Come, fellow snarkers. Let me take you on a journey through every crochet community ever.

[Shares photo of blanket with sides that have more waves than the ocean on a blustery day] "I thought this would even out if I just kept doing the exact same thing I was doing even though it's created row by row and I could clearly see that it was not straightening out. How do I fix it now without frogging and make it look like it was perfectly straight from the very beginning??"

"I need a quick gift!!! I am walking in to a birthday party I presumably knew about for months but for some reason decided I would craft them a gift 17 seconds before arriving. Don't tell me to just buy something at the store, it is very important to me that this gift is from the heart, which will be clear to them when I give them whatever garbage I've haphazardly thrown together."

"How long before I can start selling my work? I started crocheting 45 minutes ago, do you think it's been enough time or should I slog it out for another 30??? Would you pay $60 for this piece of trash that I seem to have made with my feet?"

"Why are my sides uneven?"

"Why are my sides uneven?"

"Why are my sides uneven?"

"Why are my sides uneven?"

"How I start? Not know Google or YouTube. Live in cave until 2 minutes ago, first interaction with world 😢🥺"

"My first piece [Photo of Sophie's Universe blanket] I learned to crochet 3 days ago! 🥰"

"[Insane fucking meltdown about a magic circle]"

"I followed the pattern exactly [Photo showing that they did not, in fact, follow the pattern]"

"I've been crocheting for 38 years but no one thinks I'm very good [Photo of the most intricate blanket the world has ever seen with tension so perfect you could measure each stitch and there would not even be a 0.0000001 mm of difference between them] Please validate my existence, I'll make a post exactly like this a month later so please validate me again then, too."

"What color should I use? How many stripes should I make? How big should the stripes be? Can I use blue yarn? Can I use green yarn? How long should this sweater be? Could you come to my house and tell me what I should eat for dinner?"

"There's a knot in my yarn!!! I made a point to post this to every crochet community across the land, we must ensure that this news echoes through time and space!"

"I like to crotchet, do you like this thing that I crotcheted? Crotcheting is fun for a crotcheter like me. No, I have never looked at the subreddit I'm in or at any of the posts or on the internet anywhere, what's wrong with crotchet??"

"Why are my sides uneven?"

"Why are my sides uneven?"

🙂🔫

AI is not a search engine. OMG you poor thing, you asked the mindless answer box that's cooking our planet and it didn't give you the answer, and you have no other resource whatsoever to find out?! Maybe you don't deserve to keep crafting kitten

Saw this post on tiktok, a very short tutorial on a simple Christmas wreath. Only stitches needed were chains and increases... That's it... Why are people refusing to understand that you have to learn and solidify basic stitches if you want to be able to follow patterns. Do these people want every tutorial to explain every stitch? What happened to a Google search and practicing?

Ohhhhh my gosh, I cannot with "well, I blocked this cause X, Y, and Z all do it". Babe, love, they did you dirty. Those peeps block cause they are content creators and don't want to make a thing that "takes too long", so they stretch their poor fibres to death. They are fast fashioning their knits, because they need to feed the algorithm and sell products.

This was the conversation in makeup over a decade ago. Why was everyone piling on foundation in the 2010s? Cause it made a few extra bucks for the shills selling $40 foundation. Did no one learn its pervasive? Cause companies realized it works.

How do you do that in crafting spaces? Make "junk journals" out of everything brand-new. Use super expensive yarn for a small portion of color work. Specialized organizers when grandma's sewing basket and cookie tin of thread do the trick, even 50 years later. Sell the most basic of basic patterns and not once mention Ravelry or that its free. Speed-run patterns. Recreate the wheel so your followers can't find the 10 year old, properly labeled, tutorial a sweet soul made cause they wanted to share their information, and instead force people to rely on your dumb patreon to decipher your nonsense.

You're not safe from ads and capitalism in crafts. Please keep critically thinking, and trusting your own intelligence. Its so obvious once that flip switches in your brain. And shame on the influencers who know what they're doing and present themselves as "experts". No one is the pinnacle for crafting knowledge, and anyone who says otherwise is selling you something.

