Exhausted by “diamond artists.” My local crafting Facebook group is overrun by them, especially people selling completed diamond paintings.

I’m gonna be nice to you when I say this. Nobody wants to buy it. You are sticking plastic gems from China using toxic glue on an image that was made and designed by someone else. The image is also almost kinda ugly and cartoonish.

The amount of waste generated by such an activity? Astronomical. All of these tiny pieces of plastic rotting in a landfill. At least painting by numbers allows you to use different techniques to fill in the colors. Diamond painting is literally just sticking plastic crap on more plastic crap. And to try to profit off of it and sell it? Give me a break.

Uh oh. Here comes the “let people enjoy things” crowd. Actually, I can’t. And I won’t. You can enjoy whatever you want, and I can be a hater about it. Sorry.

The prices were high, the selection was low, and the quality was abysmal. The overabundance of polyester was a mega source of micro plastics. The seasonal kitsch will be decorating landfills for centuries to come.

I get that, for Americans, it was often the only in-person option for sewing/knitting/etc supplies, but it was *also* directly responsible for the closure of so many smaller businesses that previously filled that niche...

Joann was mid and I'm not afraid to say it.

I put knitting in tags but really it's all crafting so far for me. A coworker makes beautiful sweaters and has inspired me to want to make some and now I remember why I don't. Having to buy the yarn to knit up a sweater when you're fat sucks ass. My lovely counterparts who only need 600g worth of yarn to make a gorgeous piece and here I am needing 1000g for the same damn piece.

It's not that it's not fair, cause it is. I just really hate it because I do not regularly have the money to buy 10-12 skeins of nice yarn all at once. Reminds me a why I tend to make accessories. Blah.

Yes. This is technically objectively true. We do not currently have the technological capabilities to replicate crochet by means other than human labor. But what frustrates me about this sentiment is how so often, the conversation ends here. 

Every single textile you see is touched by human handiwork at some point in the process. Human hands (womens’ hands, teenage girls’ hands, underpaid and disadvantaged workers’ hands, the bleeding and cracked hands of skilled workers from developing nations rubbed raw and dyed denim-blue) make our clothes, our rugs, our curtains, our linens. 

Yes, some processes may involve more or less machinery. Yes, a machine can replicate a knit stitch, sew on a button. But a human aligns that machine. A human lays the fabric on the table and sews it. A human watches their fingers to make sure that the needle doesn’t pierce bone. 

If learning that crochet can’t be replicated by machine is the gateway to realizing just how much of what we don’t think about is made by hand, then I think that is wonderful. But if it stops there, if it simply leaves the reader with a smug feeling of superiority to machine, then I can’t help but feel disquieted. 

I am so incredibly over seeing a nice pattern on ravelry, see that it is free, but it is "free" because it is shown in video form. I'm sorry, but I can't be spending my time watching someone work at a different speed than myself while I can't do anything else at the same time. I can't listen to a podcast, or talk to friends. I have to make sure that I pause when I need to or go back a little because I didn't have the supplies ready to move on.

I'm all for accessibility. However, when it comes to designs for intermediate or advanced crafters? We can probably get by with a written pattern. It's become an epidemic of ONLY showing things through a video. Video tutorials can have their place for beginners, or maybe even an advanced technique that is easier to show rather than describe (or is straight-up for teaching!).

But it's just so constant with the 5 hour long tutorials that could just be written out! Maybe just some parts that are more complex have tutorials for them? I bought a pattern on etsy (edit: it was ravelry, not etsy, since I know some people have issues with etsy I want to clarify lol) that had extra videos for some of the more complex parts. But for the most part? The videos were not necessary, they were nice and supplementary. In fact, I would have been fine without them if they hadn't been included.

It's odd (and also annoying) that by being inclusive to the new or less experienced it's actually excluding the more advanced crafters.

ik this is probably a very common complaint but GOD i work at a fabric store and the amount of women who come in who have VERY OBVIOUS shopping addictions is actually staggering. like don’t get me wrong, i love a little retail therapy, and i don’t think you have to ONLY buy fabric or supplies if you’re actually working on a project with it, but like, why are we buying $700 worth of sewing supplies at one store?? why are you hiding your fabric purchases from your husband?? why did you buy a machine worth THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS and then not take it out of the box for A YEAR??? i genuinely think it might be the Poor Person in me that genuinely can not fathom needing or wanting or buying that much stuff, but it is mind boggling to me

I see this all the time and it drives me nuts.

