Today I found out that yarners think crocheting socks is subversive and controversial and I just…on one hand, why the fuck not, I guess yarners are allowed to have their controversies, but on the other, how much time do you have in your FUCKIN DAY??

My main concern is how they would feel but Maggie u know yarn fandom gotta think about something while knitting five miles of stockingnette for a sweater

Look, you can’t just leave it at that, why is it subversive and controversial? *gets popcorn*

I mean, I’m taking this on good faith, and I’m not saying this is my own personal belief.  I believe in all crafts. 

But…the structure of the stitches and the resulting fabric is pretty different between crochet and knitting.  You get different effects between them, which lends themselves to different crafts.  And none of the effects of (most) crochet stitches lend themselves naturally to socks.  You’re (usually) going to end up with something either stiff and bulky, or full of holes that will Not Feel Good to walk on. Whereas knitted socks will just…BE elastic and comfortable.

Sure you CAN do it.  And there are people and patterns that do it well!!

But MOST crochet socks are a bit like calling this a bicycle

I mean… Okay?  But people are going to Talk.

But this is BABY controversy, this is nothing.  You haven’t even touched on the good shit like RHSS or that time the Olympic Committee dissed us.

Iiiinteresting. So one of those “just because you CAN doesn’t mean you SHOULD” things.

Also I know very little about the yarn fandom except for that bit where a woman had to fake her death and had a nervous breakdown over selling homespun/dyed yarn so like, I already have big expectations.

Was that the one that “died” of leukemia or the one that “died” of lupus, or the one that overdosed?

From what I know of the narrative as it was described to me, I want to say the one that overdosed, but I am intrigued and vaguely concerned that there are multiple distinct individuals the above situation could apply to.

hey umm, what the fuck

the fake deaths thing: indie yarn dyer gets popular, gets overwhelmed by orders, can’t refund money because of shitty bookkeeping, decides faking online death is the only way out.

i’m sure some of them are unintentional rather than premeditated scammers but they’re all still thieving assholes who shouldn’t be running businesses and need to give all the money back.

the olympics commitee: ravelry, well-known knitting (fiber arts in general) site, held a contest they called the ‘ravelympics’ to drum up olympic support then get a cease-and-desist letter for copyright infringement, and the letter said that calling it that ‘denigrates the true nature of the Olympic Games’ and was ‘disrespectful to our country’s finest athletes’

except, you know, ravelry had like 2 million users who all, by nature of ravelry being a website, have basic tech literacy. the social media backlash was so bad that the olympics board had to make 2 official apologies because the first wasn’t good enough.

RHSS: Red Heart Super Saver is cheap Walmart-level yarn. some people hate it because it used to be just really fucking awful and they haven’t bothered updating their opinions. some people hate it because they hate non-natural yarns. some people hate it because they’re yarn snobs(which, btw, comes in two flavors: the disdainful assholes and the people who just don’t see the point if you have the money and don’t indulge yourself). a lot of people defend it because it’s cheap and widely locally available and honestly not that bad after a wash and some fabric softener.

crocheted socks: exactly what kaitoukitty said. people who crochet socks tend to either be new crocheters who are not aware crochet is not the best medium for socks or experienced crocheters who are pushing the boundaries of the medium.

babies on fire: i can’t believe we’re talking about yarncraft controversies and no one mentioned babies on fire. that’s my favorite controversy.

so when deciding what material to make baby blankets out of, in addition to considerations like softness, ease of washing, and allergy concerns quite a lot of people like to consider what would happen to the baby if the blanket was set on fire. yes, really.

wool has the problem of hand-wash only blankets for a new mother (superwash wool exists but that’s a whole ‘nother paragraph), allergy concerns, and also real fucking expensive if you want quality not-itchy-on-baby-skin wool. but pro-wool-blanket people insist that because wool actually resists being set on fire pretty well and also can self-extinguish, it’s the only sensible choice.

acrylic on the other hand is cheap and you can throw it in the washing machine, and while bad quality acrylics might be stiff and plastic-y they’re not itchy, but if it gets set on fire it will melt onto the baby’s skin. pro-acrylic people insist that if your blanket is on fire, you probably have bigger problems than what the blanket is made of.

wow I didn’t expect such a detailed response. thank you!

Fiber Arts Just Be Fucking Like That.

what hte FUCK

A couple more from Ravelry:

If I ask my mother she could probably give me more. These are just what I remember off the top of my head. I don’t knit or crochet (I do cross-stitch and don’t really interact with the wider community) but my mother runs a small yarn dyeing business and has been part of the community on the Internet for a LONG time before that so I get all the juicy details on the drama.

