Adventure is out there!

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.

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.

It became the first website to ban pro-Trump content. This occurred after a user reported a pro-Trump pattern maker for I believe hate speech? For some reason Ravelry didn’t have an anonymous reporting feature at the time, so the pattern maker found out and sent followers to harass the user. This caused Ravelry to 1) make the report feature anonymous 2) say “fuck it, you guys are all assholes, Trump supporters are banned now.”

Disney went after a pattern maker on the site and issued a DCMA takedown for a crochet Grogu amigurumi pattern (known as Baby Yoda at the time). This prompted a huge backlash from the users who posted their own modified Baby Yoda patterns en-masse for no other reason than to spite Disney and their lawyers. The entire front page of Ravelry was nothing but Baby Yoda at one point.

(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!

Native Habitat:

Ok

Oh it very much is. He got a lot better about it but was always a British Dude of a certain age.

There's multiple bits of great trans rep & I love the plotline in Unseen Academicals where one woman has to come to grips with her own internalized sexism and how she's been looking down her nose at a great opportunity for her friend, which her friend loves and to which she is well suited, bc it isn't a "serious enough" opportunity. Like, he tried, and in many cases he succeeded, and the constant attempts to get better are why I still love Discworld.

He addressed real problems where he could and encouraged critical thinking, growth and a healthy sense of humour.

Both Terry Pratchett and Tamora Pierce had their first works come out in 1983 (the color of magic and Alanna: the first adventure, respectively). That's 40 years ago!! And these books were modern for their times! And the books that came after that were steadily popular - they could have stayed on writing stuff that was cutting edge in the 80s/90s and been reasonably successful. But they rose to the occasion! They worked on including more racially diverse characters, more gender-diverse characters, more religious diversity, more scathing social commentary.

Career suicide.

Seriously. As someone who was there, I cannot emphasize enough to those of you who weren't that the casual racism/sexism/classism/{string_variable}ism that looks so absolutely blatant (and abhorrent) to you as a child of the oughts was just part of the air we were breathing in the 80s. If they'd written something appropriate to the 2020s then, they'd have never been published again.

As another commentator put it about homophobic humor in 90s television, no it's not ironic; that's just the type of fag-bashing that was considered mainstream appropriate in the 90s. And there's a vital piece of context that is frequently missing. It was an improvement. It meant that television was acknowledging that homosexuality existed. For a very, very long time, by regulation, that wasn't allowed. Literally in the studio standards and practices style guide.

Looking at STAR TREK as a quick and imperfect gauge of the arc of this:

TOS (1960s): The Premise (look it up, it's not my story to tell). Multi-racial/multi-ethnic crew and guest stars (truly, the sheer number of non-white faces in key roles on that show, particularly in single episode guest roles, was absolutely radical for the mid-60s).

TNG (1980s): Several episodes dealing with gender and homosexuality in allegory (clunky AF by today's standards, but bleeding edge when they aired). Multi-ethnic crew and use of the infamous skant on male and female crew members.

DS9 (1990s): Ambiguous morality everywhere. Explicitly bisexual main characters but only from the mirror universe. Alien species that's been ret-conned a bit to trans allegory (again, not my story to interpret). African American commander.

Voyager (mid 1990s-early 2000s): Female captain (absolutely radical at the time). Only one white guy in the primary cast, and he was a bit of a dick (I am also counting the aliens in heavy prosthetics as non-white).

Enterprise (2000s): Bit a train wreck generally, but did include a polyamorous main character with multiple wives who still played the field when he had the chance, and who was, of course because this sort of thing has to be coded, an alien. It was mostly played for humor, but again it acknowledged that m/f monogamy was not the only possible thing in the universe.

Discovery (2010s): Explicitly gay, lesbian, and bi characters with actual relationships in the core cast with a non-binary character added in the second season.

Strange New Worlds (2020s): Good lord & butter. How much rep do you want in one show?

Another potentially useful marker about this, in case it's been lost to the mists of time. My late husband enlisted in the US Air Force straight out of high school in the late 70s. In the early 80s, he was discharged for being a homosexual. Before Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the rule was Don't.

Speaking of DADT, back in the 90s, part of Bill Clinton's radical proposals in his communist remake of America (/sarcasm) was allowing gays to serve openly in the military. Every member of Congress went ballistic. There were months and months of non-stop bipartisan gay-bashing hearings about how this would destroy the fighting readiness of the entire United States military (who knew gays had so much power?). In 1993, a compromise was reached that Clinton signed into law. This became known as Don't Ask, Don't Tell. In short sum, stay in the closet and you can serve. Come out and you'll be discharged. In theory, the witch hunts for LGBTQ people were supposed to stop. It practice... not so much.

