#drea renee knits

[ksantillus]

Shots of my VERY FIRST sweater vest before and after blocking, including a small portion of the ultra-chic leg crutch I've been wearing since my ankle surgery.

One silver lining to being stuck at home: a little more time for personal projects. I started the Tessellated Vest about a month ago and finally finished it today! I guess this is my first sweater, if sleeveless sweaters count.

I couldn't quite wrap my head around the tubular CO, so I decided to start with the Twisted German Cast On and then finish the armholes and collar with Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off. Yarns used: Whales Road (Malabrigo Arroyo) Reflecting Pool (Malabrigo Arroyo) Mint (Rowan Kidsilk Haze)

[merulanoir]

I made my first gauge swatch yesterday.

(Yes, I've been knitting for seven years.)

Anyway, I started my sweater project over because the Tukuwool yarn wasn't the right choice for this pattern. I've reknitted the collar and the shaping short rows, so next it's time to start the yoke and the lovely honeycomb pattern again.

I'm a big fan of this shape. The sweater is worked entirely in garter stitch, so the elongated stitches forming the honeycomb stand out nicely.

This is the pattern I'm working on:

[brittlikestoknit]

i have previously attempted to make the Birds of a Feather shawl by Andrea Mowry and i just chose the wrong yarn.

so i got new yarn and have been working on it and i am loving it.

it’s just such a calm knit and it’s feels luxurious

i finally got to the lace section and i’m gonna be honest, i fucked up a little bit and read the pattern wrong 🤷🏼‍♀️ but i was able to fix it!!!

i am not even close to being done but i already love it!!!

[good-prog]

Another hat!

Project dates: 2024/02/13-02/15

Yarn: Used some of the remaining yarn from the halibut cowl to knit hat (this time with MC/CC swapped). MC - Malabrigo Rios (Pisces #289), CC - Cascade 220 Superwash Wave (#116)

Pattern: Flicker and Flame from Drea Renee Knits

Another quick hat project, for a friend.

I started off attempting to use gray for MC and the rainbow for CC, shown in the left image below. Since I had worked on the hat for a few hours by that point, I was unsure whether the color issue was simply due to staring at the yarn for too long. So, I placed the hat on my completed cowl and made the image grayscale to demonstrate the lack of contrast in value.

I went up a needle size from the pattern (#6 ribbing, #8 main body) to make gauge. My colorwork is definitely tighter than stockinette, and even if the hat ends up a hair larger than the pattern specifies, the recipient claims to have a larger-than-average head.

After frogging my first attempt, I remade the hat in about a day (fueled by watching friends streaming Persona 3 Reload). I'm happy that in addition to slightly increasing my knitting speed, I'm also getting more consistent with tension, both in the floats as well as the ribbing.

[climbingrat]

Wool & Honey jumper for my Grandma

[katskrochet]

I dont think I shared these photos, but I've been working on my find your fade shawl again, trying to figure out why I can do complicated lace but a simple k2tog, double yo, k1 repeat looks like shit every time.

Bonus photo of my goofy husband being a goof while helping me take photos

[woolandcoffee]

I do actually want to talk a bit about the slow fashion movement because I think it's an interesting example of what happens when a group of people want to start addressing a symptom if capitalism without addressing capitalism itself.

I first encountered the concept if slow fashion sometime in 2013/2014. At the time, I was a college student working in a boutique yarn shop. If you know anything about boutique yarn shops, you know that working in one will expose you to the wider knitting community of pattern designers, yarn producers, knitwear trend setters - its an entire ecosystem. Like anything, these ecosystems go through cycles that are influenced by the broader world. Like most other things in the mid-2010s, the knitting world was going through a period of minimalism. Gone were the eyelash yarns, neon colors, and metallic sparkles of the 2000s. The knitting world of the 2010s was full of shades of greige, simple silhouettes, and basic garter stitch. You wanted your yarn to look as fresh off the sheep as possible, and if you actually knew the sheep it had come from, so much the better.

This wasn't to say that color and vibrancy were completely gone - Stephen West starting gaining popularity during this time, as did Drea Renee. But I would still consider designers working with color and geometric shapes as outliers of the knitting world during the 2010s. For the most part, people were gravitating towards minimal designs. And no one better exemplified the kind of cozy simplicity people were looking for better than Karen Templer.