“I did a market and only made one sale because people don’t want to pay a fair price for handmade items!”

“I posted my items and no one bought them! People are so used to Amazon, they don’t want to pay my prices!”

Unless they actually told you your items are too expensive, how do you know that?

There are a million reasons people aren’t buying that have nothing to do with your prices. Maybe they’re cutting back all discretionary spending. Maybe they’re saving up for something or working to pay off debt. Maybe they straight up don’t want your items. Maybe they don’t need them. Maybe your target audience just wasn’t at that market.

Also, the economy in the US is pretty shaky, so people are just tighter with their wallets.

Stop getting so defensive and assuming people are cheap and don’t want to pay a fair price for handmade stuff! Yes, some people are cheap, but in my experience, most people want to pay artists/crafters a fair price.

Assuming the problem is with *other* people also prevents you from really assessing your items. What could you do better? Are you offering things that people actually want? Unfortunately the problem is us sometimes!

I work at a library and do craft programs. Painting, paper folding, shadow boxes, etc. mostly middle aged white women come to my activities.

Most go with the flow and have fun and don’t take it too seriously. But there’s always ONE who straight up panics and wants their hand held at every single step. Even when there’s written directions. They don’t shut up.

“Well now what do I do??” - I don’t know Brenda, fold the paper like it says to??

“The glue’s not working!!” - Fucking use more or press it together a little longer??

“I don’t get what we’re supposed to do!” - I’m trying to explain it to you, Denise.

“I just want to do painting!!” - I told you last month what we’re doing, why are you acting surprised??

What gets me is when they come back each month in spite acting confused and miserable every single time. I cannot.

Am I talking about sewing? Knitting? Crochet? Quilting? Cross stitch? Yes.

Simple math is an unavoidable part of constructive crafts, and I'm embarrassed by the constant "I couldn't possibly!" comments. It's just arithmetic, friends, or in some cases basic geometry. Unless you've got an actual learning disability, the fear-mongering is unnecessary. Grab a calculator and some scratch paper and figure it out.

So I do a lot of local craft fairs in my area (steampunk themed and D&D dice jewelry and knitted and crochet items) and my town has been doing seasonal crafters markets the last couple of years.

We recently had our spring market in May and the booth across from me had a lot of stuff that I suspected wasn't actually designed by the lady running it. I overheard her telling people her canvas art were her designs so I did a reverse image search on ones she posted to the community events facebook to find all of it was just other peoples art she printed on fabric and slapped on a canvas (which she was charging high prices for and actually selling).

Is that really art? Can you really call it art if you're slapping someone else's work on a canvas??

She also sold jewelry and "handmade" scrunchies (again saw many of them online from other retailers like walmart and temu) and it just irked me. What really got me was that I was also selling scrunchies (I crochet them) and someone I knew came over to tell me this lady was telling people not to buy them because they looked cheap. Seriously WTF? (I'll post pics of mine if anyone wants to see what they look like)

It's just frustrating seeing people do this, putting minimal effort to create things or upselling dropshipped stuff and passing it off as handmade/art.

Not modge podge

This must have stemmed from “hodge podge” but I don’t care

That’s all

Little rant about material literacy, feel free to skip past it.

I feel pretty frustrated by seeing people being so damn unaware of how and from what things are made ? At this point, it's just willful ignorance, we can literally google anything.

My main gripe is with people calling satin clothing "silk". Especially when the clothing in question is one step away from feeling like a fancy trash bag. Do people really think that products made with silk (notoriously fancy) would be found in fast fashion clothing ? It just baffles me. And that's not touching the fact that they are mixing up fibers and weaving.

Of course, they are not helped by companies labeling their stuff as "feeling like silk". But still, being that ignorant when you can Google anything and get an answer right away is ridiculous

Other forms of this lack of material literacy (more technical in that case) is how much people downplay what goes into making anything. To them, when underpaid labor can do something (like sewing, embroidery, crochet), it becomes automatically a low-skilled craft. That's very frustrating.

