I have been mad jealous of Erin’s sparkly skirt since she first posted about rocking it at a mud race. I had a 7 day old baby when she posted the first picture, and I wasn’t the paragon of awesome fitness that I am now, and had zombies, aliens, or an escaped zoo lion attacked, I’d have been the first one eaten.

Now, however, there are at least three or four people who will bite it before me in such a scenario, so I clearly deserve a glitzy skirt as well. Even so, I don’t think I’m ready for this jelly, so the skirt does double duty of being awesome and not forcing anyone to look at what’s under it instead. (FYI, this fabric is sheer, so the skirt is meant to go over capris, shorts, etc.)

Since I make stuff, I have a really hard time justifying paying $25 for a bit of elastic and confetti dot fabric, though I give major props to those who can start and run a business selling such awesome gear. I know that most people will happily fork over the dough for some blingy runwear, but if you’re like me (poor and/or crafty), I’ll show you how to make your own for about $5. (I’m sorry about the crappy iPhone photos – I’m trying to teach the 4 year old to take pictures, but it’s slow going!)

DIY Glitzy Running Skirt

You will need:

1 yard or less (depending on size – you can do some complicated math after you measure or just buy 1 yard and call it good) Confetti Dot Fabric (Wait for a sale or use a Joann’s coupon to nab this for super cheap!)

Waistband Elastic, black preferably (I used 1.5″ because that’s what they had!)

Sewing machine, thread, measuring device

Directions:

1. Measure yourself where you want the waistband of your skirt to hit. Usually a couple inches smaller than that number will get you a comfortable fit. A good way to customize for yourself is to cut the elastic to your waist measurement and then overlap it 2 inches and pin. Try it on and adjust in or out from there.

2. Once you’ve determined a comfortable waistband size, sew the overlapping ends. I sewed the living crap out of it to make it really secure, though the sparkle fabric weighs about the same as a butterfly eyelash, so it’s not under a lot of stress. (You can match your thread, I used contrasting to show the stitches.)

3. Measure your hips. A good rule of thumb for running is about 4″ of ease, so you’ll take your hips measurement (h) and add 4″ to it for cutting your fabric. You’ll need to cut two long rectangles from your fabric. I cut the selvedges off (the bits on the edges with no little mylar dots) before cutting my rectangles so that none of my skirt was unsparkled. First, cut a strip of fabric around 5.5″ tall that is the width of your hips + 4″ measurement. Depending on your size, you may need to cut two strips and sew them together along one end.

Then, cut the rest of your fabric into strips around 8-9″ tall. You’ll need at least twice your hips + 4″  measurement, so you’ll be sewing strips together, and it’s best at this point to leave it longer than you think is necessary just in case.

4. The easiest way to do the next part is to use a gathering foot for your sewing machine. There are two settings on a gathering/ ruffler foot – one that determines the depth of the gather and the other that determines how frequently the foot places a gather. The setting I used was #2 depth and #6 frequency (I believe that means every 6 stitches it puts the gather). That worked out to need just about 5 inches beyond twice my hips + 4 measurement (this is why you wait to cut it!).

Place the longer piece on the bottom, wrong side up. The shorter piece goes on top, right side up. The bottom piece should go to the right just a small amount – too much and the part that sticks up between the layers will be too tall and flop over. Sew the pieces together. Trim off any excess long piece.

If you don’t have a gathering foot, you just have a few extra steps. First, go ahead and cut your long piece to twice the length of your hips + 4 piece since you’ll be controlling the gather instead of your presser foot. Next, set your machine to the longest stitch it has. On your longer piece, run one long row of stitches about 1/2″ from the top without backstitching (you’ll remove these stitches later). You’ll find that your fabric bunches up slightly as you go – this is okay, good even. Using the threads from these basting stitches, gather the fabric even more so that the piece is the same length as your hips + 4 piece. Lay your gathered piece just over the bottom edge of the hips + 4 piece, both right sides facing you, pinning in place. Using a regular length stitch, sew the pieces together.You can remove the basting stitches at this point.