It’s worth noting that the founders of Ravelry, Cassidy and Jessica Forbes (both women) are married to each other; and Cassidy is trans.

I had no idea this was the drama I needed on my dash today

It’s nearly Cozy Things Knitted By My Mother season!!!!

(via @scoutdoesstuff)

1) Yeah I’m not necessarily the biggest fan of the change but the timing and number of TERFs make it either the TERFs co-opted an existing complaint made by people who liked ravelry but had physical issues with the new site, or it was entirely FABRICATED by TERFs to try to make the founders problematic bc one of them is trans.

2) oooo now I want to try making a slipper in Tunisian crochet because you’re right, it makes a much flatter, knit-like fabric that might be actually quite pleasant!

3) I assume it’s a collective word for both knitters and crotcheters, since both work with yarn but their crafts are quite different. It’s the easiest most intuitive word to refer to both groups at once.

I don’t understand… I grew up in crocheted socks… I mean, they were more like house slippers because we didn’t really wear them inside shoes, but still. What’s wrong with 덧 버선?

I love that this looped back after all that to absolve the crocheted socks.

Yamask’s Revenge

Twitter | Patreon Relevant dex entries:

Previously: Sad Litwick & Phantump comic 

quickly lined and slapped some greyscale on an old comic i sketched this summer

kiibo and tsumugi are two interns (?) at team danganronpa and they finally get to be part of their fave series

I used the ‘kiibo was human before the killing game’ headcanon for this one (also i used tetsuya because a lot of peeps use it as name for a human counterpart and i wanted to do smth different than my usual human kiibo)

this was so hard…. here’s a link in case anyone wants to try do this too !!

I mean, I'm 44 and just learned that you can pick up an egg yolk. Seems like cursed knowledge to me.

My roommate asked if I could bind one of her favorite fic for her, and since she puts up with all the mess I create while binding with great equanimity, I of course said yes.

This is the first book I’ve done where I feel the backing process was more a success than a failure. The endbands also turned out much cleaner.

The book is CHONKY, coming in at right around 500 pages. It’s a French or fine binding style, so the hinges are hidden. The book was sewn French link over three tapes, and the cover material is black cotton backed with Japanese tissue paper.

I decorated the cover and spine with HTV vinyl. I made some small but stupid mistakes because I had to wrestle with my Silhouette for literally hours to get it to cut mostly right, and then I was so tired things didn’t get weeded quite right. Still, probably no one not looking for the problems would notice.

All in all, I really like how this one came out. It’s probably my best book so far.

[IMAGE ID: A tweet by “minh tâm h. 🌾 on concrete” @HAEDRAULICS on Apr 20: “everything everywhere all at once had me writing down english class notes in the theatre” with two drawings of sets of two nested circles, one black with a white center, one white with a black center. They are respectively labeled, “the bagel (yin) // -life is mostly dull and bad // -joy is fleeting and ultimately meaningless” and, “the googly eye (yang) // -life is mostly good and worthwhile // suffering is transient and fixable” END ID]

Kiara timelapse

I love her....

got a couple of questions on ig about how i choose colors and i spent way too long putting these together so!! here’s a small color picking guide 🎨✨

hopefully this’ll be helpful to someone, but really i think the most important thing is having fun and experimenting to find what you like best!

so I’m looking at short story publishers (fantasy)

Whenever I see a post like this, I feel like I have to tell people about the Submission Grinder.  I just did a search on it and it came up with 135 markets that pay for fantasy short stories. You can search by genre, pay rate, length of story they accept, etc, and it’s constantly being updated, which a post like this can’t be, and you can also use it to keep track of what you’ve sent where and when, and since a lot of people use it for this purpose it’s got a lot of good data about response times and so on. If you are trying to sell fiction or poetry on the regular, it is such a useful tool and I encourage everyone to use it.

American spells are silent. American spells are silent- one of the only people to use verbal spells in the WHOLE movie was Newt. The British guy. American spells are silent- their country was colonized by Puritans. America, from the time of its colonization, persecuted witches. They taught silent spells so they didn’t draw attention to wizardkind.

…. You do know that Europe had been conducting witch-hunts at varying levels of intensity since the medieval period, right?

Like I know that the Salem witch trials get the most attention but come on

Oh, yeah, I know that. This is less about Salem, and more about Puritan culture and how it affects Americans even today. We have a different sense of personal space, more handshakes, no cheek kisses, etc. The Puritans were a radical religious group which got shipped over to America, and then cheerfully began to murder, oppress, and outcast anyone who didn’t fit with their ideals. It’d be like if someone sent Al Queda to their own continent where it took several months to get back to anywhere else in the world. If I was a witch or wizard over there, I sure as hell would learn silent spells as quickly as possible.

