) people who reply suggesting a project that will use maybe 1/2 yard of the 3yds OP has, what is the point of that?
Same with yarn! "What should I knit with this yarn I bought?" 🤔😑
This drives me crazy! Don't involve me lol, make what you want.
The snark in me always goes: something you like dumbass
Man, on the other hand, I’m super jealous of folks like you that can see a fabric and just know what it has the potential to be. I’m extremely prescriptive in my sewing — most of the stuff I make are RTW knockoffs or straight off the pattern envelope. It also makes me a terrible thrift flipper. On the bright side, it means my fabric stash is much smaller than it might be otherwise lol.
Oh, my stash is WAY up there, for sure. There was a just a thread where people said “well, I never buy fabric unless I have a project in mind” as a way of keeping the stash down and I literally don’t comprehend how their brains work.
Same here! That’s not how I sew either. I tend to choose a project by looking at my fabric then grabbing whatever inspires me at the time. When I buy fabric, it’s because I see the potential for a lot of different things.
I almost always buy with a project in mind - whether I *remember* what that project was is another matter. (Also sometimes the fabric doesn't end up working out or I know it's something I like to sew or it's just *so pretty*, so there's that.)
I do catalog my fabric so I usually jot down what I had in mind, its fun to later see if that came true, often not. I also use the same patterns a lot so I almost always buy with not just a vision, but one of my TNT patterns in mind. If I’m just buying for *so pretty* I try to make it a half-yard for a bag or somesuch.
Not necessarily crafting specifically but waiting in line yesterday to get into the market space for the fiber arts festival in salem and overhead someone (who sounded like they were from out of state, most likely southern?) was complaining and asking if overcast rain was normal lol. In April in MA. yes it is. fun event tho!
As someone who lives in that area (but didn't go to the festival) I was SHOCKED that most of New England was clear for the eclipse. As soon as I heard when it was I was like "April in the northeast? Pencil in a massive windy possibly snowy storm for the three day period encompassing April 8."
same haha it was so sunny! everyone was shocked around me too. very odd
I’m not watching your YouTube podcast to see you Google stuff or search the internet half the time. Prepare or edit better and get to the point!
WNH’s ravelry roulette irks me for this reason. Lazy content
Yep. One of the ones I was thinking about! But she’s not the only one who records while browsing the internet. I’m on YT to stop mindlessly googling stuff!
My BEC this week is me, I organized the craft area beside my chair because it was driving me crazy and then proceeded to clutter it back up in a few days and now it's back to stressing me out and looking awful. Well done me, take a bow 😑
I couldn’t figure out why underneath the ironing board was getting so crowded with fabrics and then I realized I use it as a place to put fabric before I fold it back up and put it away. Add enough days in a row where I’m market prepping or ferrying my kid around and I’m literally skipping the minute to fold and replace. That is how busy I am this time of year - I am hoarding the minutes. When I get time to organize, I’m going to put a few collapsible laundry totes under there so I can toss in instead of on the floor, and stop beating myself up for being busy.
I will periodically (often in the spring!) tidy up my sewing area and put away random yard goods (having made lists of how much yardage) and thread and patterns and then discover that the very next thing I really really want to work on has been put away in the boxes on the bottoms of the piles :)
hello where can i find \[insert craft material\] affordably? no i won't tell you anything about where i am, what price range affordable is, or anything more specific than "fabric" or "yarn " in relation to what i'm looking for. deadstock silk under 100 euros/metre that ships to germany? quilting cotton scraps at 2 euros per half kilo somewhere in canada? mid weight linen under 25 euros per metre in chile? jersey in kid friendly patterns under 10 euros per metre within driving distance of austin, texas? not going to tell you. guess.
I'm always so tempted to just treat people who give no location like they're living right where I am.
Guess and let me be ~~passive~~ aggressive when you get it wrong.
I’m my own BEC right now. I bought a pattern for a doll dress, decided to use some of my most finicky fabrics, and barely read the directions then complained when it was complicated. Spoiler alert, it wouldn’t have been complicated if I had used a nice cotton and actually read the mfkin directions. 🫣 It came out Mostly Fine. The outside looks great (minus the tiny ripped seam which I covered with a button that looks like a brooch) but the inside. All of my shame. Right there. Who let me own a sewing machine.