5. Fold in half long-ways, right sides together. Sew the short sides together and voila, you’ve got something that looks like a skirt! Set your sewing machine to the longest stitch length it has and run one line of stitches along the very top of the waist without backstitching (you’ll remove these stitches later!). You’ll find that as you sew, the fabric starts to bunch up. This is good! When you take it off the machine, use these basting threads to gather the edge a little more sew that it is the same circumference as your waistband. It may help to pin the skirt to the underside of the waistband at this point to help get them the same. (The picture below shows the basting stitches gathering the edge slightly.)

6. Using a 3-step zig-zag stitch, attach the skirt top to the underside of the waistband, stretching the elastic ever so slightly as you go. If you forget to 3-step zig-zag, any stretch of the elastic (like, when you put it on?) will break your stitches and your skirt will fall off the waistband halfway through your race and someone will step on it. Or step on you after you trip over the sparkly fabric around your ankles.

7. If you’re anything like me, you flew by the seat of your pants a little when you were cutting, so at this point you should probably trim up the bottom nice and even(ish), and put your awesome skirt on to make sure you like the length. If not, trim to where you feel the fastest.

8. Let loose with phrases like “shake your moneymaker” while you admire yourself in the mirror in your fabulous skirt.

I am about four hundred different flavors of thrilled because I get to teach my most favoritest thing ever at the coolest fabric and yarn shop this side of the Mississippi – Fancy Tiger Crafts!

Grace started it, so I blame her. She posted this amazing quilt from the 1930′s showcased at the Nebraska Historical Society. I had some tangential knowledge of paper piecing – enough to know it when I saw it – and I piped up and said, “Oh, yeah! English paper piecing, totally easy! You could recreate that quilt with a bit of graph paper, no sweat. You don’t even need a pattern!” Well, there I went putting my foot in it, and I could. not. stop. thinking about that quilt top. So much so that I ran out and bought a jelly roll at Joann’s and started piecing using YouTube videos and scattered tutorials. I weeded through hard-to-find resources, figured things out with trial and error, and ended up with basically the coolest thing I’ve ever made.

It was actually my first real quilt – so easy – and yet so, so impressive. Admit it, you’re impressed, right? All of those 3/4″ hexagons hand pieced together to make a twin-bed sized quilt. Whatever. I’m impressed enough with myself for everybody! I only hope that my sweet baby girl will like it when she is big and will feel all the love that went into it for her. I was pregnant at the time, and it seemed only natural to make this complex and beautiful thing while I was making another complex and beautiful thing.

So, if you’d like to impress yourself with your mad skillz and create something that even sewing and quilting people will drool over, come take my class! The best part is that the project is infinitely portable – I carry what I’m working on in a tiny makeup bag, needs only a few supplies, can use up all of your cool scraps that you can’t bear to throw away because they are Heather Ross mushrooms or Kaffe Fassett crazy prints and you are sure there is a project to use the 1″ strip you’ve got left. Well, here’s your project!

I’ll be teaching 3 sessions this spring – one in March, April, and May! You’ll learn to choose fabrics, design your own original quilt, piece a star out of hexagons, and applique it to a tote or garment (or you can use your applique skills to put it on an applique border once you’ve finished your truly epic quilt top). Plus, you can bring scraps of your own for the class or use scraps provided by Fancy Tiger – and you know that means scraps of their stellar store stock. Be there or be square!

Sign up for the class here!!

Because I am a lunatic, I’ve started a project with 1/4″ hexagons. They are tiny, tiny little beasts, but once you gain the confidence from the bigger hexes, you can do ANYTHING – even make a queen size quilt with hexagons the size of green peas. And by “you” I mean that general “you” that actually only means me, because who else is this crazy?

I’m fairly certain I will ultimately be the mother of four boys. Call it mother’s intuition. If I’m wrong, in 6 years or so you can call it a load of bunk. We’ll see.

