#yarn!!!!!!!

[epersonae]

☕ I want to hear about your yarn opinions!!

[cracks knuckles]

first of all: these are very personal idiosyncratic opinions. I will NEVER yarn-shame anyone for buying what they like! [I gave away a substantial amount of basic Joanns acrylic that was Ryn's stash, and I'm happy it'll get used!]

For me texture is the main thing. I can't knit with acrylic basically at all, although occasionally I'll do an acrylic/wool blend for like, baby things, because I know they need to be machine wash/dry. On the other end of the scale, there's a whole world of extremely crunchy wool that is just WHY WOULD YOU KNIT WITH THAT IT HURTS.

Some probably lukewarm takes on indy yarn stuff: there's too much sock yarn that's not actually sturdy enough to make socks out of; fancy variegated/speckled yarns are actually terrible for complex cabling and lace, because the pattern disappears into the yarn coloration; I've tried working with planned pooling yarns and it never quite works out for me.

I like handspun, I especially like @emi--rose's handspun, but usually you have to treat it like it's one weight heavier than it actually is for the purposes of picking patterns. There's probably a fancy explanation for why, I just know that that's the case. Also handspun is more opinionated about what it wants to be made into, and you have to let it be that thing.

Sock yarn is pointless unless it has some nylon; oddly enough, the stuff at Joanns/Michaels is pretty decent for hard-wearing socks. There's a tricky balance for me with socks to get "sock that will hold up" and "yarn that's not too crunchy"; I'm currently working on a pair out of Knit Picks Hawthorne that's alllllllmost too crunchy.

I am not particularly brand-loyal, something about the intersection of being a cheap bastard (altho less than I used to be) and needing Good Texture means I'm always on the lookout for a sale. (I love yarn.com tbh) Something I miss about the beforetimes is yarn tourism, one of my favorite things about traveling was finding a yarn shop and then buying a single skein of something special to that location. (I did go wild at StevenBe in Minneapolis in 2019 during a knitting retreat and made several really lovely pieces with yarn I got there.)

I am one of those rare weirdos who does not have and does not want Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy. It was already a stressful concept uhhhhhhhh before I had to give away a stash that outlived its owner. I have some stash, and that's nice because then if I finish a thing early I can jump to another project, but endless stash is too much. TBH I'm probably about at max stash right now and will be working my way down for a while unless I do some traveling, which is unlikely.

Also, this is one of my favorite local dyers, they have very pretty tonal colors that I've made quite a few things with.

[anxiousangerball]

I don't know who needs to hear this, but

YOU DO NOT NEED TO START A NEW HOBBY!

STEP AWAY FROM THE TEXTILES!

YOU DON'T NEED MORE YARN!

THAT FABRIC IS NOT CALLING TO YOU! LEAVE IT ALONE!

[chrono-phage]

[horselessheadperson]

Listen I'm a little drunk but... yarn crafts are so important. Textile arts are the backbone of society. All of us take our clothing and accessories and upholstery for granted and it's honestly shocking

I used to buy affordable t-shirts and they were comfy and nice, now I buy them in the same price range and they're sandpaper. They don't wick away moisture and the print comes undone after two washes. I buy denim and the crotch falls apart in months. I read about how modern Singer sewing machines are disappointing and then look at the delicate machining and the beautiful finishes on my 1857 machine and wonder if this is progress?!

Reblog if you're desperate for clothing that doesn't feel like sandpaper or if you like machines that go thunk instead of going obsolete in two years

[breegadey]

kaka hating his legs makes me so sad

[ceaselessbasher]

I arrive at the yarn store and grab a skein off the shelf, the exact same brand, type, weight and color of the one I bought a week ago. Everyone in the store immediately knows that I miscalculated the amount of yarn I'd need for a project. They start booing at me. They are throwing crocheted tomatoes at me. The old lady giving knitting lessons in the corner is shaking her head. She had such high hopes for me. The cashier spits at me when I pay for it.

[reesestshirt]

When I was in middle school, I tried to learn how to crochet. I knew how to knit already, so I figured ‘how hard could it be’ and used my Christmas money on a brand new set of aluminum hooks and a how-to book.

To say it was difficult was an understatement. I spent hours pouring over my book, begging to gain some inkling of understanding from what felt like incomprehensible runes. My reward? One lopsided trapezoid of lumpy fabric and a resolve to never pick up a crochet hook again.

And so life went on, I finished middle school and high school without giving crochet so much as a second glance. In college, I read about how crochet couldn’t be replicated by a machine, it was unique in a way that knitting and many other fiber arts weren’t.

For Christmas last year, my girlfriend gave me what I now consider to be my most prized possession: a crocheted plush of my favorite pokemon. I raved over her skills and, since she never learned how to knit, we decided to have a yarn date at some point and teach each other our respective skills.

We never did get around to that yarn date. She passed a few months after our declaration, leaving me to inherit what was left of her yarn.

Nearly a decade after my initial attempt, I got ready for the toughest battle of my life. My weapons? One skein of yarn, a YouTube video, and a crochet hook that I had somehow never gotten rid of.

I slowly made my way through the video, redoing my work a couple times until I was satisfied with my product: a small, slightly misshapen rectangle.

