Vogue Knitting Hates You: Part IV

(Here are parts I, II, and III.)

So far, we’ve mostly looked at the women’s patterns in the Vogue Knitting Catalog of Mental Instability. That’s partly because, even though dudes are increasingly taking up the needles, knitting is still a mostly female-dominated hobby. So let’s hear it for men’s equal rights to devote hours of their lives to making something they will wear once and immediately regret:

MANOS: THE HANDS OF FUGLINESS

 

How to take a picture of a model wearing a stupendously ugly hat: Give him a random prop and have him make a face at something in the distance.

Case A:

“If I squint really hard, I can almost see my career in the distance.”

Case B:

He's about to start a rumble with a gang of crocheters.

 

As far as themes go, VK has covered space hookers and zombie flappers. Why not throw in a few pirates, just for good measure?

No, I'm not going to make a Seinfeld joke. I never liked that show.

 

It's possible the VK editors did, though.

 

And finally:

"You should see my big scarf!"

Vogue Knitting Hates You: Part III

(If you missed them, here are Part I and Part II.)

Today, we’re featuring a little-known bit of literary history. Say hello to Daisy Buchanan’s reanimated corpse:

 

She has lots of fashionable zombie friends with whom to sip cocktails and talk about eating socialites.

They have such fun!

Of course, they’re still insufferably boring and underfed (that’s just my interpretation of the book).

Old Daisy’s not quite as whimsical as she once was. Sometimes, instead of dancing or running people over, she just stands perfectly still, waiting to bean someone with an umbrella so she can feast on their flesh.

Thanks for stopping by, Daisy!

Unrelatedly, does this coat remind you of anything?

(Hint: It rhymes with "schmajina".)

Vogue Knitting Hates You: Part II

Yesterday I started posting some patterns from the current Vogue Knitting catalog. These were patterns that made me want to take up a less psychotic hobby, like extreme macrame or cat collecting.

In Part I, we looked at the Futuristic Space Hooker collection. Here in Part 2, we’ll start with 1993’s sweetheart:

Gimme "sullen."

No, sullener. Like, "My parents won't let me go to the Nirvana concert so I'm going to glower and write on my shoes until death comes."

 

Perfect.

 

It may seem as though I’m picking on the models and not the patterns themselves. Let me fix that:

PIMP HAT

See? Adorable model doing the best she can to convince the kind of woman who knits as a hobby that she really needs a badass felted pimp hat in her wardrobe. (Note: She does. We all do.)

Meanwhile, this woman invites you to come to her house for tea made of grass and splinters:

Her house reeks of patchouli and feet, but the cats like it that way.

 

Van Gogh's expression really says it all.

 

And finally:

HELLO, PALM SPRINGS!

 

Vogue Knitting Wants You to Take Up a Different Hobby

I bought the pattern for my wedding dress from Vogue Knitting. It’s a great pattern: easy to read, customizable, came with lots of pictures and technique illustrations. Really perfect. So when an email popped up last night announcing a $2.99 sale on all Vogue Knitting patterns, I was pretty excited. Now is the perfect time to start a project like a sweater or a scarf; by the time it’s finished, the brutal, desolate winter will have descended upon Illinois and that cozy fair isle cowl will be the only thing keeping you from burying yourself in a snowbank and waiting out the spring, Cartman style.

I’ve  been knitting for most of my life, so I’m familiar with the extreme hit-or-miss nature of most fabric arts publications. Yet somehow, I was still unprepared for the jawdropping parade of insanity which met me on Vogue Knitting’s site this morning, waving its crazy flag and gyrating in a cabled codpiece. After the first dozen bookmarked patterns, I started passing over anything that didn’t make me audibly yelp in terror. After all, this may be insane, but it didn’t make me want to burn my yarn trunk:

Bender would play poker with this couple.

I’ve bookmarked the 31 craziest patterns, which I will feature here broken up into a few posts over the next several days for your reading enjoyment. Before we begin, full disclosure: I also bookmarked a bunch of patterns that I thought were cute, and I might buy a few. Also, all images link back to the patterns. Anyone who makes me one of these things as a wedding present will automatically win.

