Upsetting Day: Ravelry's Weirdos (Patreon)

Let’s do a nice one today! I want to talk about Ravelry, a pattern database for knitters. Lots of people give away their patterns for free, but some sell them for a small price. You’re probably picturing a lot of grandmas giving away free dog sweater patterns, and you are correct, but they also have this:

Every corner of the internet has its weirdos, and we collect them here for you. So, I’ve brought you the knitting weirdos today. Please enjoy them. I know for a fact that they are enjoying themselves. How? Because you don’t make this without joy.

I look at this picture, and I know three things. 1.) This woman is pleased with herself. 2.) She should be. 3.) If you buy her chicken hat pattern for $6.50, you too can experience this much joy. Caution: it’s an amount of joy you may not be able to handle. If for some insane reason this chicken hat isn’t that exciting to you, can I interest you in a chicken in a hat?

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about these people, it’s that if you have an animal, they will find a way to put a hat on it. They have the technology. Look out, noble tigers, the knitters are coming for you. Gretchen’s Bunny Hat (Chicken Hat) is just one of many hats designed to disguise one animal as another. Here’s a guinea pig in a lion's mane, a cat dressed as a reindeer, and a dog dressed as a shark, with varying degrees of excitement about their costumes.

If you have an animal, farm or domesticated, it’s on Ravelry in a little hat. Did you think horses had escaped them? They made a dog sweater for a mini pony. There’s not enough yarn in the world to cover all of God’s creatures, and that’s the only thing stopping these people from hunting them all down and hatting them. This is a sickness.

But aren’t there horny things, Lydia? I thought you would bring us weird horny things. You’re probably saying that to yourself, your friends, and your dog with a shrimp hat on. Of course there are horny things! Do you think there aren’t horny things on the knitting website? I could pick any arbitrary thing, horse; we just did horse, put it in the mature content section and…

Is that what you wanted to see? They turn animals into other animals and men also into animals. That’s what they do. You asked to see that. They didn’t have to do a full professional photo shoot with the pony mask, tuxedo, and martinis, but they did. Are you happy? Don’t make me do this again. There will be horny stuff, but first I want to tell you about The Garment.

The Garment went viral on knitting TikTok a few months ago, and since then, over 1,500 people have made some version of it. It’s what brought Revelry to my attention. It has the drama of a cloak without the functionality of one. It looks like something made for a priest who's taken a vow of handlessness. It looks like a Nancy Meyers movie came to life and ate a man. It is strange and beautiful art. A few textile artists have put their more avant-garde work on Ravelry, but it usually looks more like this human mask.

I have a human mask; I call it my face. I don’t want to hang out with people who don’t have a human mask. Don’t give people without a human mask ways to hide amongst us, knitters! Not that this human mask is very convincing. I know whatever is behind that isn't human, and that’s not the scariest part. Ok, we can do horny stuff now, but I’m starting with cute horny. Here’s a sentence I never thought I'd write. Look at these adorable eyeball penises.

Cheeky! What sleep paralysis demon came up with this design concept? As a writer, I often wonder where creativity comes from. Did the creator of this look at a ghost and think, “slap an eyeball on that and you’ve got yourself a willy?” Or did she see a penis and think, “kind of looks like a ghost with an eyeball on top?”

A penis is rarely a good surprise, but surprise penis is the niche that user CraftedJeanne has curated for herself. Usually they are Halloween-themed, such as her devil penis, Frankenstein penis, and vampire penis, but she’s also got an Easter penis surprise, a mushroom penis surprise (not a very big surprise), and an even less surprising one based on dumplings in a tall cylindrical steamer basket.

There are a lot of penis decorations on Ravelry, but one of the most popular penis designs is probably Donald Trump as a penis. Knitting seems like kind of a trad wife thing to do, but if the trad wives are here, their designs are not as popular as those depicting our president and his entourage as tiny penises.

Ravelry has sort of become known as a radical-left knitting website because of its Facebook group. Legend has it the original moderator of the page died, as people who moderate knitting groups tend to do fairly regularly, and the unmoderated page quickly descended into left-wing chaos. A small group of Ravelry Facebook page users broke off to make a page that’s “JUST ABOUT KNITTING NO POLITICS! In response, another group broke off to create a page called Ravelry (Extra Political). The main Ravelry page is a healthy mix of “Check out this fish sweater I made!” and “heard the president might be sick, fingers crossed, any day now!” Here’s an often-reposted meme from the main Ravelry page that captures the general attitude about the schism.

You might be surprised to learn that the people of the knitting website that sells instructions for a five-foot-tall penis are pretty unconcerned about offending people’s political sensitivities. They show up to knit stuff, sometimes that stuff is a penis that is also a Dracula. Sometimes that stuff is a tiny penis that is also the President, and sometimes it’s just the biggest penis they could possibly construct.

Don’t worry about the vaginas; they aren’t getting left out. In fact, it’s not just the genitals that get featured on the female body. There’s a full knitted nude woman's torso available. I don’t think you should be able to purchase instructions for how to make that anywhere. I also don’t think the romantic photoshoot with the lady torso was necessary. When I first saw this entry, I thought m…maybe this is meant to be empowering or something? But the photos show the woman squeezing the helpless torso's titty as if to say, this is a thing I can do if I want because I didn’t knit her arms to stop me!

People are obsessed with making boobs into useful products like dice bags and boob slippers, for those occasions where you might want big oblong titties on your toesies. I feel like penises have to work less to get more attention. That could be because they’re way easier to make into a surprise Frankenstein.

The crowning jewel of Ravelry’s mature content section goes to the girlies. That’s right, it’s the vagina dentata…I want to say puppet? Doll? Which is worse? A vagina dentata that you can cuddle, or one that talks to you? Screamers choice. Whatever it is, I love everything about it, including that it has Googly eyes.

I guess that’s all I have for you this week. Please enjoy these crafts; maybe make some yourself! Or, when people tell you to get off the internet and make something with your hands, show them some of these projects and maybe they will shut up.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Alpha Scientist Javo, whose grant to determine whether a five-foot knitted penis can feel shame has entered its sixth year.

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