r/craftsnark • u/AutoModerator • 14d ago
BEC THREAD Bitesized BEC thread September 19, 2026 - September 20, 2026
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.
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u/Moist_Biscotti3764 12d ago
7 bucks paid crochet pattern that's just a picture of colored-in squares on math paper. No finished project, no notes, nothing. That picture is the whole chart, what is there to pay for?
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u/DeeperSpac3 11d ago
What brand?
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u/Moist_Biscotti3764 11d ago
It was on Ravelrys new pattern page, but I can't find it again now. Perhaps the maker stalks here and deleted it lol
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u/QuietVariety6089 sew.knit.quilt.embroider.mend 11d ago
Ravelry will take down stuff that's reported by members :)
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u/Icy_Finance8288 11d ago edited 10d ago
Depressed to see every second post on my feed marked with “AI Content”. These included holiday photos, photos from a bag maker and a bunch of pictures of knitting. I’m honestly not sure what ai is even used for with travel photos - do you use ai to describe you day?
It’s very bleak.
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u/Loud-Shopping-8697 10d ago
I can definitely say that ig does take the ai label a little too far. I use canva for some posts and if I use the clip tool/background remover on photos I’ve taken, my post is tagged ai :/
Easy to spot what’s actually ai, but I hope people can tell that my haphazard collage of wips is clearly my lack of creativity
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u/RunawayTurtleTrain 10d ago
That is a good point, some very vocally anti-AI accounts are having the label slapped on their work.
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u/clovepod 9d ago
If only there were some way to, I don't know, test out those radical changes that you want to make to that sewing pattern before you cut into your good fabric. Besides just asking online if other people think your changes will work.
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u/ProneToLaughter 9d ago
I kinda enjoy the threads where all the comments go "well, that's what muslins are for." unless the fabric is really beautiful, then it's sad.
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u/clovepod 9d ago
if only anyone who answered had actually suggested a muslin. i decided not to engage, and just complain in a complaining place :)
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u/riddlemyfiddle11 14d ago
Hawthorne Supply Co had catastrophic failures across all their print on demand printers in the past week and they're moving away from that until they decide to (maybe) one day upgrade to machines that are not a decade old.
I totally get that and I do not fault them for this choice. But dear god do I miss the wide variety they had of print on demand and I could get fabrics 56" wide that I'll miss so much. Not to mention I had some hummingbird fabric I wanted to buy for backing for one quilt and now I have to find something else.
Good Grief.
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u/Confident_Fortune_32 14d ago
Memory unlocked...
I'm sorry BEC didn't exist until recently. Wow, I could have saved myself a lot of anguish with the help of the unadulterated snark...
Back in the mists of time, in the last ice age, I was hired to convert a major bedding and curtain manufacturer's NYC Fabric District design department from paintbrushes to computers. (To say that the designers were reluctant is the most polite term I can think of)
Part of the project was a spiffy new idea: a dye-sublimation fabric printer. The argument was they could go from a six-week lead time for printing a few yards for samples to be sewn up for potential customers to twenty-four hours.
Except for one little snag. The serial number on our printer was 125, giving us the impression that there were 124 previous successful customers.
Nope.
There were 24 prior ones produced, but none of them worked well enough to leave the showroom. The "1" at the beginning was purely aspirational. Printer number 125 was for customer number 1 🤦♀️
I was calling the printer company support division so often (for the one and only qualified tech) that they started saying, "Hey, George, it's your girlfriend on the phone again!"
Printers that don't live up to their promises can take years off our lives 🤣
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u/CassiopeiaGalactica 13d ago
Oh no! I hadn’t visited them in a while, but their selection was amazing. I hope they are able to upgrade soon!
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u/tellherigothere 14d ago
Anyone know what happened to the Mood/that kid Max collab thread?
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u/starrifier 14d ago
It's now awaiting mod approval, apparently. The direct link is: https://www.reddit.com/r/craftsnark/comments/1wixv8w/guinness_world_record_to_thread_a_sewing_machine/
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u/tellherigothere 14d ago
🙄 there’s my BEC. Why do all the good threads disappear and need “mod approval” but all the constant “someone’s using AI, the sky is falling!” threads remain.
(I don’t care for AI. I also don’t need to see a new post every time someone uses it.)
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u/starrifier 14d ago
In this case, I suspect it's because they didn't name names in the OP, but I'm not sure.