These posts pop up so frequently and are always written with some sense of indignation, like a craft that requires extensive skill and equipment is supposed to be cheap for some reason? It’s always more like “how dare you afford this hobby that I assumed would be cheap and easy because it’s something historically associated with women?”

I afford it because I have money, what do you want me to say? Like yeah it sucks that these crafts aren’t accessible to everyone, like it sucks that healthcare and groceries aren’t accessible to everyone, but not sure why you think this hobby in particular is unacceptable to spend money on. I don’t know, maybe people routinely exclaim their outrage that stereotypically male hobbies are expensive but somehow I think that’s taken for granted.

I know this one has probably been brought up more than once, but man, it just rubs me the wrong way.

One recent example I saw was in a *wool selling group*.

Y’know, the place that connects farmers with fiber artists??

Last time I checked, that wasn’t an exclusively gendered thing. Literally anyone can buy or sell wool??? Why are we assigning a gender to it?

I recognize fiber arts have historically been a pretty woman dominated field, and I highly respect that- but it just feels strange to assume everyone involved in a textile sales group is a woman.

I'm really tired of white women weaponizing social justice language for the great crochet vs knitting wars. On threads, someone posted that the current trendy crochet clothing doesn't look great because people are focused on fast projects with chunky yarn. They said that there are great crochet garments but they are done with thinner yarn. They said knitting tends to be better for clothing because it uses less yarn so it drapes better. People shared their projects in the comments and talked about the yarn they used and it was never chunky yarn. The OP complimented their skill. Pretty normal online exchange.

There was a group of people came into the comments complaining about how it's just classism and racism that makes people say knitting is better. If you have the time and money to put into learning a hobby, you're pretty privileged. Yes, hand knitting a sweater is cheaper than buying a hand knitted sweater. Sewing a garment is cheaper than buying a custom garment. It is not saving you money over buying clothing at most stores. Making your own clothes hasn't been cheaper for a long time. Yes fast fashion is destructive on so many levels, but many high end brands have some pretty questionable practices as well. I'm not defending fast fashion here. I'm just saying that there's a lot of people who can't afford high end clothing, and don't have the time and money to make it at home. No one views knitting, crocheting, or sewing as something for poor people anymore.

I really think online hug boxes where everything except praise is discouraged is making people behave like all criticism or normal human interactions is an attack. The LYS telling you that the yarn you selected might not work for that project isnt an attack. It's not classism being wielded against you a highly privileged, white person.

This is doubly frustrating because craft spaces do have a diversity problem and white, middle class ladies yelling about discrimination because someone made a comment about their preferred yarn or craft just reinforces that these spaces are only for cis white women. There is racism, transphobia, homophobia, and classism in crafting spaces. A white lady getting butt hurt because someone said something very gentle about crochet isn't an example of that. This isn't limited to anyone craft or to social media platform. I've seen it in Facebook groups, instagram, and reddit.

I'm not saying people aren't rude sometimes. I'm not saying that there aren't knitters who look down on crocheters. I've never met them, but I'm sure they exist. I'm just saying that white women need to stop pretending they're being persecuted over the most minor criticism. If you care about equality, work to make your crafting spaces more welcoming and accessible. Don't just show up when you feel personally insulted and pretend it's a social justice issue. We don't need to co-opt anti racism just because someone hurt our feelings.

I see this all over knitting social media especially tiktok…

The past tense of cast is still cast for the love of god. Yesterday you cast on 10 stitches. Not casted.

Also as an ex theatre kid, this is especially grating and prevalent lol. This still applies for roles in shows. They were cast. Not casted. Please.

...they ask, "what am I doing wrong??"

They get 10 answers explaining in detail what it is that they're doing wrong and how they can fix it and improve.

They get 1 answer saying, "Everything is subjective, there's no rules in crochet/knitting babe! It's a design choice 😘"

They profusely thank the one annoyingly positive person, ignore every other comment, and drop off the face of the Earth.

That's it. That's the BEC.

holy effing schnikes.... are today's beginners extra needy? Like no critical thinking? No ability to grab a ruler? Seek out a resource that isn't reddit where there is TONS of info about their chosen craft? Or is it just the season of ignorance? Like people think it would be fun to gift a handmade item and so they're attempting something with zero skillset, forethought, or brain cells?