I also have five wienerdogs. I don’t know why, and that’s really an obscene number of dachshunds to live in one small house, but here we are and that’s just the way it is. I used to say that I liked wienerdogs by proxy, it’s really my husband with the obsession and I just come along for the ride. Really, though, I don’t think I’m allowed to say that anymore since he’s trained me to spot a wienerdog print at forty paces, an actual wienerdog at a hundred yards across a lake in a snowstorm.

So, when I saw this print at Hancock (M’liss – always holding those wiener puppies in the ads, you know) I bought some even though it’s pink and I am destined for boys. It’s lived here for awhile, and when my friend Debra showed me this blanket tutorial, I sort of had to put everything down and make it. Really, what good is a large-scale dachshunds-in-sweaters print with fashion words sprinkled throughout good for besides a blanket? Not much.

I followed the Made tutorial to the Aesthetic Nest tutorial and decided to go with flannel for the chenille because it sounded snugglier. Three yard and a quarters of flannel later and we were in business. The Aesthetic Nest tutorial mentioned an Olfa Chenille cutter, so I peeked in the quilting notions for one, and OUCH! They had it, but it was over $30. That was about 3x more than I was spending on fabric and notions in total, so that wasn’t going to work. I checked Joann’s and they didn’t have the Olfa, but they had the Clover Slash Cutter for around $15 and 50% off, so I said sure! It was heaps better and easier than snipping all of those lines with scissors – though I would second the recommendation to start the cut in each channel with your scissors – if you’re using the Clover tool, then by a full scissors length – so that you can get the cut started easily with all three fabrics and so that there’s enough space behind the cut to get a good hold on.

Because I am unable to just make something without deciding to do it my own overly complicated way, I decided that instead of just the regular bias channels, I would put a dachshund in the center. Originally, I thought about continuing the outer lines of the dachshund so that the quilting lines seemed to radiate from it, but then I regained my senses and realized that it may make the dachshund harder to see, and those lines wouldn’t necessarily be on the bias, so the fluff out wouldn’t happen. The other two tutorials have great directions, so I’ll show you where I deviate.

Once I had the fabrics spread out (I didn’t use any spray adhesive – flannel sticks together well – and who needs another step, especially one involving noxious fumes), I freehanded a non-artist’s approximation of a dachshund with tailor’s chalk.

I pinned in a few places just for the trip down to the sewing machine and followed the outline with a line of stitches. The flannel and my hands moving the fabric wanted to erase my lines, so I found myself re-tracing lines that had gotten faint while sewing so as not to lose my tentative hold on the closest approximation to a dachshund I could muster.

I then filled in the dachshund. I did this with the flannel side facing me rather than flipping it, because the circular nature of the channels made lumps on the topside while the bottom stayed even as opposed to when you stitch the straight lines being more able to keep the ugly on the bottom as in the other two tutorial instructions. At this point, all the pins were gone, because the layers weren’t really going anywhere anymore.

I then marked my bias line coming from the dog to start the straight line stitches.

…aaaaand lines stitched. I started from the center and worked out from the dog to the blanket edge. If you’re just making straight lines with no image in the center, this will be considerably faster and monumentally less of a pain, but oh, the things we do for wienerdogs in this house.

Then I snipped all the little channels and everything was groovy-Sue. I went with a satin binding because 1. I quilted a freaking wienerdog and there was no way I was making bias tape to bind it myself, and 2. None of the cotton pre-made quilt binding matched, but one of the satins did. I also did the full size binding rather than cutting and pressing and so forth as in Aesthetic Nest’s tutorial, though it looks lovely (for reasoning, see #1 above).

What can you do at this point but pray? And also wash and dry. You know, can’t rely on the heavens for everything. I stopped it early because I wanted to see it, so I know that it will fluff more, but I’m really happy with the results. I already have blankets for my boys in mind. All four of them.