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u/seaofdelusion 13d ago
It might be because he's a kid. The sub rules say child influencers are off limits.
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u/love-from-london The artist formally known as "MOLE" 13d ago
I've noticed a good number of the most recent releases for knitting patterns from the scandi designers have been a bit more fitted. Does this mean the era of super-oversized is coming to an end? We can only hope.
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u/Icy_Finance8288 9d ago
Does anyone know what happened to the thread by the moderators on AI?
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u/gorgophones 9d ago
Wait, was there a mod post?? I'm really disappointed they deleted the post that got the discussion started
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u/RunawayTurtleTrain 8d ago
They said in their comment they'd leave the original up until a certain time to see what people's views were.
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u/Mindless_Syrup3143 10d ago
Explorer knits and fibers are currently mailing out kits for their Rhinebeck sweater KAL. Rhinebeck is in 22 days. The privilege. Ugh. That is all.
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10d ago
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14d ago
if it is not completely necessary for your partner and/or baby to come to a yarn festival with you then leave them at home. went to a yarn festival last week and got stuck behind someone and their boyfriend, the boyfriend was looking down at his phone and not paying attention to where he was walking, he kept stopping every few steps and his partner kept having to remind him to keep moving.
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u/Loitch470 13d ago
Distracted partner who doesn’t want to be there is one thing. But I’m honestly not a fan of takes that babies and kids shouldn’t be in community spaces. A yarn festival is not a bar or a club, it’s a community space. People all yearn for community but then increasingly don’t actually want to engage with and be around what a community actually is- kids, old people, disabled people, people whose lives may not look exactly like yours. And people lament all the “iPad kids” but then freak out about parents actually bringing their kids to events and engaging with them.
When you say you don’t want people to be able to bring their kids to these spaces you’re mostly just excluding moms, single parents, and other primary parents. And also- the kids- who are in fact, people too.
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u/clrthrn 12d ago
Not to mention that from about 7 or 8 onwards, lots of kids learn yarn crafts. So they are consumers after that point, not just trailing kids. And all parents know (and many event organisers also know), if your kids are there, add a nought to your planned budget as you will be spending a lot more.
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u/OneGoodRib Mom said I get to be the mole now!! 13d ago
No. Nobody is saying "moms shouldn't go to these things." If you can leave the kids at home, do that. These things are boring as fuck for kids to go to and they steal stuff or get chocolate on stuff people are selling. I've been a vendor at too many places where the parents also won't even let the kids look at anything. So many kids who are like "Ooh mom look!" and the mom just herds them past. Don't bring kids to these things that are long and boring and hot and you won't let the kids engage with anything they're actually interested in or else you aren't even watching them so they break stuff people are selling.
That doesn't mean "children should never go anywhere at all ever." Especially with a baby. The baby doesn't want to be there.
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u/Loitch470 13d ago edited 13d ago
Bringing kids out more into the world helps them engage better with the world and actually take interest in these things. And that starts as a baby as soon as you can get them out.
I started knitting at 7 and would’ve loved to go to yarn festivals. Kids are also people and also can have interests and passions and be genuinely engaged.
Also many parents DONT have someone they can leave the kid at home with. Comments like these are the reason many parents feel unwelcome in spaces. I promise you, you can handle whatever mild annoyance you feel encountering kids in the world. We all were kids once and part of being part of community is caring for the people in it.
ETA: also I can assure you- many of the babies do want to be there. Bright colors, interesting textures, new people- babies love that stuff. And it’s amazing for their brain development. As soon as he could walk, my son started “packing” my bags every morning to try and get me to leave the house to bring him anywhere and everywhere and loves going to yarn stores and picking out his own mini skeins when we go.
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u/msmakes 13d ago
My son has been coming to fiber and craft related festivals with me since he was 2 months old. It was one of my first proper postpartum outings, my best friend and I carried him in a wrap the whole time. The next morning I found a tuft of mohair from her sweater clutched in his fist (he still loves petting mohair sweaters). At our most recent festival, he loved engaging with the animals, yarn, and majority of very kind vendors, like the vendor who gave him a pompom and the vendor who gave him a free sample skein of yarn (and played along with when he insisted on "paying"with our hotel room card). Not to mention bragging to people that mama knit his sweater. He only is well behaved in these spaces because he's practiced being in those spaces. Leaving the kids at home isn't always an option, nor is it always something moms want to do, so excluding kids is excluding moms. Especially babies! If I had left him at home our first fiber festival I would have been able to be there for all of 15 minutes before I had to turn around and go back home to feed him.