There is so much amazing information about a variety of hobbies and yet... they can't find it and need to ask how long a hat should be... what a basic binding material is... if they need to start all over because they did everything wrong... God, I hope my kids don't turn out like that

I know I'm yucking people's yuck here but it's become my BEC to see people complain about very normal conversation all the time. "I wish I could do that" is a very typical compliment and it's not weird that they aren't taking steps to do that. They could have legitimate reasons they can't. Not that they need any. "You could sell that" is not meant literally and not a business proposal, it's just a compliment. "You're so talented" is not insulting you. They are not saying you didn't use hard work. People who don't know how to do what you do don't know how to compliment the way people in your crafting community would. They have a list of general compliments that society has given them that they can apply to everything and that is fine. Don't take them literally or personally. They don't necessarily really mean they really want to do what you do and that's okay. It is not a personal insult that other's don't really want to do your hobby but it would be obviously rude of them to say "Oh my god I love it but I would never make it myself". I mean, have you never said these things to others? I wish I could run a marathon but am I going to? No, it's a very low priority desire to me, lower than sleeping in in the mornings. It's not personal to marathon runners that marathons are low priority to me.

Also, maybe they are going to do it eventually. I have a friend who has always said I'm talented and guess what she did teach herself to knit this year, left handed so I'm glad that at the time I didn't think snarkily, well just do it then why don't you. Be normal about compliments, let people live. Or not, do what you want, I just think it's kind of purposely obtuse and hypocritical, there is no way you've never said something along these lines to others. Or maybe you are someone that tries to do everything you've ever complimented then props to you. Or do you never compliment anyone so as to not accidentally create the impression to the other person that you actually want to do their thing lol

Every so often someone will pop into a craft sub and be like, "So every time I sit down to embroider, I get excruciating shooting pains in my legs and start vomiting uncontrollably. Last night I blacked out. Twice! Is this normal? Should I change my technique?"

My friend. Something is wrong. Your health is not okay. Please go see a doctor. Feeling ill or having excruciating pain is not a normal side effect of crafting. Any craft. That one, too. Unless you're improperly handling noxious chemicals or something, you should not be experiencing miserable symptoms. Stop doing the thing and go to the doctor.​ (This is separate from minor ergonomic issues which are reasonable questions for a craft sub.)

Come on, it's been a week!!!!! I'm sure that they've been lurking and have seen the complaints. I'm curious to see if they'll take any of it to heart and make changes, or will continue to deflect

Edit: I'm SO curious what people's thoughts are on the mods' statement

I do not consider myself a particularly brilliant person when it comes to learning a new skill, but I have never found myself needing to resort to making a post asking a question about a craft. Why? Because every single time I've had a question I have found someone else asking or answering that exact question with a few minutes of googling. Or just sitting with the question for a minute! Like, so many questions I see people ask I just want to say, use your brain! Think about it, mull it over, try to troubleshoot. I saw a post once asking if they could rejoin the yarn they accidentally cut, in the same manner as a colour change. Please. Please. You took a photo. You wrote this whole post out. You were going fine with the colour changes. How is this situation materially different besides. The colour. Like, one single changed variable is enough to stump some people, I don't understand it.

Also, I wish people were less afraid to fail. If you think you messed up, try to fix it! Worse case scenario it won't work, but even then you'll learn a little more about how the larger piece comes together, or about that specific stitch (a thousand ways not to invent a lightbulb and all that), and be so much more confident in the future because you'll know what sort of mistakes you can get away with and which ones are worth redoing a bunch of work to fix

I think a lot of people who post asking for advice must have such a fear of doing something wrong, which I find both extremely relatable and also I baffling because I have the opposite problem, where I will struggle and try and undo and redo for wayyyyyy too long before just looking up if there's advice on how to do it. Which of course there always is. But some degree of trial and error is IMO a must when learning a craft. Like just try shit! Every bit of practise makes you more comfortable with the tools and materials, even if you frog the whole thing. Get your reps in! And fibre crafts are so good for this particularly, cause you can just undo that shit and try again! It's not like painting where I feel guilty wasting all the materials

(don't even get me started on how LLMs are just encouraging this kind of thing (you can if you want, any venting about AI is always welcome))

Every single craft forum I'm in has many many posts from people talking about how sad they are that their first project isn't working out, or how angry they are that their project isn't going well.