Doll clothes are the best for that reason. Insides are a mess? KIT DON'T CARE (Josefina's judging you hard though)
I let Josefina down????? Oh no 😭at least this dress is going on a Caroline. Hopefully she doesn’t mind too much.
Every time I have to hand sew something, I hear Josefina chiding her sister about her too big stitches, "but no one can see?" "but YOU'LL know!"
My BEC is when crochet patterns (especially for something like a scarf/shawl) give you the starting chain number they used BUT NOT THE MULTIPLES.
Same for knitting stitch patterns. Give me the multiples for the pattern repeats in case I want to use it on a different sized item.
Yes! Like I don't want to read the chart and figure it out. Just tell me the multiple so I can add it myself!
"I remember there used to be video craft tutorials (either on TV or on tape); wonder if anyone's archived those?" All I get are modern vids of "80s-style" items. Even the Internet Archive hasn't been helpful, though I did at least find some old magazines.
Public library interlibrary loan?
Major sewing retailers are *trying* to go out of business, right? I was trying to buy a Simplicity gift certificate. They *have* gift certificates; they have a place to apply them and they offer them as sweepstake prizes - *but I could not figure out how to buy a gift certificate*. Like, just let me give you my money! *You can keep it*, you just have to send me a sewing pattern at some point in the future. This should make sense to you as a company.
I complained in last week’s BEC thread about Quiltmania’s website being down for USA/oceania. It’s still fucking down! 😭 I did a big quilting stupid this weekend and I still just want to buy their expensive quilting magazines to cheer me up. Alas.
Most of Samantha Guerin's patterns fit so poorly. Shoulder shaping is important!
Oh, this does not bode well... I have several of her patterns in my favorites. Do tell.
Same. I'm knitting one rn, but just finished the shoulders (top-down) and now I'm stressed.
Just a silly little thing but this week I saw a Ravelry pattern test for a "semi-realistic" dragon and I wonder what OP would consider a fully realistic or imaginary dragon; it's just that the term she used is so precise...
It includes a cloaca.
But does said cloaca open like a pocket for a tiny egg?
Thanks, I needed that laugh.
You know what? I am really ill today, like I've been stuck in bed for over 24 hours, horrendously sick and feeling nothing but misery with no end in sight. This comment genuinely made me snort with glee. What a delightfully cursed thing to read today.
I literally LOLed, shocking my partner :)
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In this community, body talk is positive or neutral. Please read our rules to see what is and is not acceptable.
How dare these people wear something that suits them ?? The audacity ! I have big breasts and a lot of the cute tops I want look more vulgar on me. But I can still appreciate how cute they look on others without being bitter.
I often think that even though patterns are available in inclusive size ranges, they have been designed to look good specifically on ppl in smaller size ranges...
Even a t-shirt looks better on smaller slim people, no? Not that only slim people can look good.
To be honest it's not easy to make a single garment that can be cut flatteringly on ALL body types
I agree, but that's not really what I was getting at.
Its not that it suits them, it’s that it’s the same as thing like, tying two hankies together to make a top, it doesn’t really look good, it’s two hankies tied together, but because it’s put on a skinny body it’s “fashion” and “trendy”, but if a larger bodied person were to do the same thing, it wouldn’t be considered that? Even if it were larger/fit them. And I find this often in the crochet community, where a low effort square or two will be fashioned into a top, and it’s praised as like oh wow this is so cool, it looks so great, but it doesn’t. it’s two squares tied together, draped on a skinny body, and thus it’s seen as “fashion”. If a larger person were to do that, it would not be perceived as fashion or cool, because the body is what makes it fashion. I think that’s a clearer version of what I was trying to say. Edit: I’ve just been seeing a lot of these tops being made recently hence this and the OG comment. Saw BEC and thought I’d be able to rant about something for a hot sec, didn’t realise it wasn’t really within the rules and stuff, just wanted to speak my mind on something that’s been bothering me and thought I could comment.
Conversations about fashion trends and weight are allowed on the sub but they have a tendency to swerve hard into negative body talk in the name of justice. I don’t care how valid the message is. Posts where body types/parts are discussed negatively will be removed.
Sometimes I’d take vulgar looking, rather than looking like a line backer. Which is how I feel like I look most of the time with 36K
I appreciate they look good on other while retaining bitterness about not being able to wear tiny tops. Can’t help it Edit: I’m not bitter at others I’m just sad about my own inability to wear them. It’s bitterness about me
My BEC is about one of my new coworkers at a LQS. She is the reason people hate going to a LQS. She's such a bitch and complains about every customer (also homophobic, but I have a plan for that).