I’ll start with a series that I imagine was driven by the concept “If she looks like a space hooker on Xanax, no one will notice what skullduggery she’s wearing!”

Elmer Fudd goes high fashion.

Bang! Zoom! Straight to the moon!

The "duck bill" is her Blue Steel.

Gloveless fingers. VK calls these "fingerlettes," but I prefer to think of them as "a sign of the end times."

Stay tuned for much, much more fuckery tomorrow.

EDIT: But wait, there’s more!

Surprise. I found more of this shit and decided to throw it into this post, a one-stop shop for all your space hooker in knitwear needs.

Her neck has actually been warped into another dimension.

 

Disco's coming back, but now instead of dancing under the ball, you dance with the ball. We're going to need a lot more cocaine.

 

"I am going to have a SERIOUS talk with my agent, as soon as I detach this bear from my neck."

 

This is actually the school uniform at Futuristic Space Hooker Academy. Your hoodie must be at least 3 inches above your furry metallic skirt (they're very strict).

Episode 7: This Is Going Well

I lied.

Well, I guess it was only a half-lie, really. I manipulated the truth to make myself seem better. So, when it comes to the grand scheme of internet writing, I told the god’s honest truth.

Remember when I explained away the slow updates by claiming that the dress was still chugging along, there just wasn’t anything new to report? That was partially true, inasmuch as there isn’t that much new to report progress-wise. Except for this:

Yes, my wedding dress project has become a demon. I let it sit in a Glad bag on my end table for weeks, until it gradually grew resentful of me. It saw me work on the little monsters and it frowned, but assumed I’d finish those and return to it with my desire for quick, easy, cute projects sated. And I did — after the baby shower, I went back to the dress and worked a few rows. What I found was that the spark of working on an exciting new project was gone, and so was the placid routine of just making the project longer. I had begun to decrease for the waist of the skirt by changing to smaller needles (oh no, did I forget to tell you that? That probably should have been its own post. DUN DUN DUNNNN DIFFERENT NEEDLES HOLY CRAP), and shortly thereafter I began to feel the anxiety of coming to the end of the skirt. While still in tube-shaped blob-of-lace form, I had no need to worry about how it would fit, whether I had measured myself properly, what size heels I would wear, or what to do about the liner. But now that it was beginning to take form and the end of the skirt was in sight, this grocery list of anxieties stared back at me every time I looked at the dress.

So I shoved the dress back in its bag, returned it to the end table, and let it watch as I worked on crochet bunting for the engagement party. It watched patiently, day after day, waiting for me to finish — but the project never ended, it just kept going on and on, and dozens of little granny triangles piled up in front of it on the table. The dress realized that it was outnumbered.

It got angry. And it might just get even.

Interlude: The Ring

Thumbless.

I considered for a long time writing a lengthy, completely non-dress-related post about our journey to become an officially engaged couple, which took five years and was fraught with misunderstanding, angst, and sadness. I thought about showing everyone my four (4) engagement rings — three fake ones and this, the real one — and telling the story of each, but then I realized it wasn’t entirely my story to share. Besides, all I have to say about the tumultuous limbo of being “pre-engaged” has been more eloquently committed to the internet here, here, and here.

Someday I might write that story, but today all I have to share is this quote from Anne of Green Gables, which pretty well sums up how I feel about my awesome heirloom purple ruby:

Long ago, before I had ever seen a diamond, I read about them and I tried to imagine what they would be like. I thought they would be lovely glimmering purple stones. When I saw a real diamond in a lady’s ring one day I was so disappointed I cried. Of course, it was very lovely but it wasn’t my idea of a diamond.

And this: Nick, FH, Husband-Elect: No matter how many times you propose, my answer will always be yes.

Yeah, I can see you on the other side of the Internet, puking on your keyboards. Cynical bastards, the lot of you.

Revenge of Episode 5: Monsters

Remember how I talked about making adorable things while watching obscure and often violent TV shows? I continued that trend last week with these little monsters:

Ridiculously easy pattern from craftyiscool.blogspot.com

I made those guys for a baby shower for FH’s cousin while watching the first season of the excellent BBC series Luther, which is about an entirely different type of monster.

If this photo didn't send you immediately to Netflix, I just don't know. Also, rawr.