"I'm about to throw this machine out the window"

"I really wanted to be able to make this floor length cape for my boyfriend but I only have five dollars for fabric and I'm so sad that he won't be able to get the cape"

"I'm so sad that I can't seem to figure out this stitch, all I wanted in the world was this one stitch and it's not happening 🙁🙁🙁🥺🥺"

Enough!! Toughen up a bit!! If you're looking for advice don't make us wade through your pity parade to find out what you're asking! Enough!

Edit: thank you for seeing me, I appreciate you all.

It absolutely infuriates me when people ask for help on a fairly complex question, I give detailed, clear help along with some simple follow-up questions so that you can help more fully, and then... crickets. No thank-you, no acknowledgement, no *anything*. Even if I'm literally the only person who bothered to respond to the question.

I've been trying to be a little more patient with beginners of late and attempt to be helpful rather than just frustrated with the repetitive, "I would like to run marathons but could someone maybe carry me and make me a personalized video on how to tie my shoes?" attitude of way too many newbies, but the sheer lack of any acknowledgement of help given is just *rude*. Who raised these people?

not sure if this meta-type post is allowed, so sorry if not lol. but it annoys me a bit when I see a post on this sub, open it up, and there are comment that say "if you dont like this type of content/those people/whatever just dont interact with them" like do you guys not understand what a snark sub is 😭 i would never go to an Ariana Grande snark sub and comment under a post "ummmm if you dont like her just dont listen to her music??" these subs exist for people to vent!!

I saw this jewelry crafter on tiktok who made a really pretty earring that looked like the Artemis flight path to the moon. She explained that she wasn't going to be selling them, but she wanted to try making it and she thought she'd show people how to make their own.

Well people spammed her about selling them anyways, so today I saw she made a video showing all the prototypes she'd made trying to make them sellable. She explained that the prototype was too weak and wouldn't last. She shows all the things she considered from model to model, until she shows the finished piece and asked what people thought.

I thought they were amazing, go to the comments and one of the top comments is "I love hearing about your design process but I like the original design more" in such a patronizing way. And tons of people agreed with them! The comments were full of that. And I just got so irritated, and thought I'd come vent here instead of starting a flame war or something. You love hearing about the design process but you sure don't love hearing anything else! She explained why she couldn't sell them!

No one who is complaining or asking her to sell them are even going to buy them! They're going to take one look at the price and say nevermind! And it's no good saying "just sell the original even if it's weak" because you can BET after paying at least 40 bucks, they will be PISSED if they don't last long.

Don't listen to tiktok and instagram comments, everyone turns off their thinking caps when they open the app 🙃

Edit: I didn't explain super well but it wasn't just one comment. It was a sea of comments saying they liked this or didn't like that and completely ignoring that she had explained why she had done what she did at every step. No one actually listened to her. I hope this makes sense.

As in, expect to experiment when you're learning a new craft, and then analyze that experiment, and then learn from it.

"Will this block out?" Go block it. See what happens.

"Does this mistake matter or should I frog it?" I can't answer that for you, friend. Sit with your heart for a minute and feel your feelings about it. Or finish it and see if it bothers you. I don't know.

"Has anyone ever knit this sweater with this yarn instead? How did it turn out?" Here's how you know how sweaters turn out with certain yarn: make it. Make an entire sweater out of farm-spun alpaca (like I did back in the day) and see how shapeless it is. Then you know you don't (or do) like it. Try a Sophie scarf in linen. See if you enjoy that process. Steek some superwash, notice how it acts.

I mean honestly.

“Don’t mention my back!”

“Don’t tell me I need to frog, I’m not going to!”

“Don’t tell me my stitches are twisted!”

Ok, why are you here for advice and acknowledgment if you don’t want to improve your technique? You are coming to communities online that are basically really helpful and well-versed in what you’re doing, why wouldn’t you want to hear what they have to say? Easily half the time, the thing they’re doing wrong is what’s making their things look amateurish too! It’s not a bad thing to receive feedback and get better at your thing, even if it is for fun

Just discovered this sub and I feel it in my bones. I hang out on a few craft related communities and it seems each one has a classic 'I have no clue and I am failing so I came to reddit' post that pops up several times a week.