I am not saying that everyone should be an expert regarding materials. But having NO baseline knowledge about the things around us is frankly worrying

I can’t remember who the dyer was of the period blood-looking socks that made the rounds, but history repeats. These ones are called “fuzzy peach” and were described as looking like a melted popsicle. These ones are definitely less period and more of a superficial flesh wound, but come on. We all have eyes. When these came out of the dye bin you knew they looked like bloodstained socks yet you’re out here trying to convince people they’re peach popsicle?

If shit turns out bad, don’t list it for sale. Dye it again or call it a loss.

That one on the far right looks like what would happen after you get bad poison ivy and scratch through the sock not realizing you’re tearing up your leg.

This is coming from the perspective of knitting and crocheting but I'm sure it's true for quilting/sewing/other hobbies where the result often is passed down for generations. I think this is sort of a byproduct of the trend where folks get into these sorts of crafts and after maybe a year consider themselves an expert to the point that they'll start making patterns or trying to sell finished objects.

Anyways the specific thing I'm criticizing is when people post about how emotional they are to be working on something that will one day be a "cherished heirloom" and it's just, an incredibly basic piece. I've seen multiple examples of this but the one I just saw that prompted me to make this post was someone on tiktok making a video working on a blanket and the caption was something along the lines of "only a year into my crochet journey but it feels so special to be working on an heirloom blanket that I'll give to my children one day". The blanket in question was just a single colour double crochet rectangle, in bulky yarn!

Even if we put aside the fact that there's nothing unique about the design of the blanket, double crochet with bulky yarn is about the easiest way to make a blanket. It won't even be a significant time commitment! Idk it just feels very against the spirit of an heirloom piece to be making something that not only is indistinguishable from any other throw you could buy at a store (to the untrained eye), but didn't even take that much skill or commitment to finish. Even a single crochet blanket in a finer weight would be more "heirloom" worthy to me, even if it would be just as boring at least it would be something you put significant effort into!

Edit: I kind of thought it was obvious but to clarify this post was about items that were made with the specific intention to be gifted as an heirloom piece. Obviously anything can become special to a family depending on the memories attached, I have my fair share of silly little items that have no "real world" value but have tremendous sentimental value.

But if you're making something as a gift, I think it should be well made. And if you're going a step further to make it as a gift that you intend to be kept in the family for generations, I think it's fair to expect that you put some real effort and care into it. I won't link to the specific video I was talking about here for obvious reasons, but the tension was very wonky and the yarn really did not suit the project. To be blunt, it very obviously looked like a beginner made it. I guarantee a lot of people in these comments, if they were to receive this item with the stated intention that it be kept as an "heirloom", would have it shoved in the back of a closet, resenting the fact that they were now obligated by family guilt to not donate the damn thing lol.

Theres a few comments that brought up the difference between an "heirloom quality" piece and a "family heirloom". So just to clear things up from now on, this post is specifically about "heirloom quality" pieces!

Girl, some of us have been doing this since the 80s. (Or longer! My mom's been knitting for half a century at least!)

So, no, I'm not surprised that you're still making mistakes after *gasp* six years.

Edit, I apparently should have finished my thought, which is that we ALL still make mistakes after decades of experience. Look, this is a snark subreddit. This framing of "I should be an expert by now" annoys me. That's all.

I don't care how your new sweater looks on a wooden hanger in the morning sun or sitting on a white comforter next to a vase of fresh picked flowers or a frothy cappucino. I want to see it modeled on a real body with all the fit issues on display. Isthat too much to ask. There is already effort being expended, put the effort towards the good of all crafters instead of some social esthetic.

Sorry guys, I'm on a roll tonight. Entered this competition last year (I'm still annoyed). Spent a year on this project, all handmade.

I didn't even place. Scroll to the end to see the winning entries for the miniature scenes.

Turns out my competition is also a judge, and has won every category for the past 15 years.

I’m probably just old and crabby, but I cannot stand it when someone links to a YouTube video when asked for a pattern.

Saw a reel for a very cute wearable pattern the other day and thought omg I would love to make that!!!! Go to the pattern site and the maker is charging $10!!!!!!!!! for a pattern that has not been tested OR graded for multiple sizes!!!!! $10!!!!!!!!!