One thing I would make sure and adjust in future – notice the darkness where the edges of the wienerdog are on the outside. The slash cutter has a little lip at the edge that ran up against the stitching line for the dachshund. I didn’t go back and clip with my scissors to get that further up, but I will, because I don’t like how it looks. If you’re just doing straight lines, you won’t have that issue, but if you do a pattern in the center, you may want to snip.

Now I just need someone who likes pink to cover up. And no, I will not be letting the wienerdogs use it.

I love Ravelry. I resisted it for so long; I held out, demurred, didn’t want to get on their little waiting list (if they didn’t want me right then, I didn’t want them, either!), and finally, reluctantly, crankily signed up. Man, if I ever got my comeuppance for being a cranky old lady, that was it. It was like the first few months after getting Tivo when you reached out to rewind the radio or the first time driving after playing Grand Theft Auto when you had the irresistible urge to jump the curb and just scoot on through the park to get where you were going a bit faster. Suddenly, you want to be able to search recipes by ingredient and see progress pictures of meatloaf and everyone’s variations (my, that loaf looks excellent in lamb), or to be able to winnow down choices for sewing projects, food, shopping, into manageable little clicks and have the perfect thing for you delivered on a platter with a link to download.

The best thing about it is that you find these patterns that you would never have seen from designers that haven’t been published, but should be, things that you JUST MUST KNIT RIGHT NOW OR ELSE! My stash has never seen so much action! Hm, what have people knit with this pretty yarn I bough 12 years ago and have just taken out occasionally to fondle… click! An illustrated list of 345345 patterns for your perusal.

The Junie Cap is just one of those patterns. Not only is it the cutest hat ever (twee jaunty little point at the top without being too precious!), but it has some amazing and innovative construction that will make you want to knit one for every kid you know.

It starts as an i-cord, which was an awesome way to start a hat – providing the point and also eliminating the casting on of a zillion stitches and joining them, then knitting for several rows before realizing you’re making a mobius or you’ve laddered somewhere like as if you’ve never knit in the round before (because tell me I am not the only one that happens to, even if you have to lie). The increases are structured such that it fits on the head as if it grew there and cradles the back of little delicate necks from the windy weather. The shortrow earflaps not only look fab, they fit over little ears without squashing them down, which if you are my child means that you will leave the hat on instead of flinging it from you in a fit of earflap discomfort.

Clearly, this designer has children, because she’s thought of everything. The ties call for 7inch i-cords. If you are an auntie or a special friend of a small child, you may not realize, but string-like objects near babies and toddlers shouldn’t exceed 8 inches for safety. Who thinks of this stuff except for a mama knitting for her little Junie?

I knit the 18 month size and played a little fast and loose with gauge and yarn, so it fits both my 13 month old chubba and my teeny-weeny 3 year old. If I stretch it, it fits me, which gives me hope that I could do just a smidge of alteration and make a Junie cap for myself…

Because I love it so much, I’m giving away FIVE copies of the pattern! OMG! I know! The super duper grand prize winner will also get a $10 gift certificate to Knit Picks to buy the yarn for their Junie Cap of Supreme Fabulousness (I suppose you could choose your own title, but I think that one has a nice ring to it…)

I have not been paid or provided the patterns – I’m using my own hard-earned dough to buy them from Ravelry and gift them to lucky you because they are JUST THAT AWESOME!

Win the Pattern & Knit Picks Gift Card!

Easy peasy to enter! Just leave a comment here with your contact info! For an additional entry, tweet, Facebook share, or blog about this giveaway and post a new comment with a link! You can also visit A.P. Watts’ store and download the free Sleepy Mouse Pattern (because it is the second cutest thing ever – if only it had a little Junie Cap on…) and post that you’ve downloaded it to your library. An additional entry will be given for each! You have until midnight MST on 12/23/2010 to enter!

Five winners will be randomly selected via integer generator on 12/24/2010 and I’ll contact you for your Ravelry username (which, if you aren’t already a member of you have surely already gone and signed up, right?) so that I can send you the pattern, and if you’re the super duper winner, I’ll also send you $10 from Knit Picks as well! YAY!