I looked at my pristinely-made pokemon plush with hope for the first time in months and thought to myself, ‘maybe crocheting isn’t the hardest thing in the world, maybe you were just 12.’

Maybe this isn’t the hardest thing in the world. Maybe I’m just 21.

[kleinergeist]

I'd like to introduce to everyone this horrid thing I created about a year ago but haven't shown many people yet (probably for the best).

This is Baby. AKA The Monster. AKA Sight Tremendous and Abhorred, AKA Vile Insect, AKA A Thing Such As Even Dante Could Not Have Conceived, etc, etc. It's made from bits of scrap fabric I scrounged from various sources and is roughly the size of a human toddler. Its design is based on Mary Shelly's original descriptions of Frankenstein's creature.

But that's not all! Behold!

You can dissect this little abomination to reveal a full set of crocheted, knitted, and scrap fabric organs, all hand-stitched by yours truly!

It has a heart, stomach, lungs, liver, small and large intestine, kidneys, bladder, and, of course, a brain! So it can ponder the horrors of its own existence!

I used this pattern by Less Than Three for the heart. I ended up felting it because I screwed up most of the stitches (I was relatively new to crochet at the time). The result was a bit of a blobby mess, but oh well.

So yeah. This thing lives in my house now (my family hates it). I have yet to reap the full consequences of my hubris.

[salamispots]

more wips

[iknityounot]

(Long post, sorry y'all)

A little more than two years ago now, my grandmother passed away. She and my grandpa had moved down to my home town a few years before so we could take care of them. I brought them groceries once a week, helped them write checks, fixed tvs, and found lost things. I was really close with my grandma.

In addition to her hilarious personality and dry wit, one of my favorite things about her was that she was a painter and a crafter like me! She used to crochet, and I took her to the craft store a couple of times so she could get more yarn and books on crochet. But her arthritis and the shaking in her hands kept getting worse, so she eventually had to stop.

She kept her most recent project, a granny square blanket, safely packed away in a plastic bin. She told all of us she was going to finish it one day.

Her hands never got better, and when she got sick, and we found out it was cancer, she rapidly deteriorated.

After she passed, I went to work helping my mom clean out my grandparents apartment so we could move my grandpa in with her. In our frantic cleaning, I found that bin again:

DOZENS of granny squares, dozens of half used skeins. I asked my mom what she wanted me to do with it, and she said she didn't care. I set it aside and later took it home.

Maybe a month later, that tumblr post about the Loose Ends Project was going around. It felt like a sign--I was never going to learn to crochet in order to finish my grandmother's blanket. But they might be able to help!

So I filled out the interest form. They got back to me SUPER quick. And maybe 2 weeks later, I was paired with volunteer in my state (only 2 hours away!) and the box of yarn, granny squares, and my grandmother's crochet hook were in the mail. That was at the end of January this year.

Over the next couple of months, my "finisher" emailed me regular updates on her progress, and asked me questions on my preferences for how she constructed the final blanket.

At the end of August, the blanket was done!

I had always intended the blanket to be a gift for my mother. So I cleaned it up, put it in the only bag I had big enough to fit it, and drove to my mom's. I gave the blanket to her and she was gobsmacked. I explained to her all about Loose Ends, and how someone volunteered to finish the piece for us. She was speechless. (I was quite pleased with this, because I am not the best at giving gifts, so this was a pretty exciting reaction!)

She said that it was the most thoughtful gift she had ever been given. She said "your grandma would love this". To which I replied, "yeah, I know she really wanted to finish it a couple of years ago". But that was when my mom dropped the bomb of a century on me--she told me that my grandma had started making those granny squares OVER 30 YEARS AGO. She had started the blanket when my grandpa was staying in the hospital, but that was back when my mom was younger than I am now! My grandma had packed them all away, planning on finishing it, when my grandpa was sent home from the hospital. Then it went from house to house, from condo in Chicago to their apartment in my hometown. All that time and my grandma had wanted to finish it, but couldn't. First because she was busy, then because she forgot how to do it, then because of her arthritis, and then because of the cancer. My mom said she had given up on expecting my grandma to finish it. 

She said I brought a piece of her childhood with her mom out of the past.

And really, all of this is to say, if you have seen or heard about the Loose Ends Project and have an uncompleted project or piece from a loved one who has passed away--these are your people. They were so kind and treated my project with such care. That box probably would have been found by my own grandkids one day if I hadn't heard about Loose Ends.

Five stars, absolutely worth it!

(From what I understand, you can sign up to volunteer too! If you have time to share, it might be worth checking out!)

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

while we wait.

may i offer you all a pubby?? lil bby barns?

[ithinkdogshouldvote]

Guardian swap au for 4/13 ^ ^

[beausbugbiome]

Guys look at this GIANT millipede!! Free pattern from Projectarian! 🐛✨

Definitely want to make one myself!

[littlelightfish]

Them <3

[monsterfrills]

So I think I forgot to post about it here but I'm knitting my own wedding dress.

Edit to add materials: I'm using suri silk alpaca (apparently I'm slightly allergic to mohair?), and glass beads for the silvery and pearl beads.

[mothyandthesquid]

“Great Tits!”, inspired by the Great Tit, a small insectivorous bird with a black and white head, blue wings and tail, olive green upper body and yellow underparts.