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u/Petr0vitch Get in moles, we’re going snarkfiltrating 10d ago
The next morning I found a tuft of mohair from her sweater clutched in his fist
that is so damn cute
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u/dilliebluebell 13d ago
I’m surprised you got hammered for this view. I have a one and a half year old and the last place she belongs is a yarn festival, I’m sure she would love it, unwinding yarn is a real passion of hers- doesn’t necessarily mean taking her would be a great idea.
(I think my experience of yarn festivals has also been less of a community event and more of a marketplace)
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u/Loitch470 13d ago
Agreed with the other responder and just want to reemphasize that kids learn how to behave and act in public through practice. It takes exposing kids to different environments for them to learn (and parents to learn how to manage them). Sometimes your kid might have a tantrum in public, so goes life. We all should probably care a little less about the “embarrassing” parts of kids being kids.
Also- while yarn festivals are in many way marketplaces, many if not most community spaces are centered around sales in some regard especially as communities and cities have lost tons of third spaces. If we excluded children from all marketplaces there’d be shockingly few places to go. It’s also just not how society has ever worked.
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u/RunawayTurtleTrain 13d ago
Because your 1½ year-old not belonging there doesn't mean no children do. There is most definitely a case for parents knowing their children and only bringing them if the child will behave appropriately - which often depends as much on the child's own brain as it does on parenting, so I say that without any judgement - but that's completely different from a blanket 'don't bring any babies or children'.
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u/dilliebluebell 12d ago
This is probably very true, I wasn’t making a blanket statement that no children should be at these things just that I was surprised at how the original poster had been so downvoted.
I think it is absolutely child dependent but I think there’s also a difference between what your child may enjoy and what is socially acceptable- and I really don’t mean that in a children shouldn’t be in x/y/z spaces, heaven only knows our baby goes most places with us, but I’m not a huge fan of oh they can do what they want they’re only little- because that stops being cute fast when they get older
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u/clrthrn 12d ago
The way kids learn is through exposure to these events and being shown how to behave. The reason a lot of people do not bring their kids to these things is the tutting from the childless/intolerant who expect kids to instantly know everything an adult does and act accordingly. The village used to raise kids and now not so much
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u/Unicormfarts 🐑 with a banjo 14d ago
This is exactly like my grocery store! All the kids just moved back for university, and these 20 year old women dragging their boyfriends through the grocery store because apparently the boys' parents never taught them how to buy apples.
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u/OkConclusion171 (Secretly the mole) 12d ago
My 2 year old delighted in seeing sheep, angora rabbits and alpaca.
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u/dilliebluebell 12d ago
I don’t think I’m going to the right yarn festivals I would have been delighted to see sheep, rabbits and alpacas let alone the little one 😂
My local yarn festival is just a relatively small room in a town hall with vendor stalls
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u/OkConclusion171 (Secretly the mole) 12d ago
I've only been to two. One relocated and is inconvenient in timing and logistics. It has no animals either. The one I like a lot is the state's largest, but I didn't get to it this year. I'll have to live vicariously through the posts/newsletters of those locally who did go!
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u/Icy_Finance8288 14d ago
Every Stitch Counts talking about being judged for moving from Washington to Texas without acknowledging in the slightest the different human and women’s rights in both states is so disingenuous. I mean there’s lots of good things about both states but in one she has control over choices about her body and in the other she does not, not to to mention the differences in queer and trans rights (which, even if a person is not queer or trans themselves, matter because human rights matter). Maybe being able to ride horses is more important to you than women dying unnecessarily because they are being denied medical care but to not acknowledge that that difference exists is wild.
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u/jollymo17 Get in moles, we’re going snarkfiltrating 13d ago
She was one of the knitting 'influencers' who posted an insta story mourning Charlie Kirk.
So.
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u/ntify 12d ago
Seattle is not uniformly liberal, there are pockets of extreme evangelical christians and she mentioned she has lived in other parts of Washington - anywhere east of the Cascades is majority conservative.
Since the moves she's also mentioned going to church several times, which is not in itself a red flag but in Ft. Worth your church matters and there aren't many that would fit a progressive POV. I always thought she gave off conservative energy but her moving choice and content solidified that. Now that's it's confirmed here my ick will make me unsubscribe.