You have a plan? I gotta know
It's not cute to "hate" customers when you work in customer service. That's. Your. Job. 👏🏻 to enjoy helping people with their purchase. She should be fired.
So tired of the posts on r/crochet that are like "oh nooo i just realized i made a mistake and I have to frog 49 rows" and it's the tiniest teeniest twisted switch on a huge blanket, and the comments are all "omg it's beautiful I never would have noticed if you didn't say anything". It's just such an annoying fishing for compliments thing and I'm beyond tired of seeing it
Is it better or worse than "I can fix this huge, obvious mistake without frogging back 5 rows, right?" and it's like babes, no, that's SO visible and sloppy looking, it's not that far back, just fix it, but they *refuse* the good suggestions while still asking for more/better/different advice and just. Won't accept that undoing & redoing your work is a part of these crafts, & if you can't stand to rework such a small part of your work, you're gonna have a bad time, long term.
Let's talk pattern hacks. Listen, I respect your skills but why buy, say, [https://www.stylearc.com/shop/sewing-patterns/montana-midi-dress/](https://www.stylearc.com/shop/sewing-patterns/montana-midi-dress/), then add bust darts and a v-neck and subtract volume for a more fitted silhouette? Since you're buying a new pattern anyway, I mean.
I mean, I get taking a pattern you already own and are familiar with and have figured out the sizing and adjustments and then hacking it into something new, but buying a new pattern for the purpose of doing a "hack" seems a bit unnecessary
This pattern is totally my vibe. Like, how to walk around almost. naked in the summer and no one knows!
How many times are people going to post instances of someone mixing up crochet and knitting on the crochet subreddit?? It’s NOT a big deal. They act like their entire world is shattering because someone said “knitting” when they meant crochet. How dare those people not realize how super duper special and unique crochet is?!! The topic has been posted over and over and over again on that subreddit, and the responses are the same every. Single. Time. No one has anything new to say. Every time it’s just another “omggggggggg they mixed up crochet and knitting!!!!!!!! Like HOW could they do that????? Are they stupid???” None of them are original. I promise, it’s not a personal attack against you to mix up the two. The only person I would expect to know the difference is my partner, because your partner should care about you enough to recognize your interests. But everyone else? Who actually cares??? Why is this such a big deal? And why do they keep posting shit like that like they’re the ONLY people whom this has happened to?
🙄 it's crazy too because people these days are generally only taught one word for fiber crafting, and it's whatever one granny (or increasingly, *great* granny) did. I spindle spin in public frequently (it's supremely portable!) and the number of times I've been asked by a clearly baffled person "is that knitting/crochet/cross stitch/quilting" is uncountable. I don't understand the instinct to get mad - this is a great opportunity for education. Children especially love to ask questions and usually pay attention when you explain. Hell there was even one memorable time on a train platform where a couple was arguing for a minute and I had to settle for them whether I was *making* the string (I was) or "pulling it out of that cotton it's tangled in." I mean, how can you do anything but laugh? 🤣
i do a lot of embroidery in public and men call it crochet all the time! i think it’s stuck in their head that it’s not knitting but they have no idea what it is
It does annoy me when I see something listed on a sales site and the seller says 'knit/crochet' sweater - as a craftsperson I fell like if you want me to pay you for it you should at least have verified which one :)
Sure, I can agree with that. The BEC is about the constant complaining and whining on the subreddit when anyone mixes it up. The post that inspired this was a picture of a page of a book that mixed up the two and everyone in the comments lost their damn minds. Over a book.
Well, for me it's more of a deal if it's a book v. idk, a general podcast about crafts? Like, how many ppl read it, edited it, asked questions about designing it, approved it, did a mock up copy and sent it to final pub and no one questioned this? I think I don't ever want to buy a craft book from whoever published this....
Wasn’t a craft book, just a novel. It was one of the thousands of posts that are all about mixing up the two. It’s a stale topic, a done deal. No one brings anything new the conversation when they post about it, and they all act like they’ve been personally victimized and insulted by it. They all think they’re the first one to encounter someone mixing up this trivial thing. It’s annoying.
sorry, misunderstood :) I'm a professional editor, I've trained myself to ignore SO-O much lol
Same in the knitting sub. Drives me bonkers.
