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"On Friday, the company announced it had sold its US division, IG Design Group Americas (DGA), which owns the sewing pattern brands, to Hilco Capital, a liquidation firm.

DGA also owns other craft brands, including Boye needles, Wrights trim, and Perler fusible beads, among others.

They also own the last pattern tissue printers in the country, and that is significant to all the other pattern companies that rely upon it."

6/5/25:

This one from 2020:

Well my loves, it appears as though the answer to "Can the Big Pattern Company (Simplicity/Burda/McCalls/ect.) survive the death of JoAnn?" has come.

The answer is no. No it cannot. It has been sold to a liquidator just like JoAnns was.

So if there is ANYTHING you want I suggest you get it now. simplicity.com is currently having a pattern sale and I snatched up some that might be useful for cosplay purposes.

I am very glad these last couple of years I have built up my collection.

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what if you do a poll thats like you have 4 options: 10%, 20%, 30%, and 40%, and ypu gotta have eaxh option like be that percent yk??? like 10% of people voted 10%, 20% of people voted 20%, ect.

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I got them to play Alice Cooper school's out at my high school graduation

never understood students who willingly attend their own graduation ceremony. the entire point of graduating is they can't force you to attend shit anymore

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I genuinely want to have my skeleton used as a Halloween decoration

I sometimes wonder now many people would go in for a Paris Catacombs type burial situation if that was an option in their home town. No marked grave, no memorial, just having all the flesh chemically stripped from their skeleton, which is then disassembled and incorporated into an anonymous wall of bones in some kind of fucked up underground labyrinth where people can walk through and look at the bones. I have to imagine there's a non-trivial market for that.

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I’m up to the start of Angel now and ITS ELIOT. AND HES A CORRUPT LAWYER. AHHH

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Biting will continue until morale improves.

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it's gotta be great to be a like casually worshipper of an apocalyptic god of destruction and evil. like every time something awful happens you can just chalk it up as another win for lord blooddeath and smile a little

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there are corners of this website where the year is still 2013. and sometimes, on beautiful nights when the veil is thin, you can find them . if you know where to look

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Dead Like Me

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Wait

They snap on like a sewing machine presser foot‽

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if you ever find yourself thinking “wow I scraped the bottom of the barrel with my energy with that and came out okay!” that’s the devil talking. you did not come out okay. you borrowed energy from the future. you will repay it if you don’t rest and replenish the borrowed energy first.

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Art by Chloe’s arts

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I don't think there was a hot topic anywhere near me that early. I remember the tunnel entrance instead

I have that Zim shirt somewhere. And the original JTHM tee w the hieroglyphs on the back

Today's Topic is Hot Topic

"The pants command me!" Invader Zim

It turns out that one of the Hot Topics in the Tampa Bay area - at University Mall in Tampa - still has the old gate style entrance. I asked the gal working there why the owner never removed the gate, but she didn't know. She did confirm, however, that it is one of only three out of 675 Hot Topics that still have the gate.

I used to see these gates on Hot Topics all the time, and I am sorry to say, I didn't even notice when they stopped having these gates. But then again, my time of frequenting Hot Topic was back in the '90's. By the mid-aughts, I had stopped visiting the brick & mortar Hot Topics and started ordering everything I bought from them (which, admittedly, was never a lot) online. The last items I purchased from the Hot Topic website was several striped shirts, both long and short sleeved, of a type fairly difficult to find anywhere else, plus they were on sale, so I snapped them up.

As for my reminiscences of Hot Topic back in the 'good-ole-days' of the '90's, they might be a bit underwhelming. I was never a 90's mall rat, so you won't find any vintage pics of me wearing those super baggy pants, but I still went to malls about once a month during the 90's. Much less than the once a week, or more, during the 80's. I first encountered a Hot Topic about 1992 in either Richmond, Va, or Washington, DC. I didn't realize it was a chain, of course, until I encountered the second one. Independent stores similar to Hot Topic were common enough back then that I really only took particular notice of Hot Topic once I realized it was a chain and, clearly, doing quite well. Even back then, it was an expensive place to shop, so I rarely bought anything but would just browse. They used to focus much more on goth items and maintained that emphasis throughout the '90's, but by the early aughts they'd begun to shift to other areas until eventually evolving to the Funko Pop shop they are now.

