#crochet rant

[dragonlover736]

Today at work I saw a little girl with a crochet granny square tank top on and I thought it was the cutest thing ever. At first, I was SO proud and thought that she might’ve made it herself, so I complemented her on it. Her parents then proceed to tell me that they got it at T.J. Maxx.. and my heart just broke. I couldn’t even come up with a reply other than “oh.”

As someone who spends countless hours hand making items for myself and others, it breaks my heart knowing there are people out there having to crochet things for pennies just so that big name stores can sell them. I can’t even begin to describe how this makes me feel. Crochet isn’t something that should be taken for granted.

[naomichimarufuji]

crochet hot takes?

-clears throat- buckle up because I have Opinions

To start. There is no fucking reason for some of the prices people are charging for fucking patterns. You literally get a PASSIVE INCOME from it. Like. You do the work, do some promotion, and then it just goes on Ravelry and sits there making you money. Unless that fucking pattern has videos, charts, is size inclusive, or anything extraordinary, then it shouldn't be more than like 5 dollars. And there are designers who I will happily shell out 10 dollars for, but they're usually the blankets I do and those have multiple pictures PER ROW for what it should look like and video tutorials.

And I'm saying this as a pattern designer.

AND SPEAKING OF MORE DESIGNER THINGS.

I hate when I see "free on my website but you can buy an ad free PDF!"

It's not difficult to make a fucking PDF. You made A Document for the pattern. You can just save as PDF and be done AT THE BARE MINIMUM. And I know these fuckers aren't doing screen reader accessible documents either. So pffffft

Furthermore. If you do this shit I'm just gonna make my own ad free PDF of your pattern by highlighting the pattern section, going to print, and then hitting save as pdf. And it'll be ad free because I have a decent ad blocker.

And this doesn't even touch the "size inclusive for free! well except for anyone bigger than an XL. you have to buy the pattern for that" thing

Anyway.

Other designers piss me off so much. This rant is mostly brought to you by dealing with some real crappy patterns I paid Too Much for.

[hookinghijinks]

Small crafting rant ahead: I need crochet pattern designers to actually look at their patterns for readability. Like have someone who does technical writing read over your pattern to make sure it's easy to digest and use.

I've been crocheting for over 20 years. I know what this all means, but the rows are grouped so close together that I was working on round three but my eyes were seeing round four. It's too easy for the numbers and abbreviations to blur together and it's not really clear on what you're doing.

This is what my patterns look like. I've taken classes on technical writing and I have had gripes about how people write patterns for years at this point. Things are spelled out and it's clear what you need to do. There are check boxes for people to mark off if they're finished with a row and the rows are spaced at 1.5 so that it's not a big blur of numbers and abbreviations. There are actual words used as well, making it a bit easier for people to digest it.

All I'm asking for is if your pattern costs me 8 dollars, it better be actually written in a way that's accessible to creators. Take some time to write out what is going on so people can actually digest the information. A block of basically crochet code is hard for the brain to translate.

[guardian-of-hope]

When the pattern is free... but you have to copy each section out of the .pdf because the company's graphic designer got their hands on it.

(The pattern is nearly impossible to follow on the .pdf because of the layout. I think their graphic designer got their degree from a cracker jack box.)

Also my fellow crocheters, am I stupid for not understanding this row or will it make sense in context?

1st row: Ch 1.  Sc2tog.  *Ch 1.  Skip next sc. 1 sc in next ch-1 sp. Rep from * to last 3 sts.  Ch 1.  Skip next sc. Sc2tog.  Turn.  39 sts.

Rep last row until there are 5 sts.

I think it means row on the last line... It's from Yarnspiration.com, which is a brand website, and this is what it's going to be. This is the last thing you do before sewing the individual rows to create the chevrons. (If you click the picture, it links back to their page for getting the pattern just in case someone wants the pattern or needs additional context.)

[ofnestsandcomfort]

I keep buying amigurumi patterns that use bobble stitches as details (claws, currently), but I either end up removing them completely or making the bobbles way smaller because as much as I like how they look in photos I, apparently, haaate how they look in person. >:[

I could of had all four legs done by now, dang it! I now only have one and it's been like 4 hours!

[genderfluidfish]

Why is it that when I try to make a sweater the sleeves end up fucked up?

I made them exactly according to the pattern. I even counted the rows in the pictures to check if there was a mistake in the pattern. There's not. My sleeves are exactly the same size as the ones on the sweater in the picture.

So why do the sleeves on the model reach to her wrists and mine to the elbows? Does the model have weirdly short arms? Do I have abnormally long arms?

Her sweater is one size smaller than mine and the sleeves are the same size for both sizes so I'd expect mine to be a bit shorter on me but the whole forearm? Seriously?

It's not a serious issue, I'll just make the sleeves longer it's no big deal, but the last sweater also ended up with too small sleeves, too narrow this time, even though the whole sweater was very loose and big. So I don't know, maybe sleeves don't like me. Maybe it's my weird Slavic arms and shoulders. Maybe it's a sign from god to stick to making vests. Maybe it's Maybelline.

I'm just mad because I thought I won Yarn Chicken, guess not:/

[rovingwren]

It's one of those nights 🫠🐸

[rovingwren]

I will never learn. At least one hook size up from the recommended. Probably best to just start with two. I didn't just frog 1/4 of a vest because my gauge is wayyyy too tight, not me, never.