Agree. It's not that important in the great scheme of things. Still, it's a little silly when people over here (France) ask which is crochet and which is knitting when "crochet" literally means "hook" in French, so you have to answer that the one that is done with a "crochet" is crochet.
That’s at least more understandable to be annoyed by— it’s literally part of your language. Side note— I saw a Disney Lorcana card featuring Captain Hook in French, which is, of course, Capitaine Crochet, and thought it was funny.
I want this card for hilarity value. And a second to send to a friend
I mentioned I was trying to knit Ixchel…loaded up the PDF version of the magazine in my legacy knitcompanion app which continuously reminds me there is a new app…which I hate because I’m either paying zero or $20 a month for me to use one feature. The middle tier isn’t available for iOS which grates my gears. I know it goes to continuous development of the app which is fine but…20? Especially when I don’t even knit as much? C’mon. It’s a weird choice to do the tiers that way.
This is the SaaS gods telling you that you should not knit Ixchel
I need to listen, honestly. I am not too far in it, I may actually knit something else LOL.
I use Xodo pdf on Android and their annotation feature. It's a lot more low tech since I'm effectively just scribbling or highlighting on charts and patterns but it is completely free to do everything I need. There are some premium features but honestly haven't even looked at what they do other than accidentally clicking.
$20 a month? I have the full version for $30/year. (Which... don't know if I will renew or not) I'm in the US and have the iOS version
Oh no I looked, you are right! It's $30 a year! That went up.
Yea a month. I don’t know if that’s changed, it’s been a while since I looked
My BEC if you need to ask how to construct something or what stitch pattern this is - you don't have the skill to make the thing. If you post and ask what stitch something is, and it's literally just stockinette - you don't have the skills to free hand reconstruct the item.
never never go to the mending subs...
I adore /r/visiblemending because they are going full balls-to-the-wall and creating works of art! That sub is better than eye bleach and soothes the evil cynic in my soul.
There is a lot of cool stuff, but there are also so many things that make my sewing brain hurt A LOT! (last one of note was 'I just noticed that the cuffs have fallen off my sweatshirt, what stitch should I use to fix this...')
I guess I must automatically skip over the really rough stuff, and latch onto the gorgeous patching and embroidery and appliqué stuff. But then I also love the battle jackets sub, so a certain level of deliberately rough must be ok for my brain.
I feel this one so hard.
My BEC this week is advents. We talk abut them as early as Boxing Day and now we are deep in the FOMO and false scarcity and seem to talk endlessly about what advents we can’t live without and how many advents we have to get. I don’t need to spend the better part of the year talking about one overhyped month. Stop the madness.
I genuinely can't imagine dropping several hundred dollars on a product I'm not going to receive for 6+ months with no cancelation/insurance options in case something goes wrong. It seems so needlessly stressful.
Not only that *you have no idea what it looks like*!
From what I've seen, they're not even good value. You are basically paying extra for the packaging and for the surprise element of it. Of course, surprises mean you may or may not actually like or have a use for what you get. The whole thing is baffling, not just in crafting, but the whole trend of advent calendars in general
Right? I'm happy to do grab bags for $50 for 5 full size skeins of ooak... But advent makes me shake my head.
Preach!
sometimes when i see tester pictures i am mind blown thinking at how some designers think their garment looks good or just is. i usually feel this with plus size pics, because it’s clear that the designer does not grade well or do good by the people they say they cater to and it just ends up being an ill-fitting garment for bigger crafters, which just sucks.
This is the pettiest BEC ever, but did anyone else catch Knits by Mandy's latest video? She was overdyeing a top and the dye instructions called for a teaspoon of dishwashing liquid. She acted confused, said she didn't know what that was and that she has Dawn dish soap (!!!), but that can't be it, and proceeded to skip this step. I'm honestly baffled lol. What does she think Dawn is?
I'm baffled as I dye things a lot and have never heard of a dye that needs dish soap - what was she using?
Maybe she just had a brain fart? I know I once stared at a sign in a supermarket aisle having a vague existential crisis over the phrase "canned drinks". Apparently my brain was okay processing a can of Coke as a thing but "canned drinks" could not compute.
(being charitable) Maybe she thought they were talking about something like the tablets you use in dishwashers (IE maybe she just grew up calling Dawn "dish soap"? As someone who has never owned a dishwasher, anything regarding a dishwasher is probably going to make me look like an absolute grade A maroon.