Once, I was sitting at the pattern book table in a Hancock Fabrics in Sparks, Nevada when a woman of a certain age wandered nearby on her cell phone. I mention her age, as there is a certain segment of the population that cannot fathom the ability of the magical cell phone to work properly since it doesn’t have the common decency to be connected to the wall with a coiled cord, and thus carries on every conversation at some pretty ear-splitting decibel levels. They also seem to lack the cell phone discretion gene, and I was shaken from my pattern contemplation with:

“HEMORRHOIDS?”

Picture me, a Vogue pattern book open in front of me, a look of consternation on my face. (I just looked up consternation to make sure it was the exact word I meant – “a state of paralyzing dismay.” Oh yeah. That’s the one.)

“WELL, PREPARATION H OR SOMETHING.”

She continued to browse, circling the pattern desk. I couldn’t hear the details of the other side of the conversation, just the fact that it must have been someone of the same age on another cell phone from the WAH WAH WAHWAHWAH à la Peanuts cartoon adults coming at screeching volume from the cell phone speaker. The entire small store had stopped to gawk and listen. It looked like an anime convention – a room full of women with the biggest eyes you’ve ever seen.

“PROBABLY FROM PUSHING TOO HARD! I DON’T KNOW.”

Moral of the story: Don’t push too hard or someone will discuss your nether behindal regions very loudly in a public place.

Okay, really, I have a doctor’s appointment regarding some uncomfortable (literally and figuratively) things that shouldn’t still be uncomfortable 5 and a half months after the baby is born, and I also have to go to Hancock to check out fabric for this amazing shower curtain from Anthropologie, so for some reason Hancock will always have to be associated with uncomfortable pushing.

I blame Stephanie at Adventures in Babywearing for tweeting about it and making me jones pretty hard for a $120 shower curtain. Is that even sane? I hit up the local Anthropologie store yesterday, fondled it, fell in love, asked it to marry me, was turned down, and drowned my sorrows in a two-year-old’s birthday cake while making plans to turn all Dr. Frankenstein and make my own.

It didn’t help that I left the store with a list twenty miles long of all of the things I wanted. “I could make that. I could make that. I could make that! I could MAKE that! It thrills me to my soul that Anthropologie has returned to their amazingly intricate and fabulous antique roots. For a few years there, they were rocking the fug pretty hard. Lemon-yellow ankle boots weren’t ever a good choice for anyone, if you ask me.

So, my nether behindal regions and I (oh, and also my kids) will be hitting up Hancock and making ourselves a shower curtain. And some aprons. And some fabric covered wall letters. And some dresses. And…

Okay, maybe not all of it today, but you can count on a tutorial for a ruffled shower curtain of supreme awesomeness in the coming days. Also a picture of my bathroom that is so going to be slumming next to that curtain. Oh well. I won’t push it too hard.

I love a good wetbag. That may speak volumes on the excitement level in my life right now, but suffice it to say that a cute print, a non-wicking inside, and a zipper to hold in any undesirable wafting, as it were, and I’m a happy mama. It’s a rectangle within a rectangle, how hard could that be, right?

And yet, zippers are scary,  and wetbags cost so darned much, so they must be incredibly complicated. And, oh, did I mention that zippers are scary? So, DIY inclined mamas pay other people way too much for what is, if I do say so myself, the easiest thing in all of cloth-diaperdom to make.

So, let’s make one, shall we? Maybe I’ll even give you something for your trouble.

All images are clickable to make big! See my crooked stitches up close!

DIY Zip-top Wetbag

Sandwiched zipper, cute outer, just like you can buy in your favorite cloth diaper store, except made by you.

Supplies:

• 2 rectangles of outer fabric (any size)
• 2 rectangles of 2mil PUL (you can use 1mil, but for wetbags, I find the 2mil to be a sturdier, stink holdier choice)
• 1 zipper the size of one of the rectangle sides or larger.