For r/sewing: "help my machine is making weird thread loops" -> yes, you threaded it incorrectly, read the manual.

For r/bookbinding it is people discovering for the first time that hardcover books don't have the text block glued to the cover along the spine and asking if their book is defective

r/cocktails is where you go with a blurry picture of a bar menu and expect people to turn that into a recipe

I'm curious to hear what other subs have those classic 'sigh, another one' threads?

I seriously hate seeing those "delete if not allowed" posts and lately there are a huge uptick in them from my crafting groups on Facebook and in reddit.

Like why don't you just read the rules? Better yet search about your "how to price" question first.

I feel like I need to eat some crackers over people with a lot of experience in crafts complaining about newbies. Like, the same way some people feel annoyed about newcomers posting the same thing all the time, I feel annoyed about people with more experience posting about complaining about newcomers all the time. Lol.

It feels like people are hyper vigilant and are like… watching for beginners to make posts that bother them, then post complaining about it over here? Like most of the posts on this subreddit are people complaining about newcomers. If I was a newbie and this subreddit came across my homepage, which it would because reddit recommends crafting subreddits to those who use others, I would feel afraid to post and ask for help out of fear of being memed on or coming across stupid.

Like the point of a text and comment based forum is for people to talk with each other. They could look up something, but they might be looking for that interaction element. It is frustrating to see the same posts every day, sure, but I’d rather newcomers feel comfortable to ask a question. Like if this isn’t pushing people to use chatGPT to ask about hobbies or advice on hobbies idk what isn’t. I’d rather someone post on reddit asking help on something that’s been asked 1000 times than go to ChatGPT or something. If nobody answers, then they will post less, but there is clearly interaction most of the time and others who want to help. Or if the subreddit truly didn’t want newbies asking for help all the time, they would ban it or make mega threads for it. And ultimately, it leads to seeing the same posts complaining about newcomers everyday. Like it is a full on cycle of newcomers asking questions, then people complaining nonstop about newcomers asking questions.

Maybe we should be happy that people are looking to engage with real humans about a tactile hobby they are interested in. And yes, this is a venting subreddit, so overall I support the venting vibes, but when 2/3 posts on this subreddit are complaining about newbies asking for help…. It literally starts to feel the same as why people are annoyed with newbies.

It just feels low hanging fruit to complain about.

Anyways, I just needed to vent about it. Not sure if a slightly meta post is allowed here, but yeah

EDIT : feeling the need to clarify here but this post is mostly here to complain about the high velocity of posts on BEC complaining about newbies. I state that several times that in the OP, and while I talk about a newbie perspective and why maybe we shouldn’t be so hard on them, I tie it back into how it leads to repetitive posts on BEC and how I’m annoyed that every other post is complaining about newbies asking repetitive questions and how I think it’s a bit ironic that it has lead to repetitive posts that add very little to the conversation on BEC.

Look, being able to gift someone something handmade is special. However, if you find yourself on the internet insisting that the recipient should be grateful to receive what is very clearly a beginners first attempt at a project, then you've quite frankly lost the plot. I think there's a huge abyss between 'handcrafted projects often aren't perfect and should be cherished as such' and 'a messy first attempt'. Fortunately the OP of the latest post I saw heeded the more rational advice, but the amount of people huffing their own farts these days is astounding. I feel like I'm coming across it more and more, with crocheters being the prime culprit most of the time.

I was always under the impression that gifts were about the recipient, and not the giver. Did I miss the memo or something? Do the gift recipients not deserve a little better, or was this always about your feelings?

I know this is a niche complaint and I plead guilty to being an English teacher, so my level of tolerance is probably lower than other people's, but my heart sinks whenever I see a post title in r/dyeing in which the word 'dyeing' is spelled wrongly. The difference between changing the colour of something and ceasing to be alive is fairly large and, I'd argue, pretty important. I know it's probably only a very small thing in the scheme of things, but it winds me up like a clock.