Not that I have anything against Funko Pops. Folks really seem to like them, although they're not my thing. I'm still able to order gothy stuff via Hot Topic's website when needed, so it doesn't matter to me what they stock in their brick & mortars. They also changed the font at some point - also didn't notice when that happened - but this is how I remember Hot Topic from the '90's:

Another reason I'd usually visit one whenever in the mall, was to socialize with my friends working there. I might be the only person I know who didn't work at a Hot Topic for at least a week or two back in the '90's. I just don't have the customer service skills. But it was always fun visiting with friends and acquaintances and catching up on the latest news from my fairly large social circle. The Hot Topic folks always knew the latest since everyone else also stopped by to socialize, so they were practically town criers. And after inevitably quitting the job, they would lament that they no longer got to hear all the latest, juicy gossip. The last person I knew who worked at Hot Topic - a co-worker of mine at a haunted house - quit working her Hot Topic job in late 2005, and that's when I stopped visiting the stores with any degree of regularity.

I'd also always visit the Spencer Gifts that was, invariably, just a couple stores away from the Hot Topic. While Hot Topic has changed, Spencer's has remained the same - so much so that stepping into one is almost like traveling back in time to the 90's. And with over 600 stores, Spencer's strategy seems to be working as well.

Another somewhat odd thing I discovered, is that the Tampa Bay area has an unusually high number of Hot Topics with 10. Orlando only has 4 and even the vastness that is the Miami metro only has 7. My old stomping ground of Richmond, VA, only has a single Hot Topic remaining. Why does Tampa Bay get 10 while Richmond only gets one? I don't know. And why does one of our ten still have the gate? Also, unknown. And what ever happened to that cool Invader Zim shirt I bought at the Hot Topic in Mall St. Mathew's in Louisville, Ky, back in 2003? Yet another great, cosmic mystery on par with GIR's...well, on par with GIR.

creaturesfromelsewhere 7-3-2022

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Gazing into the black pond once again I see.

Leave it for now!

It is the time again.

I have a new challenge for you, my little pupil.

Show me the fruits of your endeavours.

Finish the experiment.

Show me something new.

Do. Not. Disappoint me.

Finish the experiment with:

⟡ Copper figurine

⟡ Golden Nugget

⟡ Silver Chain

⟡ Blood

⟡ Special thanks to @whispering-jabberwocky for proofreading ⟡

CW Blood, body horror, mild jumpscares

Would you like to do some past homework?

Here is the link to the first version

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A friend and I were discussing what we're like when we're sick and we decided people usually fall into one of these five 'sick modes': *Everyone is probably multiple of these at different times depending on how sick they are and with what but we think most people have a mode they default to and become more often than the others*

Delicate Consumptive Victorian: you feel tragic and mournful but also beautiful in a sad way, you are in bed, sipping hot tea, others should quietly whisper about how you are too good for this world, too beautiful, too tragic... And bring you more tea

Sick Dog: you are curled up in a ball, you don't want anything, you don't need anything, but it would be nice if others could still ask you if you need anything

Sickly Child Emperor: you are dying and it's everyone else's problem, you need pillows, no! you need soup, no! You need absolute silence or you will not be the first one to die today

Plague Pit: you are curled up probably on the floor, no one touch you, no one look at you, this is between you and God and you already know He has no mercy left for you

Warrior General: you are not sick. You are in perfect health and you don't know why anyone would think otherwise. Illness is an enemy that can be intimidated and you must remain strong for your men! (You are going to pass out at the most inconvenient moment possible)