Temple ran a blog called Fringe Association that was, for a time, one of the best known knitting blogs out there. She wasn't a designer or a yarn producer (occasionally she would release a knitting pattern, but that was not her main function), what we would probably call her now was an influencer. She did operate a shop that sold notions and knitting bags (girl you HAD to have a Fringe Association knitting bag), but that came a little later after her blog had taken off.

Now, Templer did not coin the term "slow fashion," nor did she invent the concept. But she arguably helped it to take off, become more mainstream. My experience with the concept of slow fashion began with Templer, and I'm willing to bet that's true for a lot of people. Slow fashion, at that time, fit really well with the broder knitting community. It was about slowing down, thinking more critically about your clothing, and even making things yourself. That is 100% in line with where the knitting community was in the early to mid 2010s. In a world where knowing which farm your yarn came from was a virtue, slow fashion made sense. Templer began hosting Slow Fashion October on her blog and Instagram - a month-long annual event where participants would post photos of themselves wearing handmade things, usually in response to prompts from Templer - and things grew from there. This is when I, personally, starting noticing a rise in slow fashion influencers. Some had been knitwear designers or sewing pattern designers (a breakdown of the different sewing communities is best saved for a different post), some had already been fashion influencers, and some came to it from different spaces entirely. I won't pretend to know the whole history of slow fashion influencers on Instagram, but I would definitely say that by the later 2010s, from about 2016 onward, there were a fair few number of accounts that largely focused on slow fashion.

It probably won't come as a shock to too many readers to learn that from the very beginning, slow fashion was pretty inaccessible. The focus was on handmade garments made with traceable or boutique materials, and garments purchased from small, ethical companies. Every now and again, someone would bring up buying high quality vintage, but I general thrifting was rarely mentioned. In fact, the one year I participated in Slow Fashion October on Instagram, one of my posts was about a sweater I had thrifted years before and still wore on a regular basis. The post lowkey blew up, and there was a lot of commentary about thrifting, in part because I was (to my knowledge) one of the few people talking about it that year. But in general, there was little to no mention of how inaccessible slow fashion was. It was expensive, the focus was on thin, white bodies, and it took a lot of time and effort to make or aquire slow fashion pieces. It just wasn't something that everyone would be able to do. Even when slow fashion started to shift to accommodate more people of color and fat people, there still wasn't a huge discussion of how freaking expensive it was to participate in slow fashion. Heck, the only reason why I was able to participate in slow fashion shit was because I got an employee discount at the yarn shop I worked at, and would steal stuff from the store when the boss forgot to pay us on time.

Now, for me personally, when I first encountered slow fashion, I really liked it. In fact, I still largely support the idea of trying to disengage from fast fashion, shopping second hand, mending your clothing, treating your wardrobe as something to care for, etc. However, as I became more radicalized and just generally aware of the horrors of capitalism, the more I began to see the gaping holes in the fast fashion movement. You see, what had started off as a fun way for some people to think differently about their relationship to clothes, had morphed into a way to judge how much people cared about the environment and other human beings. Slow fashion influencers had begun to take the stance that anyone who participated in fast fashion was trying to destroy the environment, was trying to harm the people hurt by the fast fashion industry, was racist, was sexist, etc. Occasionally you'd get someone in the comments of an Instagram post pointing out that not everyone could reasonably afford to buy all their clothing from Everlane, and they didn't make them bad people. The typical response to this would be an irritated comment from the poster about how obviously they didn't mean poor people, and how they had said countless times that they didn't mean poor people, and so on.

There also was, again to my knowledge, no real discussion of the role capitalism plays in fast fashion. Sometimes someone would bring it up, but it was not a general focus of slow fashion. Instead, slow fashion influencers took the line that the only thing that would change things was us by voting with our wallets and showing H&M that what we really wanted was baggy linen pants made ethically by hand in Knoxville. Nothing else would change the system.

And thats... when I started to get really disillusioned with the whole thing. Slow fashion, what it had become, was not about fighting back against the capitalist harms of fast fashion - it was about clout. And baggy linen pants. It was about trying to fight capitalism with more capitalism, it was about trying to look like you were doing the right thing with minimal engagement, it was about shaming poor people and labeling anyone who didn't 100% agree with you as bad.

I don't quite know how to end this, other than to say that addressing only a symptom of something will never be enough to solve the underlying problem. Getting out from under the ills of capitalism is going to involve so much more than making your own shirts from dead stock designer fabric. Which isn't to say that changing our relationship to clothing isn't important, but expecting that to solve everything is naive. We need more than that.

