Ive had Knitpro (knitters pride) needles for around 8yrs now, and Im looking around to upgrade my current set... when suddenly I come across this nonsense 😕

What is going on !? Was Hobbii not enough of a lesson for these companies?

(Sorry for sounding so mad, but its all starting to get a bit exhausting)

I wanted to buy linen from them at some point but nvm

I saw their Instagram post, and I assumed it'd be $120 MAX.

You're getting 250 grams of yarn, a pattern, and some unspecified trinkets.

Please tell me I'm not the only one shocked by the price 😭. I get that they're a luxury yarn brand, but TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS is an insane markup.

An additional note:

I am interested in purchasing a yarn advent calendar to try out some new colors and fibers! This box sounds lovely, but obviously out of my budget.

If anyone has tried out advent calendars at a lower price point, please recommend them in the comments!

Got a notification from IG this morning that a poplar sewing account that I follow “shared a story created with ray ban meta glasses”. I promptly blocked the account.

I’m so sick of this crap.

Firstly, I only allow notifications on my own content (and a very very small number of other accounts), if I want to see what others are doing, I log onto the app! I don’t want constant notifications and I hate that when IG creates a new class of notifications, you’re automatically signed up to it.

Secondly, try hard much? Like tech bros shoving AI down our throats, Meta is desperately trying to get people to like their pro surveillance state bullshit product. No thank you. Particularly when these products are most likely going to be weaponised against women and diverse communities (pretty much anyone that isn’t hetero white male), don’t push this shit into sewing/crafting communities that are dominated by those groups!

#endrant.

Welcome to the bitesized BEC thread!

You have the freedom to indulge in BEC-style (b*tch eating crackers) vent comments in this thread. Naming examples is not required (gasp!) but majority of r/craftsnark rules still apply. Basically, don't be shitty and ruin the thread for others.

Hi I am actually the maker of this reel but let us never miss an opportunity to share the snark
KnitPro’s latest catalogue is absolutely riddled with slop illustrations with yarn joined to the bottom of projects, weird merging threads and knitting in the round hanging from straight needles.
Their previous catalogue didn’t have any illustrations at all so they added them just to slop out this rubbish.

WTH! Is going on with indie yarn dyers and there obsession with AI captions and the grifting for cash!! Like come on!

This is yarn Worx in the uk! And this is them not only using AI but asking their customers! To buy them a home!!!!!! Excuse me!?

Yes they are really out here, asking for £40,000 pound to put as down payment on a commercial property, for them to live and work from!!

My favourite part of their AI Audacity is

“Everything we've built over the last seven years has been achieved through hard work, determination and a willingness to invest in ourselves”

Just not with your cash from your “apparently” so successful business you need to move to a bigger place, but not successful enough to use your money though!!!!

Stop using your customers as free atms ffs

*edited to add*
I’m aware it’s a “home for their business” and there offering rewards! But if you can’t fund your business without asking for handouts! Or asking customers to buy “special offers” then you can’t control your cash flow and shouldn’t be expanding at all.

*edited to correct a spelling mistake*

tldr so what i’ve gathered is that syd is pattern testing for simona, asks a question in the group chat that no one answers, then syd messages simona while she’s sleeping that she feels the group chat is ‘passive aggressive’ and wants to be removed, and before even giving simona a chance to respond or do anything because she’s still asleep, syd reports her account for bullying and harassment

Edit: I GOT BLOCKED and my comment was super respectful and informative and factual. Guess AI psychosis doesn’t care about facts :(

Y’all, anytime someone says they had conversations with AI or they got help from AI to think or talk through difficult personal issues, that’s like a million red flags.

This person is getting a lot of backlash but they are doubling down. Talk about not knowing your audience.

This was originally posted by u/Efficient-Display-18 in a recent r/hobbydrama Scuffles thread, but they gave permission for it to be posted here. All words below are theirs, not mine.

I'm new here, and mostly a sewer myself, and I've seen some people have been trying to see if someone has posted this on Reddit, but I haven't seen this yet. This is in the sewing/cosplay/Disney/fantasy books niche hobbies. This has mostly been going on in Threads for the past 3 days.

Designer Daddy is a self-taught designer/costume maker mostly known for going viral for making a quick-changing Disney dress for his young daughter in 2016. He eventually upgraded to making more Disney-inspired dresses for his other children and wife. He also started taking commissions for other cosplayers/authors/bookish community people from around 2018.

However, recently on Threads, people have started to come out about their horrible experiences with him regarding poor communication and forgetting orders for years (one lady tried to get the dress she ordered since 2019), dresses not matching the picture/design and overall shoddy craftsmanship (puckering, darts in corsets, wrong materials/fabric, poorly glued embellishment, etc.). Some people are paying up to $3k-$4k for just one of his dresses (with a $1.5k deposit).