If this sounds an awful lot like the current paroxysms of trans-in-the-military bashing going with Republicans in Congress, that's because it's essentially identical. They're running exactly the same rhetoric with a search-and-replace on "gay" for "trans."

DADT lasted until 2010. The exact same arguments from 1993 were trotted out before it was repealed, and precisely none of the dire predictions came to pass. It's been less than two decades since one could be openly queer in the military. It's been less than a decade since we could be legally married (and brother is that in serious jeopardy right now).

it isn't just that capitalism is killing fun and whimsy, it is that any element of entertainment or joy is being fed upon by this mosquito body, one that will suck you dry at any vulnerability.

do you want to meet new friends in your city? download this app, visit our website, sign up for our email list. pay for this class on making a terrarium, on candlemaking, on cooking. it will be 90 dollars a session. you can go to group fitness, but only under our specific gym membership. solve the puzzle, sign up for our puzzle-of-the-month-club. what is a club if not just a paid opportunity - you are all paying for the same thing, which makes you a community.

but you're like me, i know it - you're careful, you try the library meetings and the stuff at the local school and all of that. the problem is that you kind of want really specific opportunities that used to exist. you are so grateful for libraries and the publicly-funded things: they are, however, an exception - and everything they have, they've fought tooth-and-nail to protect. you read a headline about how in many other states, libraries have virtually nothing left.

do you want to meet up with your friends afterwards? gift your friends the discord app. you can choose to go to a cafe (buy a coffee, at least), a bar (money, alcohol) or you can all stay in and catch a movie (streaming) or you can all stay in bed (rent. don't get me started) and scream (noise complaint. ticket at least).

you want to read a new book, but the book has to have 124 buzzwords from tiktok readers that are, like, weirdly horny. you can purchase this audiobook on audible! your podcast isn't on spotify, it's on its own server, pay for a different site. fuck, at least you're supporting artists you like. the art museum just raised their ticket price. once, they had a temporary exhibit that acknowledged that ~85% of their permanent art galleries were from cis white men, and that they had thousands of works by women (even famous women, like frida! georgia o'keefe!) just rotting in their basement. that exhibit lasted for 3 months and then they put everything away again.

walmart proudly supports this strip of land by the street! here are some flowers with wilting leaves. its employees have to pay out-of-pocket for their uniforms. my friend once got fined by the city because she organized a community pick-up of the riverfront, which was technically private property.

no, you cannot afford to take that dance class, neither can i. by the way - i'm a teacher. i'm absolutely not saying "educators shouldn't be paid fairly." i'm saying that when i taught classes, renting a studio went from 20 bucks an hour to 180 in the span of 6 months. no significant changes to the studio were made, except they now list the place as updated and friendly. the heat still doesn't work in the building. i have literally never seen the landlord who ignores my emails. recently they've been renting it out at night as an "unusual nightclub; a once-in-a-lifetime close-knit party." they spent some of those 180 dollars on LEDs and called it renovating. the high heels they invite in have been ruining the marley.

do you want to experience the old internet? do you want to play flash games or get back the temporary joy of club penguin? you can, you just need to pay for it. i have a weird, neurodivergent obsession with occasionally checking in to watch the downfall and NFT-ification of neopets. if i'm honest with you all - i never got into webkins, my family didn't have the money to buy me a pointless elephant. people forget that "being poor" can mean literally "if i buy you that toy, i can't afford rent."

you and i don't have time to make good food, and we don't have the budget for it. we are not gonna be able to host dinner parties, we're not made of money, kid. do you want some kind of 3rd space? a space that isn't home or work or school? you could try being online, but - what places actually exist for you? tiktok counts as social media because you see other people on it, not because they actually talk to you.

there was a local winter tradition of sledding down the hill at my school. kids would use pizza boxes and jackets and whatever worked, howling and laughing. back in september, they made a big announcement that this time, rules were changing, and everyone must pay 10 dollars to participate. when im not scared shitless, i kind of appreciate the environmental irony - it hasn't gone below 40. so much for snow & joyriding.

i saw a bulletin for a local dogwalking group and, nervous about making a good first impression, showed up early. the first guy there grimaced at me. "sorry," he said. "there's a 30-dollar buy-in fee." i thought he was joking. wait. for what? the group doesn't offer anything except friendship and people with whom to walk around the city.