[aestherians]

My response to this video is gonna be ridiculously long, so hit J if you want to skip it

“Fictinkin is Terrible” Bad grammar. Should either be ‘fictionkin are terrible’ or 'fictionkinity is terrible’. But I digress.

“I actually used to be fictionkin” It’s generally agreed that if you’re 'kin, that’s what you are. It’s an inherent trait, like a hair color, and you can’t just quit it (though you can realize you never were 'kin in the first place or you can stop associating with the community or you can refuse to use any of the labels). A better wording would probably be “I used to think I was fictionkin.” This is just nitpicking, honestly, as it doesn’t change the experiences you’ve had with the community.

“[The otherkin community consists] of people who believe they are the spirit of a species besides human, born into the wrong body.” Not exactly wrong, not exactly right. This describes a lot of otherkin but by far not all. I believe my soul is partially that of a bison but I don’t believe I should’ve been born in the body of a bison. I also feel like I’m a gnoll (you know,, those fuckers from D&D) on a psychological level, which I chalk up to a lot of weird things in my late childhood/early teens, such as roleplaying werewolves and imprinting on the art of DarkNatasha. It’s not play-pretend, it’s just a… character trait, I guess you could say. Like being Pagan or being really into knitting. A large portion of otherkin believe it’s a purely psychological phenomenon or that the cause is a mix of spiritual and psychological stuff. Likewise, a lot of otherkin don’t feel like they’re born into the wrong body. It’s very subjective how each individual describes their otherkinity.

“It’s origins are mainly from tumblr” Not really… The current otherkin community has its roots in the elven communities from the 1970s (namely the Elf Queen’s Daughters and the Silver Elves). The EQD have letters dating back to 1973 detailing their nonhuman identities and can trace the origins of their organization back to the late 1960s. The word 'otherkin’ was coined by Torin in a mailing list (hosted by R’ykandar Korra’ti) in 1990. This is around the same time that the therian community appeared (seperately from the elvenkind/otherkin community) in the newsgroup Alt.Horror.WereWolves. For more information, check out “Otherkin Timeline - The Recent History of Elfin, Fae,and Animal People” By O. Scribner.

“Nowadays, the otherkin community has actually been pretty dead recently…” Again, not really… If anything, there are more otherkin actively discussing their identities and connecting with each other now than ever before. The community is just isolated to private chats and servers (mainly on Discord) and heavily moderated forums like WereList, Therian-Guide, and Fictionkin Dot Com.

“…and in its place has arisen something far worse: This is the fictionkin community.” Though some of the elves of the EQD and the Silver Elves would technically be classified as fictionkin today (as they identified as canon characters from Tolkien’s Middle-earth), the fictionkin community as we know it dates back to circa 2001. In other words, it’s not a replacement for the otherkin community specific to tumblr, and it is probably older than a lot of the people watching this video. For more info, check out “A History Of The Fictionkin Community” by House of Chimeras.

“Otherkin actually has [sic] some basis in spiritual beliefs like reincarnation and spirit animals” Otherkinity has nothing to do with having a spirit animal and an otherkin have nothing to do with spirit animals. If someone isn’t first nations they shouldn’t even touch that term. I understand where the confusion comes from, though. When you’re just getting to know your animal guide/spirit guide you think about them a lot, and when you think about something a lot you’re bound to experience things that are reminiscent of otherkin experiences, such as dreaming that you are the animal or taking on the mindset of the animal. The author Lupa used to think she was a wolf therian but a couple of years down the line recognized that she’d mistaken her spirit guide for a theriotype. You can read about it in her article “Letting Go of Therianthropy For Good.”

“Fictionkin, however, these people lack any actual reasoning behind why they think they’re a fictional character. They’ll often run around in circles, trying to come up with explanations for it, usually quoting the multiverse theory.” Archetypal connection, dissociation, energetic resonance, imprinting, mental fabrication, psychic connection, differently shaped soul parts, soul shattering, spiritual links, trauma, a coping mechanism turned into an involuntary identity, astral shapeshifting, neurodivergence, developmental issues in one of the critical periods of identity formation… Need I go on? There are plenty of things (both spiritual and psychological) that could explain why some people are fictionkin.