As a result of this, people have started to look back at some of his stuff with more scrutiny and digging up old post/sharing their experiences, such as:

• Using AI to enhance his photos (both background and maybe the dresses themselves) to make it look better

• A gothic version of the Tiana Disney princess Dress, that includes chains on it.

• The Lion King Live Action remake Premier outfits he made for his family (I'll let you be the judge of that)

• Collaborations with other influencers going poorly when he is involved (allegedly)

• Poor teaching of the Corset courses that he taught during lockdown/covid-19

• Wanting to book a photographer but 'paying' her via getting a free ticket to the event that they would photograph

• Apparently deleting negative comments and reviews on IG

One person has tried to call him out before or fix outfits that have been ordered from him, but none have gained traction until recently.

This has led several people to speculate that he either AI-renders the dress completely or pins pieces/fabric to the mannequin without sewing anything together, posts to Instagram, and then, if a person orders, buys pre-made corsets and attaches whatever embellishment and fabric to match the pre-made corset and the image he posted.

He has tried to show a behind-the-scenes look of his process with an IG live stream of him and his team working on a commission, and..... it has not gone over well.

This is still slightly ongoing, with people in various communities/profesions weighing in on it recently and people looking for other designers to work with to get replacement dresses. I kind of hope that some people can get their money back if it's possible.

Here's the thread where you can share any new patterns or products that you don't think deserve their own post. Any craft goes, whether you're sharing sewing patterns, weird yarn colourways, woodburning templates, soapmaking supplies, or any thing else that you'd like to discuss. If you think it deserves it's own thread, feel free to make one!

Please share all personal chatter here--questions, planning, works in progress, successes, failures, discoveries, and anything else pertaining to your personal crafting.

​

I'm so perplexed by this woman and her work ethic and her goals and dreams for the future.

Didn't see anyone else posting about the newest video (which i haven't watched, but did hover over to get the first min or so) and am wondering how people are reacting.

I've unsubbed from her for maybe a year now, when she continually demonstrated she couldn't be bothered to improve in the crafts she was undertaking while still bemoaning how frustrating it was that her garments fit poorly, she used hot glue, etc etc ad nauseum. Like, it was just exhausting to watch.

So i arguably am not the person to be contributing to this topic, but for those of you closer to it...what the actual hell is going on with this channel/her business life?

Welcome to the bitesized BEC thread!

You have the freedom to indulge in BEC-style (b*tch eating crackers) vent comments in this thread. Naming examples is not required (gasp!) but majority of r/craftsnark rules still apply. Basically, don't be shitty and ruin the thread for others.

you don't own the right to something i made with my own hands. surely no one is paying almost $30 USD for a right you already have

(note: none of this designer's patterns are of copyrighted characters or anything that would require a selling agreement. they are extremely basic and easily duped. this is a scam!)

This has bothered me for a while (since the election), after it seemed that she (https://www.instagram.com/handywomanshop/) posted some pro-Trump messaging after he won. I stopped following her but didn't feel comfortable outing her here if I wasn't sure. Also, knitters and yarnies tend to do a good job of uncovering this stuff, and I just don't know if weavers care.

Fast forward to today when I saw a listing of hers and decided to investigate again to determine whether I felt comfortable making a purchase. Annnnd I saw that she is apparently Charlie Kirk 😬

Based on a recent post here, here’s a thread for folks to share their testing knitting experiences and rating.

I feel like it would be good to not only share what your “rating” is but also the why. Some people might really dislike a super social buzzy test group, others may love it.

Starting off,

Emily Y Chen (Em Knits on instagram): 5/5.
I really like structure and she was very communicate, set bi-weekly soft suggested “deadlines” and check ins and was very quick to respond to questions in the pattern. She also allowed alterations and had suggestions if people (like myself) encountered any fit issues. It also was a generous test window for a vest (12 weeks). It was not a super social experience but it was still fun. Her patterns are also some of the most pretty, detailed and clean ones I’ve ever seen. Intense though!

ETA: here is the old thread of reviews for quick access. Thank you [u/goliathfrogcrafts](u/goliathfrogcrafts) for linking below

https://www.reddit.com/r/craftsnark/s/4NBBuk2Pfd

Less of casual snark, more of a full on rant about the experience of trying to download more than one pattern off of Mood's website... or even find what patterns there are on their website.

I think most people who have tried a Mood pattern know that they're going to be iffy at best and downright nightmares at worst. That's fine. You get what you pay for, etc. etc. and I really just look to their patterns for general shapes and vibes, because I look at all commercial patterns as rough guidelines if anything.