Step 1:

Lay your zipper face down on the right side of one of the outer fabric pieces. Sew across the top. (Optional: forget to check your bobbin thread before you start, and run out in the center of the zipper. Remove bobbin. Wind new bobbin. Replace bobbin. Seethe.)

Step 2:

Place one piece of your PUL, shiny side down, on top of your zipper. Sew across the top again. Now you have one half of the zipper sandwiched between two pieces of fabric.

Step 3:

Flip your pieces of fabric over the zipper so that the un-sewn side of the zipper is on top, and your two fabric pieces hanging on to the other side of the zipper are on the bottom. You’ll be taking the two pieces from right sides together to wrong sides together. (Optional: figure out a better way to say that than I just did. Roll your eyes at my ability to make something so easy sound  complicated. Email and tell me of your superiority.)

Step 4:

Lay your other piece of outer fabric right side down, lined up with the top of the zipper. Sew along the top. (The fabric I’m using was from a special order sample sale – a bunch of cute home dec fabrics that had been hanging up to be special ordered in squares of about 20×20, hence the fading on the wrong side. The right side (the only side anyone will see) is perfect. Sample sales like these are a great way to make unique, one of a kind wetbags!)

Step 5:

Turn everything over and lay your last piece of PUL, shiny side down, lined up with the top of the zipper. Sew across the top. You now have both sides of the zipper sandwiched between fabric. One half sandwiched between your outer fabric, one half sandwiched between your PUL.

Step 6:

Spread your fabric out so that the right sides of the outers are together and the right sides of the PUL pieces are together. The zipper will be in the middle of a giant rectangle. I usually pin in two places – each end of the zipper – but you’re free to pin the whole thing if you have a ton of time that you just don’t know what to do with. BIG IMPORTANT DETAIL: Open the zipper at least half way or so. Don’t forget this step or you will be sad.

Next, sew along the edge where I’ve marked in red. Note that you’ll be leaving a space at the bottom of the PUL section open. I usually give a larger seam allowance on the PUL than the outer so that they don’t touch. It may be superstition, but my wetbags never wick!

Step 7:

Reach your hand through the hole you left and turn the whole thing right side out. See why you needed to open that zipper? Or did you forget? Are you sad? Told you.

Straighten everything out and look at the bottom of the PUL section. Since you went a few inches in on each side, your center hole should turn nicely inside without you having to pin or mess with it. Sew closed starting at a little before the hole and ending a little after it. I put the red line right above my line of stitches. This is a good time to use your Teflon foot if you have one since PUL is a sticky wicket. If you don’t have one and don’t want to fight with your sewing machine trying to go over this few inches of PUL, you can use some tearaway stabilizer or even a plastic bag from the grocery store over top. This will allow your machine’s presser foot to glide over the PUL, and is easily tear-off-able after you finish sewing.

Step 8:

Stuff the PUL section inside the outer fabric section (just like you do after the laundry if you’ve ever owned one of these!) and bask in the glory of your ridiculously easy to make, and yet fabulous beyond words wetbag. Easiest zipper you ever put in anything, right? Like, doesn’t even count as zipper insertion. Go forth and put something stinky in there!

Wetbag Giveaway!

Don’t you just want to tell everyone you know how easy it is to make these silly things? I want you to tell everyone you know, too! I will be giving one lucky winner not only the wetbag I made here for the tutorial, but I will put CHOCOLATE in it! 16 individually wrapped squares of Ghirardelli dark chocolate with caramel inside. There will never be anything this yummy in this wetbag again! (Wetbag is about 12×16, should hold a good outing’s worth of diapers, even a day of running errands worth depending on the kind you use.)

OMG HOW DO I WIN THIS?

• Each of the following gets you one entry.
• Random dot org will select a winner based on the # assigned to each comment! (Do any or all, each is not dependent on the other, you just get more entries!)
• Winner selected Friday, April 23rd

1. Leave a comment here and tell me what you think!
   
2. Follow me on Twitter (keelydeux) (comment to tell me so!)
   
3. Tweet this tutorial and contest (leave another comment telling me you did this!)
4. Blog about it or post it in a community. Share the wetbag love. (yet again, new comment!)