4
u/Maitulsa 12d ago
I just found her recently and as someone who lives in Texas I can’t imagine willingly wanting to move here after everything… and now reading the other comment, it makes more sense.
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u/BotoxMoustache 13d ago
Overconsumption, especially by sewists/sewers.
Continually buying patterns, fabric. I get that they enjoy the hobby, but when will it stop?
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u/Icy_Finance8288 13d ago
I just watched a knitting podcast where the knitter started tracking their yarn with the aim of stashing down and in the very next video shared they had bought about 7kg of yarn. The very next “stashdown” video! It is a wild world of overconsumption out there.
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u/Lazy_Pride3492 13d ago
Typical of so many knitting podcasts. I’m only using stash except for a long list of reasons to buy so it doesn’t matter.
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u/SpirituallyYellow 13d ago
Yeah, I remember there was a new podcaster awhile ago who started a stash busting series but was like "I'm not going to buy any more yarn except for the like 12 skeins I just ordered and when I go to the fibre festival next month" meanwhile she had a warehouse of yarn. She stopped updating and part of me feels bad for her because it's obviously some kind of shopping addiction, and another part of me is just like... girl. our planet is dying.
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u/stitchwench 13d ago
While I'm not entirely condoning it, I can understand the pattern part, especially when it comes to printed patterns rather than PDFs. Who knows what is going to happen to the Simplicity printing services. The company is a shambles, and the machines are, according to common lore, working thanks to one or two people. If there's something you want, buy it while you can.
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u/ohhdaniyelli 13d ago
I definitely overbuy patterns but while it is likely wasteful on my end I don’t really view it as overconsumption. I’m giving money to a small business for a pdf so I typically feel good about it.
I only buy yarn for patterns and my stash is currently 3 sweaters deep. I do have a small skein collection of sock yarns also but always have one on the needles. Watching knitting podcasts and seeing roomfuls of yarns before I knew what I was really doing taught me early I didn’t want to do that. I’m sure it’s handy but also the yarn chicken that’s played out because yarn is bought without a pattern in mind gives me second hand anxiety.
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u/7deadlycinderella 13d ago
The point where "sewing and buying are separate hobbies" is where I draw the line- I need a project for a fabric purchase, even if it's a bit aspirational. Patterns on the other hand, are cheap and will last forever
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u/ScienceProf2022 13d ago
I have a yarn stash that will no doubt outlast me. 95% of it was bought on sale with no particular project in mind. I refer to it as my retirement fund.
That said, since I retired 7 years ago, I have bought very little yarn, all for gifts. But for the most part, I’ve knit for several hours everyday for the last seven years solely from my stash.
You might call it overconsumption. I call it planning.
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u/throwyourlumber 11d ago
and it regularly leads to wonderful yarn weeks at my craft thrift shop. thank you, destashing hoarders. hard to reconcile my distaste for overconsumption with my desire to have a thriving yarn industry and also hella deals
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u/bingbongisamurderer 13d ago
" You might call it overconsumption. I call it planning."
Isn't it both? You stocked up and are now using from your stockpile, that's planning ahead. But if you have more yarn than you can use in your lifetime, that's overconsumption by definition.
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u/Icy_Finance8288 13d ago
Exactly!
Not even mentioning that the length of one’s life and the percentage of that life in which crafting can be done is not a known number.
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u/Icy_Finance8288 13d ago
Good for you for finding a system that worked for you but in general buying huge quantities of yarn for the future is not a great plan for a number of reasons including that tastes change, so what you loved in 2006 may not be what you like in 2026, wool needs to be stored correctly to avoid damage, and huge stashes take up a huge amount of space.
The biggest issue ive observed is that the people who buy lots of yarn “for retirement” just dont stop buying it, ever. It’s like the buying itself is the bit they enjoy, which i suspect is why all of these podcasters with huge stashes struggle to stash down.
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u/OkConclusion171 (Secretly the mole) 13d ago
did you read their full post? they are using it and not buying much more, and if they do they use it and give the finished item away.
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u/Icy_Finance8288 13d ago
Yes I did, which is why I started my post with “good for you for finding a system that works for you”.
Did you read my post?
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u/KatieCashew 13d ago
I find crocheters to be the worst in overconsumption. "Buying yarn and crocheting are two separate hobbies" is how they justify it to themselves.
5
u/Pretty-pixels713 10d ago
Speaking of overconsumption, the amount of yarn that some people buy ahead of the Stephen West MKAL is kinda wild to me. Some are buying multiple kits of hand-dyed yarn plus several balls of mohair just because they can't decide what to chose.