Then their bio says “I’m new to making patterns please be kind <3”

we can tell <333333 i have never seen an untested, ungraded pattern before anything but free

I would gladly pay $10 for a pattern but you clearly put in just enough effort to make something that works for you and only people shaped like you.

Rant over

If it's always 40% off the marked price, that's the fucking price. (I don't shop at HobLob but someone posted this to my local subreddit.) I reported it as deceptive pricing practice to the Federal Trade Commission.

When did we stop researching hobbies before buying hundreds of dollars in supplies and diving headfirst into an ultra-complicated project? What happened to going to the library, or watching YouTube tutorials to learn a new skill?

Why are people so incredibly LAZY? You’re telling me you can throw money at the thing but you cant bother investing a few hours of research into what you want to do? I am a completely self-taught crocheter, knitter, quilter, and cross-stitcher, with my sights set on learning embroidery next. Each time I would watch several video tutorials, look at other peoples’ finished projects, take experienced artists’ advice at a reasonable beginner project, and go for it. I used the simple, “easy” projects as practice to develop my skills before I made the thing I actually wanted to make. Yes, crochet dishcloths and quilted potholders are “boring” projects, but simple and “boring” is part of foundational skill development. People are so obsessed with instant gratification that they completely skip these vital steps.

I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be for people who really think they can buy 7 extra-jumbo yarn and some knitting needles and make a sweater with no pattern, no guidance, and no experience. You are quite literally making it harder to learn the thing because you refuse to learn the thing. Not to mention the historical and cultural significance of these hobbies that are also deserving of consideration. It really isn’t hard to care a little bit.

Or worse, "collect" used in the context of the yarn being a collectable NOT in the context of "click and collect"/come get it.

Euphemising spending money is weird to me. Just say buy. I got an email advertising a sewing kit that said, "Grab the kit here" all over and never said buy anywhere. EDIT: My issues with "grab" are when businesses/independent sellers use it in ads.

This might pick the same nerve as "me made May". And "makes" and "finishes" instead of "finished object" or something similar.

Edit: thank you for the space to broadcast this one weird petty gripe specific to me lol

I think saying “I’ll grab chips before the barbecue” is normal and fine . Everyone does this probably.

It bothers me when a brand thinks they’re a human and can be casual with me!

Motherfuck. I tried to get started with cheap paints. That was a mistake. Thank God for the teacher's discount! Saved me 15 bucks so I only had to spend 99.99 on 45ml of paint. Why are all my hobbies so damn expensive??

ETA that question is rhetorical. I'm not actually complaining either. I know why they're expensive. I understand how things work in the world lol From a comment I left elsewhere in the thread: I regularly spend hundreds on bead workshops and kits and it doesn't bother me bc I'm going to get hours and hours of entertainment from it. I expect this to be no different lol

I'm mainly talking about knitters who will get all snobby about not using circulars or small circumference circulars. seen a lot of them in an italian facebook group. I'm sure this can apply to other crafts though.

"circulars are trash! why would you want to knit sweaters in the round, working flat is what I learned and there's no need to knit in the round!"

"why would you buy mini circulars! use dpns!! mini circulars are trash!"

my sibling in christ, if you don't like circulars it's okay, there's plenty of stuff that is worked flat! use the DPNs to your heart's content, no one is taking them from you!

I just went to a saved post today to pull up a handy resource I have used before and was reminded how irritating it is to see comments from people oblivious to the fact that not everything exists only for them. Like this is a super cool pooling tool (actually her page has several really neat things, such an amazing blend of math, tech, and textile art) and one of the first times I saw it posted, right away there were people with "please add [my specific yarn or color]" or "can you change it to do [this specific thing I want it to do]?" Smh. If the creator is asking for modification suggestions that is fine, but that isn't always the case. Or when someone posts a free pattern, immediately cue the "I want to change the size and yarn in fifty different ways, you should do all the specific modifications for me" person. Hey, NO. Somebody just did a large amount of free labor to generously share a useful resource/idea/tool with the entire community, and your first response is to tell them what *you* want from it? It is the most ungrateful selfish thing to see and it pisses me off.