The Azel Pullover

Let me start by saying, I love this pattern. The designer creates fantastic patterns. Her model (I'm assuming her daughter?) is insanely adorable. She uses fabulous chunky yarns that look amazing knitted up. Her fox hat is to die for. (Of course that does the rounds on Facebook regularly too...) Did I mention Heidi herself is stunningly beautiful too? What's not to love?!

So I can understand how the Azel went viral. It's a fairly simple knit, that looks amazeballs on her model. In a bulky yarn it would knit up quickly so doesn't seem too big an imposition to ask your crafty friend to whip up for you. Does it?

 "But FuckingMermaid you love this pattern, you just said so! What's the problem?" I hear you say.

Well, have you ever eaten the same food over an over for a week? Breakfast, dinner and lunch, day after day. No matter how much you love nachos or candy corn or kale smoothies* you get pretty darn sick of them day in and day out. 

Now imagine instead of food, its the Azel pullover. And instead of meals, its your newsfeed. Your inbox. Your private messages. Suddenly the gorgeous pattern you seriously considered knitting one day is fucking everywhere!

"Aren't you overreacting a bit? People know you like this stuff and they just want to make sure you saw it! It's what social media is all about."

No. Just no. Because I did already see it. It was published in February 2015. What these well-meaning sharers don't know is that net-savvy knitters and crocheters use Ravelry. We use it A LOT. It's basically Facebook for crafters. And it has a really good search feature. Like really, really good. We spend hours on it looking at patterns and projects. We even have a term for it: "going down the Ravit hole." Because we start looking and next thing an hour or two have gone by, we've favourited 15 patterns, updated our WIPs, tidied up our stash and resorted our queue. Sure we forgot what we originally were looking for but hey! That's Rav for ya. 

Ravelry also has a feature called "Hot Right Now." You can see popular patterns for any category you chose! Designers love seeing their patterns showing up on the first page. Here, have a look at what's hot right now under "Child 4-12." See anything familiar?** 

So yeah, we've seen it. We've seen it, we've favourited it, we've shared it with our favourite knitting groups til we were blue in the face. LAST FUCKING YEAR. So please, I beg of you. Stop.

Stop doing this.

And this.

Oh and also fucking this.

Just so you know, I hate you now. Like for actuals.

And we haven't even covered how it would probably look once knitted up in whatever god-awful acrylic shit*** you will inevitably chose for us to knit it with, and modeled on your precious little snowflake, not on a pebbly-beach on a moodily-overcast day but in terrible fucking lighting in your living room. Not professionally-photographed but snapped blurrily on your iPad. Unless you use a very similar yarn and buttons, and have a child worthy of the front cover of Treasures, its going to look disappointing. We know this, we've seen countless projects that didn't measure up to the beautifully staged designer photos. We look at these on purpose, because we don't want to waste our time and money/luxurious yarns on something that isn't going to knit up nicely. 

Now I'm not saying this pattern won't knit up nicely. It can't go too wrong really (as long as have half the skill of a drunk toddler and provided you BLOCK THAT SHIT!) but the designers spend a lot of time and effort making the photos look amazing to entice you to buy the pattern. That's part of their job! You only have to look at Stephen West's designer page to see that. Many of them probably spend their hard-earned cash on professional photo-shoots and that shit ain't cheap. If I'm going to spend hours of my precious knitting time, which I carve out of my very busy life, to knit this for you, possibly having purchased the yarn on your behalf, because lets face it, I won't be knitting acrylic, it better look fucking amazing when I'm done. Because instead of knitting this, I could be knitting that cute new shawl that was just released, or a jersey for my cousin's newborn, or new gloves that my kids desperately need before winter. Then there's the patterns in my queue I have been wanting to do for ages, and the WIPs already in my basket that I should finish before I cast on anything else. And the socks I should mend before my feet freeze right off. So if our friendship is actually strong enough that I would (however begrudgingly) agree to knit this for you sometime this decade, when you put it on your special angel, it has to look as good as (or better than) the beautifully styled photo you saw on Facebook. Or we will never speak, ever again. Real talk.

Thanks to contributors Eva and Fluffy for sharing these thorns in your side!

Got another fucking mermaid blanket to share? Email me: anothermermaidblanket@gmail.com

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* You fucking liar! No-one likes kale smoothies.
** At time of publication it was this: 

*** From Spotlight no less.

You Know How It Goes

You are a crafter. You knit, you maybe crochet a bit. Sometimes you might dabble with felting or spinning. Maybe not. This is your getaway, your tiny bit of you-time that you carve out from the demands of the world. You join a bunch of Facebook groups, looking to find like-minded individuals to share your passion with. People there share patterns that aren't like your grandma's knitting, they are modern and interesting, wearable even! They get you! Sometimes they even post a joke or two that relates to knitting. Occasionally something will strike a chord and will get posted in a few groups, a mini-viral response. Its ok, everyone comments and then you move on.

In your excitement and enthusiasm you make the ultimate mistake. You let your wider Facebook circles know about your hobby. You endure the "oh I've *always* wanted to know how to knit but I'm hopeless at crafts!" comments and the "how do you find the time?" that implies you are somehow less busy than them (and therefore less of a human.)

But here's the real kicker. After a little while, those mini-viral posts from the crafting groups somehow leak out into the non-crafting community on Facebook. They go proper viral. We all know the ones I mean. The reason you know them is because now every well meaning "friend" on Facebook  is sharing it and tagging you, asking you to make one for their little darling, or just letting you know in case you somehow missed it the first 25 times it came up on your feed.

The crochet slipper boots. The shark booties. The. Fucking. Mermaid. Blankets.

I get a lot of these posted to my wall. Now thanks to Facebook's "memory" feature I get cheerful reminders of when someone posted it to my wall LAST EFFING YEAR. Talk about adding insult to injury. Then the leaves changed, the weather got a little chilly and I made the image you see here.

 But it wasn't enough. I can't complain about it on Facebook because those same well-meaning "friends" might take offense. My knitting friends and I have a vent about it occasionally. I felt my ire needed a wider audience. So I present to you, Another Fucking Mermaid Blanket. Please, send me your screenshots, I will anonymise them and you. Then I will post them with as much snark as I can muster. Enjoy!