“At least the otherkin community tries to explain their logic with actual spiritual and religious beliefs.” What’s the difference between an “actual spiritual belief” and what fictionkin believe in? Hopefully you’re aware that all religious and spiritual beliefs were created by people. Superheroes are the modern day Greek gods, and fictionkinity isn’t really different from Alexander the Great believing he was a demigod. At least I don’t see the difference, except in the number of people that believe it (and I think we can all agree that the number of subscribers a belief has does not determine how real it is, otherwise we’d all have to accept the Abrahamic god as real and atheists would be seen as delusional).

“But the fictionkin community preaches a theory with no actual evidence behind it like it’s fucking fact.” And what exactly is the evidence behind non-fictionkin beliefs about the cause of 'kinity…?

“How do you actually determine that you are these characters?” I’m not fictionkin, so I can’t speak for them, but I identify as a bison and a gnoll because I experience a lot of things that fit into either narrative more comfortably than it does a human narrative. Body dysphoria, homesickness after places I’ve never been, impulses/urges, supernumerary phantom limbs, periods where my mindset feels less human and more animal, and flashing images of being my kintypes. Am I literally a nonhuman creature in a human body? Who the fuck knows. But it feels good to me to put those experiences in that narrative.

“It’s really concerning that these people would base their entire identities around something so vague.” Assuming someone’s kintype is their entire identity because you only know them from their 'kin blog is like assuming Drea Renee’s entire identity is 'knitter’ because she runs a big knitting blog. It doesn’t really fly. I’m otherkin, sure, but I’m also an animal science student, an aspiring amateur entomologist, a collector of old books, a fantasy fan, a cat lover, a scourer of thrift stores, and I could go on. Old books isn’t my entire identity. Insects aren’t my entire identity. Otherkinity isn’t my entire identity. I understand the assumption as you only see most 'kin on their blog devoted to otherkinity, but trust me, they will 9 times out of 10 have a private main blog where they post about all the other stuff that interests them.

“Let’s assume these memories are real. Don’t you think it would be possible to have memories of a character you aren’t even familiar with?” Plenty of people do, actually! They usually only find out when their source comes out, though. A somewhat famous example is Ebony who identified as a thestral a few years before Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was released. You can read about this in their essay “Fangs, Flesh and Flight” on House of Chimeras’ Livejournal. I myself have had several 'memories’ (I’m reluctant to call them that for personal reasons) of being an elderly woman in various situations. I’ve looked everywhere for something that matches those images, but I’ve pretty much resigned myself to it just being a 'normal’ past life.

“They pretty much make their self-indulgent canon” As a canon-divergent gnoll, I am Offended™. Nah, but honestly, canons and people’s relationships with them are weird (and I have a gut feeling that non-'kin would call our experiences fake whether we adhere to canon or not). Some people swear up and down that Shiro from Voltron still loves his ex, others claim the opposite. And neither of them are wrong since it’s all about the media consumer’s own perception of what they’re shown. Then there are people like me who just go off whatever gut feeling they have, so whatever kind of gnoll I identify as doesn’t show up in any tabletop canon that I’m aware of. I technically identified as a gnoll before I knew what a gnoll was and on my blog there are plenty of posts where I list my traits, asking if someone knows a creature matching them. In the end a kind Anon pointed me towards gnolls.

“According to these people you don’t even have to have memories to be kin. Actually, there’s no real determining factors for how to be kin and nothing is stopping you from being kin with every single fictional character that you like. As a matter of fact, people who are only kin with one or two characters are the minority.” You don’t need memories to be 'kin as there are many other factors that could cause you to feel nonhuman/like a fictional character. I’ve already gone over this in “How do you actually determine that you are these characters?”. What stops you from having a billion characters as your kintype at once is the simple fact that only a smaller number can really be significant enough parts of your personality to constitute kintypes. There’s no set upper limit, but somwhere around 5 is usually where you should start to get really skeptical. The people who have a list of 100 supposed kintypes have just really misunderstood what other-/fictionkinity is and need to be gently corrected. I hate to sound like I’m yelling ‘no true scotsman’ but among genuine otherkin, you’ll rarely find someone with more than 10 kintypes. Past lives, sure, but not kintypes.