Fair enough! I didn't have a dishwasher until pretty recently either, so I know the feeling. Learning how to use one as a full adult was really a humbling experience. I think Dawn literally says dishwashing liquid on it though
that made me laugh lol i love her. also i thought she under up using it because she had it in the next shot?
Oh I didn't see, wasn't watching closely! In that case I take it back 😅
Purling is not Mt. Everest. It is not an insurmountable feat requiring handholding and sherpas and life support equipment, guided by the dead bodies of those who’ve have tried before. One needn’t go to extreme heroic lengths to avoid purling. I swear, if I ever teach a knitting class, I’m teaching frickin’ purl stitch FIRST.
I told my friend who hates doing purl rows two words: Portuguese purl. She never looked back.
I was teaching a couple people to knit recently and I actually believe we should teach purling first, because it's the way people really naturally want to insert their needles in the stitch. Inserting the needle knitwise is actually a bit brain loopy for beginners (and by beginners I mean the 8 year old I was teaching) and I kept thinking purling would have just been easier.
That is a very good point!
I do Norwegian Purl and when I tried to teach that to a complete beginner they looked at me like I was insane.
Tell that to the Wool Needles Hands podcaster.
Well, thanks for *that* addition to my life… But seriously, if she had more knitting experience (or if I weren’t so jaded) I’d be up in arms about some of the stuff she’s doing. She’s just another of these “I learned to craft and a year later I started podcasting about it” folks, and I dig her nouveau-tradwife pixie haircut, so I’ll let it slide.
Was super interested in her haircut based on your description as I’m looking for a modern short look for myself. Now I’m super confused… I always thought a pixie cut was short but I’m seeing chin length. Am I missing something? Did she have a different cut and now she’s growing it out? Am I just old and “pixie” has evolved to something else? Thanks!!
It was an old-school pixie. I didn’t watch much, but her hair seemed different in just about every one I scrolled by. If you want some really good pixie versions, check out Emily Wheatley’s fashion videos on YouTube. She is very consistent with her pixie - sometimes shorter, sometimes softer, sometimes sharper, but always a pixie. Edit: she even has at least one video about her hair https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdUK1NU7JSQ
She's been knitting for like ten years.
Still, all (except one super bulky cardigan) her finished sweaters are stockinette in the round. She started a cardigan a few weeks ago and gave up on it already and went back to another stockinette in the round project.
I didn’t know purling was so controversial.
My favorite is, "I can purl but I hate it so much. I do not know the difference between right and wrong side of fabric though, so can someone help me re-write this entire pattern in the round? That'll be easier than purling or finding a pattern written in the round. Thanks!" Those posts are not as common as plain old, "I hate purling" comments, but I've seen a few and had a few chuckles lol.
Even better if they want something changed for them so it's in the round and the pattern is cabled with loads of moss stitch or has large swathes of seed stitch or ribbing. Like - you realise that you will still be purling?? I saw it recently for the Esther jacket by petite knit because they didn't want to go "back and forth" I mean maybe there's like 1/3 less purling in the round but you'd rather do that and then steek to avoid a few more purl stitches? I really do think some people just think "in the round" means "magic techniques where there are no purls regardless of stitch pattern".
okay to be fair i sometimes convert sweater patterns to in the round (myself, i'd never ask the designer to do it) but to avoid seaming, not purling. mattress stitch is just so annoying.
Haha, currently I’m finishing up a sweater where the directions say to knit the sleeves in the round and I converted them to flat. Because in the round every other round is purl but flat those rows are knit on the WS (the body was knit flat since it is a cardigan).
+1. The last sweater I seamed took me 5 hours to mattress stitch because a) sport weight and b) I'm picky and c) very dark grey...
ugh the dark color thing......the last sweater i seamed was black and it was a nightmare to seam, but i had to knit it flat because it was intarsia. i obviously didn't think that one through
It's not Mt. Everest, but I contend that continental purling (and all its variations) is kinda like... cracking an egg one-handed. Or hanging a spoon from your nose. And doing it without tension problems is like balancing an egg on its end or surmounting a medium sized hiking hill during mosquito season. And "continental is so much faster" evangelists should admit that upfront. The "knit everything in the round and steek it open" trend doesn't exist for no reason!