My grandma taught me how to crochet when I was seven. I had a pink skein of Red Heart from the local Ben Franklin, a shiny blue metallic crochet hook of indeterminate size, and a dream. My much older cousin had crocheted me a pink Barbie blanket, and the vistas of my childhood crafting imagination opened majestically before me. Unfortunately, my grandma’s vistas only spanned the crocheted chain, and I returned to my parents at the end of the weekend with about eight feet. I finished the skein thinking that once I had made it all a giant chain, I would learn the next step – the magical step that would transform my chain into a Barbie blanket. No one thought to tell me as I walked, crocheting feverishly, dragging my ever lengthening chain behind me, that I ought to have started that next step about fifty yards back or that none of them really recalled how it was you hooked on to the next row.

I was forever soured on crochet, though I am fairly certain my mom could pull out that crocheted chain from a box somewhere. Moms are like that.

In college, I took a class where we edited the student literary magazine. As classes like this often go, we became close over the course of the semester. One student’s wife was pregnant, and someone came up with the idea to throw him a surprise baby shower. I’m pretty sure it was something like their third kid, but baby shower we threw. I mentioned off-handedly that I would knit a hat and booties for the baby. The professor said, “Oh! You knit?” Of course I knit!

I didn’t knit.

One Hancock Fabrics learn to knit “hat and booties” kit (white, cotton/acrylic, very splitty yarn and some Susan Bates metal needles), many swear words, a traumatized cat (I may have flung the knitting away from me in a fit of frustration and had a near miss), and a pink Chibi later, I had some wonky booties and an off-kilter hat. I presented them to much fanfare, and vowed to never knit another bloody &^%$&^%$ thing again. I should have vowed to never knit anything using crummy yarn again, but who knew there were yarn shops outside of the big box craft stores? WHO KNEW? And why didn’t you tell ME?

I submit for your consideration, Exhibit A.

On the surface, you have a sweet mother/daughter model pair that nobody thought to teach to actually knit before the shoot. Some seed stitch scarves, painstakingly (I hate seed stitch) knit up by some aspiring set designer working as a lackey intern. (And do you see? They even made that poor girl weave in the ends on all those stripes – as if this simultaneous knitting mother/daughter pair stops and tackles those pesky ends before moving on to the next color in some sort of dastardly Sleeping With the Enemy of knitting.) And you think they just put the yarn skeins like that to show for the picture, but really, they’re facing away because who wants to knit with Vanna White smiling up at you in all of her glorious vapidity? You? Not me!

But, really. I will admit this to you even though it crosses many bounds of ladylike discretion. I have not stopped scratching since I laid eyes on those tops. At least they give mama a camisole underneath, but that poor little girl in her bulky, purple, crocheted, acrylic monstrosity of shirt. I hope she’s at least got a training bra under there. My nipples have spontaneously inverted themselves at the thought of so much $2.50/skein acrylic next to the skin. This is the kind of yarn that squeaks when you knit it. Do you really want your nipples to squeak? Can that possibly be good for you?

From the same circular, I present Exhibit B:

I know I often need to examine my bright white acrylic yarn under the natural light and magnifier, as bright white acrylic is so difficult to see. I make this plea to you, crafter, knitter, crocheter, lover of things that you make with your own two hands. For the love of all that is good and high and holy, if you can spend $120 on a lamp specifically for true representation of color, please find yourself a nice ball of wool somewhere. It probably will not be two for $5. If this is not possible (as $2.50 yarn is all you can afford after your lamp purchase), return it and come out into the sunshine with us and knit $120 worth of natural fiber in the H’est D you can find. Real life.

Exhibit C:

(Warning: blue sky may appear bluer when not seen through monitor or exorbitantly expensive lamp.)