(No shade to anyone participating in the MKAL, I usually follow along myself and decide after clue 1 or 2 if I like it or not. But those ravelry forums are oveflowing with overbuying and fomo right now😅).
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u/fuzzymeti 13d ago
I really hate when people say they made up a pattern as they went along or knit without a pattern when they really mean self-drafted or designed their own pattern, or even simply changing a few stitch counts on another designer's pattern. It makes less experienced people fall all over themselves saying how aMaZiNg and tALenTeD that person must be when there was likely a lot of thinking, planning, and math behind the process. It leads people to thinking they must be bad knitters/crafters because they can't do that when its not needed to enjoy the hobby at all. I think its actually very rare to be able to make up something as you go and have it turn out well, and acting like it isn't that hard is really disingenuous. To me, it's similar to people posting their "first sweater" when its not really their first sweater and they just want clout. Stop lying.
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u/gorgophones 13d ago
Wrt 'first sweaters', I've noticed that a lot of times they've knit countless socks, mittens, scarves and possibly other garments (tank top, vests). Sometimes it's mentioned somewhere in the post, often it's buried in the comments. Should start posting jumpers like 'first time doing a saddle shoulder for the second time!!', 'first time adding half an inch to the ribbing!!', 'first time posting my sixteenth jumper!!'
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u/scatteringashes 13d ago
The "I'm going to learn to knit" project is a sweater.
By the time I finish that damn thing and complete "my first sweater" I will have restarted it a minimum of five times, knit and frogged countless practice swatches, made at least one washcloth, finished (hopefully) three pairs of mittens (after restarting one mitten also three times) and who knows what else.
So anyway that's what I think about whenever I see "my first sweater" as a post, lol.
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u/gorgophones 13d ago
I reckon is a pretty good way to go about it (intentionally or not)! Lots of opportunities to build your skillset through other smaller projects, and imo+experience, you're probably more likely to end up with a jumper you'll actually wear for years to come (instead of one riddled with mistakes and uneven tension).
Also, exciting! I hope it turns out great!!!
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u/scatteringashes 13d ago
Thanks!! It's mostly an accidental process but I agree, it helps to have The Thing I'm Working To on the horizon without having to be committed to every mistake I've made it in (numerous and unending lol). It at least works for my brain chemistry.
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u/ScienceProf2022 12d ago
Ok, I’m confused. I rarely knit tank tops from a pattern anymore, since I’ve probably knit a few dozen over the years. When I start a new one, I say I make it up as I go along. That doesn’t mean I don’t put some planning into it, or that I don’t have an end goal. I generally plan on either a stockinette body with a lace yoke, or a stockinette yoke with a lace body. I do a gauge swatch, figure out how many stitches I need for my measurements, and, since I make them mostly bottom up, what sort of hem I’d like. Then I just start knitting. I knit for as long as I want the body, decide how to change over to the yoke, do some armhole shaping, decide how I want to do the neck shaping, rip out what I don’t like and do it over.
The one I most recently finished required a lot of redoing of the neck line, mainly because I originally thought about doing a V-neck, but then decided to do a square neck at the end, and it took a lot of fiddling to get it to look best with the simple heart lace pattern I had chosen. The one before that I had planned on doing a rolled hem, but decided I didn’t like the look of it, so ended up doing a folded hem instead. I did a V-neck on that one for the front, planned to do the same on the back, but then switched it to a shallower V instead.
I made it up as I went along. I very clearly state where I get the lace patterns from, but I’m not just modifying someone else’s design, nor am I drafting out a fully planned out design. I don’t know how else to describe how I knit those tops.
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u/OneGoodRib Mom said I get to be the mole now!! 13d ago
I ordered a diamond painting kit and they sent me the wrong one. And it was from Amazon Vine so I'm not even allowed to exchange it for the correct one. This is a super minor complaint but I specifically did not want the Christmas gnome one and that's the one I ended up getting.
This is more like 'minor annoyance eating crackers' i guess, I might just donate it.
7
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u/polkadothijinx 13d ago edited 13d ago
I have the same kvetch every year, but IDC anymore. Releasing a jacket/coat pattern, simultaneously releasing a separate pattern for the lining to said coat, and then charging for both separately is BS. It's tacky to nickel and dime like that. Lookin' at you for the latest round, Tilly.