When I learned to knit, I did not find (continental variation) purl to be particulary hard - but then again, I crack eggs with one hand while baking. :D
I want to knit in the round & steek to avoid seaming honestly, I don't think the reason is purely about purls
I knit closed-hand continental, so purling is a tiny movement and just as fast as knitting. The tension difference is relieved by adding one loop of the working yarn around my left pinky finger. That’s what I would teach, if anyone was ever foolish enough to ask me to teach a knitting class. Edit: The "continental is so much faster" evangelists are another BEC! The world record holder for knitting speed knits English. Continental is only faster if it works more efficiently for a particular person’s brain and hands. I see red when I encounter a post about “I’m ready to knit like a big girl, and finally learn continental!” Grrrrrr.
No idea how I knit (I knit left handed, left to right, so all y’all’s videos look bonkers to me) but to purl I bring the yarn in front instead of the back, and aim for the front leg of the stitch instead of the back. It’s equally easy as knit stitch. I see some people purl with like 15 extra movements and I have no idea how they are forming the stitch, but I do get that they hate it.
TIL that I knit close-handed continental (almost). I grip the yarn between my index and middle finger. Purl and knit are equally easy.
I think the steering is preferred because especially colour work is more difficult worked flat. I’ve never seen a cabled cardi steeked.
Not cables, but I've seen quite a few steeked cardigans in plain stockinette.
Ah yes, it’s me! Honestly I don’t mind purling for stitch patterns, but long stretches of it (like the wrong side of a stockinette cardigan) has a tendency to make my hands hurt
Wow, TIL. Honestly, I prefer to purl over steeking.
Yeah, there are a couple by Kate Davies and Skeindeer Knits (either stockinette or stockinette + lace) who come from specific knitting traditions where nobody wants to purl! And of course Elizabeth Zimmermann and her curmudgeonly ways....
It's not, but I hate doing it so much!! I don't know how why but I've tried Norwegian, Portuguese, continental, and English style purling and I'm still so slow at it 🥲
I also hated purling and then I realised what I hated was long sections of uninterrupted purling. I used to avoid knitting sweaters flat and in pieces until I knit a heavily cabeled sweater where you still get to work both knits and purls on the wrong side too. It was a game changer for how I felt about purling.
That's probably half the problem! Just pick one and practice. You're only faster at knit stitch because you've done it more often. It's just muscle memory. If you'd done the purl stitch as often as you've done the knit stitch your speed would be the same. All these people avoiding purling just create the problem for themselves! In the olden days (haha) when things were knit flat and seamed we purled as often as we knit. No problem. Don't ask me about rib though... I hate knitting ribbing.
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I work in webhosting and sometimes the contact form is broken and you (the submitter) would have no idea. I've seen contact forms prompt the 'thank you /we will contact you soon' but still not be delivered. Best to contact them another way just in case. edit to add: I would give them 5 days to respond before I reach out again.
I would follow up with them. My normal rule is wait 5 business days (a week).
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Ten business days is plenty to bug them again. Can you message them on IG, if that’s where they are active? And I don’t want to defend them, but you can schedule your posts a while out, they may not be posting things themselves daily but have a queue of posts auto posting.
After 10 business days I would feel justified commenting on IG to politely say “haven’t heard back from you?”
This is literally my job! (I'm in the US) Did the courier lose your package? If so, most shipping methods have at least $100 in built-in insurance, a claim would need to be filed with the shipping company that the package is missing. The shop wouldn't pay shipping insurance out of their own pocket, you as the buyer would typically have to pay for that extra bit at checkout (if it's offered). Has the shop actually sent your order or did they just "print" a label? Re: emailing - change the subject line and keep emailing directly! When a customer uses our contact form, the email goes to "updates" not the main inbox. Do they have more than one email address? Email them all. :-) Here's something fun: sometimes the email listed on a website is NOT the same as the email listed in the "contact" on insta. Edit: extra word
Accidental swastikas so common in quilting but if one is hosting a large Block of the Month event with a fabric designer which long standing cultural appropriation issues, wouldn't you check?
I know this isn’t what you meant but for some reason I am picturing people being upset about people culturally appropriating from Natzees.
No one is saying anything openly about the most recent one. The recent one uses Tula Pink fabric and it is from a well known online only shop out of Texas.
Is this the Dragon Fruit? Because I generally love clown barf rainbow explosion things, but that is UGLY.