“…delusions of being fictional characters.” 'Kinity is not a delusion. Please don’t downplay mental health issues by comparing them to a subculture. The DSM-IV classifies a delusion as “A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person’s culture or subculture (e.g., it is not an article of religious faith). When a false belief involves a value judgment, it is regarded as a delusion only when the judgment is so extreme as to defy credibility.” Otherkinity is an identity, not a belief, and it is in identity that makes no claims about the external world (with the exception of a select few elves and fae in the 80s/90s who claimed to be genetically otherkin). The beliefs surrounding otherkinity, however, can be delusional in rare cases like physical shifting. But in almost all cases the beliefs would fall into the culture/subculture category like religions do.

"And as they always say, anyone can become kin! You don’t even need to take it seriously.” The people who say that are going against the +40 years of established knowledge about the community and the otherkin experience. They’re wrong. You can not 'become 'kin’, only realize you were 'kin your whole life. You can, however, choose to become a copinglinker, which I believe a lot of the kids on tumblr actually are. If you chose your kintype, if you can drop a kintype all willy-nilly, or if you’re “kin to cope,” you’re a copinglinker, not otherkin. It’s a matter of misinformation and a lack of resources (and of kids refusing to listen when more knowledgeable people correct them).

“Eventually you’re gonna have to grow out of this.” Why? I’m happy the way I am (and functional, if that’s what you’re worried about). I’ve got friends, hobbies, and goals. I recently quit my job to focus on my studies, but up until then, I had no problems keeping it. I go to college. I go to parties. I’m going to Pride in a few hours. I’m not exactly secret about being otherkin, and all the people who’ve found out or who’ve been told that I am, have just shrugged and accepted it. If it doesn’t interfere with my day-to-day, there’s no reason to 'outgrow it’. For the record, I know plenty of people in their 30s and 40s (even a few upwards of 70) who lead completely normal lives and happen to be other-/fictionkin.

[hookyarnandquilter]

June Socks

My sock knitting has take a bit of a backseat this month because I have been working on Pink Fizz by Drea Renee knits using baa ram ewe winterburn. It’s such a lovely pattern and the wool is so soft I can not seem to put it down

[ksantillus]

Lots of firsts in this project: first hat, first twisted German cast-on, first knit project in the round, first time using double-pointed needles towards the end (a clerk at the local knitting supply store was kind enough to help me with this part)

The fit is a bit looser than I expected. I'm pretty sure I got the gauge right, but I could have knit the Adult Small size instead of large. It still fits fine for the time being, although I might add some fleece lining on the band to make it extra toasty for my upcoming Iceland trip.

Pattern: Shiftalong by Drea Renee Knits

Main color: Whales Road (Malabrigo, sport weight)

Contrast color: Sailor Mercury (La Bien Aimée, DK weight)

[nobleknits]

Drea Renee Boho Blush Shawl knitting pattern available at @nobleknits link in bio and here https://www.nobleknits.com/drea-renee-boho-blush-shawl-knitting-pattern/ #knitting #knit #knitstagram #knittersofinstagram #diy #handmade #diyproject #knittingaddict #nobleknits #slowfashion #yarnlove #crafty #knittingpattern #craft #crafting #makersgonnamake #instaknit #abmcrafty #knitlove #shawl #knitting_inspiration #pattern #knittinglove #iloveknitting #ravelry #handknitlife #knitlife #i_loveknitting #instaknit #knittersoftheworld

[carwaiseto]

Night shift by Drea Renee knits. Malabrigo Worsted yarn. #knitting

[carwaiseto]

Night shift by Drea Renee knits. Malabrigo Worsted yarn. #knitting https://ift.tt/2YGOjBF

[nobleknits]

Drea Renee Boho Blush Shawl knitting pattern available at @nobleknits link in bio and here https://www.nobleknits.com/drea-renee-boho-blush-shawl-knitting-pattern/ #knitting #knit #knitstagram #knittersofinstagram #diy #handmade #diyproject #knittingaddict #nobleknits #slowfashion #yarnlove #crafty #knittingpattern #craft #crafting #makersgonnamake #instaknit #abmcrafty #knitlove #shawl #knitting_inspiration #pattern #knittinglove #iloveknitting #ravelry #handknitlife #knitlife #i_loveknitting #instaknit #knittersoftheworld

[nobleknits]

Chilly, damp mornings call for something cozy on your feet. Knit Drea Renee's Wanderers Modern Mukluks knitting pattern available @nobleknits link in bio.

[nobleknits]

Cozy toes! Drea Renee Wanderer's Modern Mukluks knitting Pattern available @nobleknits link in bio. 💕