Also, Salem isn’t really important except when studying mass hysteria- there were many other American witch trials, but, they didn’t use spectral evidence and offer a reprieve if one turned in a neighbor. That’s why Salem is so famous, tbh. To quote my professor, “Something went wrong”.

(I took a class that was focused on the Puritans last semester, which is why I even thought of this idea in the first place. )

Ah I see. I mean, they did still teach silent spells at Hogwarts, but I guess the point is there was more consistent and pervasive need for secrecy in America so it became far more the norm.

Taking it further, then, shouldn’t this have led to regional variation? The film was set in New York so Puritan influence would be quite strong up there, but what about the south, where the settlers came from Jamestown? Or Louisiana, originally colonized by the French? Do you think they’re more likely to use verbal spells?

(I doubt in reality that JKR’s world-building is this nuanced, but we can imagine :P)

Opposite element AU featuring firebender Katara, earthbender Aang, airbender Toph and waterbender Zuko.

World building details on this AU can be found here. 

I would pay top dollar for a comprehensive, source-supported explanation of how Superwholock vanished.

Like……..that was the core of tumblr in 2013. Its tainted life-blood. Its fetid royal palace. Destiel this and Johnlock that. Tardis-in-the-impala-at-221B URLS. Bendydoot Cucumberpatch and long analytical debates of which doctor is best doctor

What caused the end? What destroyed it? What series of events sunk this fortress? I’m so. So curious. This was so much of what tumblr was. So unavoidable. It’s cultural history. I want. to know.

So I’m not completely sure but I think you can pinpoint the disappearance to the month following Dashcon. Like, the entire year prior, things were going fucking insane; The DW 50th anniversary, Sherlock returned after a hiatus, Dean became a demon or something I don’t remember. Point is, the fans were worse than ever. 

And then Dashcon happened: All those people got together for a nightmarish event in the ball pit (for anyone who doesn’t know what Dashcon was, look it up and read any of the news articles about it. I promise, you will not be disappointed). 

Now, I wasn’t too active on tumblr at that point because of school reasons, but I remember finding out that the new season of Supernatural had aired on TV, and I saw NOTHING about it on tumblr. Not a single post on my dash. It was a miracle, but I was so confused. How had the whole fandom just vanished like that? I still don’t know for sure, but it was very shortly after the Dashcon incident. 

Then Doctor Who returned. New doctor and a new companion. Same scenario. Nobody said anything online. I was still big into DW so that was kind of a bummer but it was still astounding.

I went back online more readily and started realizing that fandoms, as I had known them, were essentially dead after that summer. It was like everybody simultaneously realized how toxic those communities were after they all got together in person and proved themselves to be a disgusting bunch.

It was the fastest and most unsettling jump in internet culture I’d ever seen. Overnight it became an embarrassment to admit that you were in a popular fandom. All because of fucking

“Superwholock died as a result of Dashcon” is the most fascinating theory I’ve heard in a while amazing

(And you know, seasonal rot and kids getting older and all that but s t i l l)

Netflix’s new site is a giant “f*ck you” to Comcast and Time Warner

Netflix launched a site late Wednesday night called Fast.com, where — in one click — anyone browsing the internet can see how fast their internet speed is. Although it’s great for consumers, some internet providers might not be happy about the new website.

Follow @the-future-now​

Fuck Comcast

Netflix didn’t invent that it’s been around

Netflix didn’t invent speed checks, but this site is Netflix’s.

Okay, so here’s why Netflix speedtest is so brilliant. 

Most of us know about Speedtest.net, right? Well Comcast and Time Warner know about it too. They know customers use it to check to see if they’re getting what they are paying for. Comcast techs even tell customers to check their speed with Speedtest.net. 

So, to make sure people think they are getting good speeds, Comcast and Time Warner prioritize traffic going to Speedtest.net. When you check your speed there it’s artificially inflated. That is NOT the speed you are getting when you browse tumblr and that is definitely not the speed you get when you watch Netflix. 

Comcast and Time Warner can not artificially inflate the results by prioritizing traffic to Fast.net unless they also prioritize traffic to Netflix, and they definitely do not want to do that. 

That is pretty clever I gotta say.

Yeah and fast.com even encourages users to cross-reference with speed test, with a little passive-aggressive “if there’s a discrepancy, maybe check with your internet provider :)”