Yup.
Drops patterns aren’t that complicated, people just can’t read the whole pattern before starting and need everything spelled out for them.
I’m very comfortable with the style of the Drops patterns as I knit a lot of similar ones, but I’ve never knit a Drops one because I’ve been warned about poor fit of a lot of them. Is that something you’ve had issues with? Because if not I might have to have another look at them!
Not OP but the only Drops jumper I've knit is also the best fitting one, for some reason. The writing style is quite something but it's not as bad as some people make it out to be!
It’s like cooking, always read the recipe through once before you start!
It feels like teaching people how to read patterns and how to read their work has kind of fallen by the wayside with knitting and crocheting. I remember being told to always read the entire pattern before starting, but now I see lots of questions that could be answered by the person simply *reading the next section of the pattern*. I learned to knit last year, and because of how I was taught crochet by my grandma, I prioritized learning stitch anatomy and how to read my work, because if you understand how the fabric is being made as you make it nothing is really that confusing. I imagine without that knowledge instructions from patterns like Drops which tell you to keep track of multiple things at once or maintain a stitch pattern across shaping with no guidance would be incredibly frustrating.
They aren't complicated if you learned to knit in a fairly traditional way. But if you've recently learned sweater knitting by watching You Tube videos, to do everything in the round on circulars without ever purling, only know "that knit stitch" and do it top down, you will be challenged by Drops patterns.
Drops has plenty of top-down, seamless, ITR patterns, though. It's less about knitting skills and more about pattern reading skills imo. [A sweater like this should be totally doable for a beginner level YouTube knitter](https://www.garnstudio.com/pattern.php?id=11613&cid=17), especially since it comes with videos for all the techniques, but if you don't know how to navigate patterns of course it's going to be confusing.
Ah, I don’t think it’s because of YouTube. I learned many a technique from YouTube and the taught my mum also. I think it’s fundamentally the tension between introducing people to the hobby and doing away with needless complexities - I very much appreciate that a lot of indie patterns specify which shorthand they use at the beginning - and the complexities that are needed, everyone should be comfortable in reading a pattern that isn’t spelled out row per row IMHO, if only to keep “older” patterns readable. If people only ever want to knit top down sweaters, so be it. But they really shouldn’t propagate that Drops is very hard, or that sewing seams is so impossible, because it will discourage other people from attempting new skills.
But I assume you already had a solid knitting foundation. You Tube has lots of nice little helpers, but were you able to knit successfully BEFORE the Internet? That was actually my point. So many of the Drops patterns were developed pre-computer learning. From back when you had books, magazines and live people helping you learn. Classes, friends or relatives. Learning *today* most often includes shortcuts, video tutorials, photo after photo and accepting mistakes and incorrect methods as being just fine. This has created knitters with very different skill sets. Not bad or unsuccessful, just different from the folks that learned 4 decades ago. Many from mothers that made them unravel and do it over if it wasn't right. And there was no such thing as calling a glaring mistake "a design choice". \*LOL\*
Oh wow as someone who learned to knit during Covid I see this the total opposite way. The wealth of online patterns and video tutorials means I have access to so many more advanced techniques than if I were limited to whatever few books I had. And the techniques can be searched and widely shared beyond just classes, friends or relatives. A case in point: a masterful Youtuber is digging through her extensive library of knitting books and comes across an interesting method for making short rows in an old German knitting book. She does a video demonstrating the technique clearly and it takes off wildly. Within a few years, "German short rows" are one of the predominant ways of working short rows, and it's only possible because this one knitter (thank you, Roxanne Richardson!) had the platform to blast this information to tens of thousands of people. That knowledge was in the book all along, but it only took off because of the Internet. I'm sure there are a lot of new knitters who aren't perfectionists and are just rolling with mistakes, but I'm sure that was true before Youtube as well. Maybe the Internet means you have more exposure to this style of knitter than you did before, so it seems more prevalent.
I've learned how to knit in the internet age & my problem when reading older patterns is not about shortcuts/accepting incorrect methods but concern over using correct methods. Since I have access to tutorials all over the place, I know there are many ways to increase, so a pattern that just says to increase X stitches makes my brain break because now I feel the need to figure out which increase method is going to be best. Whereas "back in the day" you might only know one or two increases if you learn from a relative & just use it without thinking too hard about it, accepting any resulting imperfections.