However, trying to even look through their pattern collection is actually costing me brain cells. Their website is not kept very up to date with all of their patterns in a UX-friendly way, and it's very hard to navigate to a place where ALL of the available patterns are actually in one place. Sure, there's their blog, you say, and yes, in theory, that has everything....... but there are 56 pages (not 57, as theoretically shown at the bottom of the page, if you try to go to page 57 it redirects you to the homepage... I had to manually redirect the URL to page 56) and only 10 patterns per page. "Sort by type" doesn't work because the patterns are not tagged consistently. I did a very simple check and the very first shawl pattern I found isn't in the shawl section, but a robe and a vest are????? The "all patterns" page doesn't work because it only has a fraction of their patterns... and it can't even JUST be the ones with flat lays because their emails with patterns all have lineart flat lays in them?! (They could just reuse those assets??? I can already think of at least three ways they could populate a page automatically with the right logic setup so they don't have to remember to keep up with it)

Plus, getting a pattern once you've actually gotten through 50+ pages requires clicking through to the pattern, scrolling down to the download section, putting in your information, waiting for the download link, going to your email, opening ANOTHER link, and then downloading the pattern. If the goal is to get people to use your free patterns to buy your expensive fabric and notions, YOU WOULD THINK you would want the UX to be as seamless (ha) as possible to GET TO THOSE PATTERNS and DOWNLOAD THOSE PATTERNS???

I did find a Google Sheets with 480ish of their patterns neatly catalogued, but the links aren't the PDFs, they just lead to google searches for those patterns, which leads to Mood, which we start the stupid process all over again where I have to put my email in every. Single. Time. I want to download a new pattern...

The marketing director in me understands why they don't just dump it in a dropbox, the normal consumer in me says PLEASE, I AM SO SICK OF THIS AND SO SICK OF NAVIGATING THEIR WEBSITE. If they're worried about making sure people see the little upsell widget, I get it! You can still keep it on the page! You can just remove the need to put in your information a million times! There are ways!!!

The worst part is, you have to go through this whole nightmare of a process even if you are logged in with an email that is already subscribed??? As somebody who works in this field and does the annoying work to implement this kind of thing on the EXACT SAME PLATFORM THEY USE, I KNOW there are ways around this while still preserving their marketing needs. I've done UX/UI design so many times to fix issues exactly like this because friction like this causes people to go "screw it" and not hang around on your website, which is the OPPOSITE of your goal. With the size of their company, I KNOW they could afford to have a competent dev do this, and I'm sure it would benefit them in the long run instead of leading people like me to automate this with a crawler bot to just archive everything into a dropbox for myself, which is what I am now very tempted to do at work today since most of my team is out on vacation......

Anyway, Mood, get it together and hire a competent UX dev for the thing you tout as your big hook instead of using AI for your patterns and wrecking your UX.

This was posted about in the new pattern discussion thread, but: Andrea Mowry's Rhinebeck Sweater (aka the one every third person will be wearing) is Antipodes.

Okay, so, I get that she's a knitter and not a sewist, but in sewing we talk constantly about pattern matching. To non sewists, basically what that means is, to the very best of your ability, you try to line patterns up at seam lines in order to make it look like there is no seam. Pattern matching also allows you to sometimes play with things lining up, but at different angles, such as what happens with striped fabric cut on the bias. See the striped examples of the Bora Dress from pattern company Chalk and Notch.

And that is my biggest issue with this pattern: the lack of pattern matching to me just looks sloppy. I totally get what she was going for with positive and negative space across the fronts and having them be opposites of each other. That could have been awesome...if they lined up. They don't. They are offset by what appears to be like, one and a half motifs.

I suspect but will never be able to prove that this wasn't intentional. I think she made a mathematical error during the design phase, ran out of time, and didn't fix it, but instead chose to release on time and treated it like a feature, not a bug. But I also don't think this would have been all that hard to fix. I can see how the tiger stripes at the top on the wearer's left hand side (right hand in the photo) are too big and they push the left side motifs down. That's not difficult to fix! Just make that top motif half the width!

I also would have liked to see the motifs line up at the center horizontally as well as vertically (that's a bit more difficult to explain but basically, end with a corner on both sides), and I don't think with different sizes that would have been hard, but that bothers me less than the vertical offset.

TL;DR: I'm picky about pattern matching, and I'm not a fan of the extremely obvious pattern offset at the center. If you're going to make that the focal point, make it perfect.

On a fence about this. From one hand, it's not a terrible AI slop, on the other hand - it could have been another person's gig.

What do you guys think?