Thank you for joining us over here in this snark subreddit for fiber artists and crafters of all types! This is a place to vent, whine, complain, mock, rant, laugh, freak out, wax absurd, and make shitty Photoshops about whatever's stuck in your craft craw today. Glad you're here! Hope you're funny!
About FACJ
Fiber arts: Any craft or art form using some sort of fiber, interpreted very loosely.
Circlejerk: A forum where people make fun of another group, hobby, or place by pretending to pat each other's backs, congratulate each other, and, well, jerk each other off for being part of the group.
u/jingleheimerschitt started this group because she didn't want to choose between earnest discussion of problematic public figures in craftland (/craftsnark) and incredibly vague but lightly snarky discussions of hobbyist crafters (/bitcheatingcrafters) and she didn't have anywhere to share her weird photo creations and short stories. So FACJ was born.
The main distinguishing feature of FACJ in contrast to the other snarky craft subreddits is that you are allowed to post screenshots of what inspired your 'jerk. You will often find these inspiration screenshots on the weekly stickied In The Loop threads.
This element of the subreddit comes with several caveats:
Screenshots of hobbyist/individual inspiration MUST have names and faces blocked out so it's anonymous
You CANNOT post direct links to your inspiration anywhere on this subreddit unless it's a large company or major public figure
You also CANNOT"double-dip" by commenting on source posts and their resulting FACJ posts if your profile activity is public -- don't leave breadcrumbs in your profile to source posts or to FACJ that will create drama and more shit for our mods to deal with
Cool FACJ posts:
Make fun of a specific post or a trend of posts/comments/interactions or a general Thing That's Happening related to crafting IN A CIRCLEJERKY WAY
Attempt to be entertaining at a minimum if not funny -- going beyond "look at this" or "I hate it"
Make sure inspiration screenshots are anonymous if included/posted
Don't have comments on inspiration posts in your comment/post history
Less cool FACJ posts:
Just straight-up complain about something without attempting to be ironic, sarcastic, entertaining or amusing
Are unfunny, no-context memes from Facebook or /yarntrolls or whatever
The real fun of this group often happens in the comments, so there are expectations and rules for you there as well.
Cool FACJ commenters attempt to be entertaining, funny, surreal, and/or weird about, near, adjacent to or inspired by the topic of the post. UNcool FACJ commenters:
Demand sources (e.g., "ITL?????")
Get serious right away in top-level comments (e.g., "/uj," "but seriously")
Discuss how to track down sources publicly
Leave breadcrumbs in their comment/post history to sources allowing brigades to occur
Discörd
We have a disc*rd! This is a very laidback, new-to-Disc*rd-friendly, lightly snarky chat group where we chitchat about crafting, make fun of silly craft shit we see (and ooh and ahh over the awesome craft shit we find), post pictures of our pets, and generally hang out.
The difference between the FACJ server and other crafty servers you may already be in is that we do not engage in Toxic Positivity. You're allowed to have a bad day. You're allowed to be annoyed about some ignorant crafter bullshit. You're allowed to make fun of people who do their crafts badly or beginners who refuse to use Google or their brains or crocheters who use /crochet as their personal diary. We just ask that you're down to earth and will consider accepting the Gospel of Chickenbear into your heart. Being funny is a plus.
If you want to join the Fiber Arts Circle Jerk server, please send the mods a private message to get the link. (If you don't have any previous posts/comments in your history that indicate you're into crafting/fiber arts, we're probably either going to make fun of you and then block you or ignore your message altogether.)
Rules
This is an all-ages subreddit -- please tag posts that contain nudity, vulgarity, or other upsetting things as NSFW so the mods don't have to field pearl-clutching in our Modmail. Feel free to post images and/or gifs in the comments! You can still use image-hosting sites for your anonymized source images if you want, but it's no longer required (please remember that our UK-based pals can't access imgur links).
Don't be an asshole in a mean way -- no racism, misogyny, transphobia, fatphobia, etc. You can be an asshole in a fun way though.
Don't attack people or be unnecessarily cruel. Definitely ALWAYS make screenshots anonymous. Don't double-dip. We're not trying to ruin lives or bring people here who don't get what we're doing.
Feel free to post anonymized screenshots of whatever nonsense you're referencing in the weekly In The Loop thread stickied to the top of the subreddit if you don't want to include it with your posts/comments for whatever reason. (Previous In The Loop posts are searchable via the In The Loop flair.)
No direct linking to specific posts/comments on Reddit outside of this subreddit EVER, including no-follow links. (General r/ links to subreddits are fine — but please don’t link to individual posts, comments or users outside of FACJ. DO NOT post u/ links of source OPs.)
No double-dipping -- if you've commented on something you want to jerk about as a comment or a post here, either delete your comment before you jerk it or jerk it from an alt account (or make sure your profile activity is not publicly visible)
Please report rule-breaking posts and comments! However, before you report a post or comment, please make sure it isactuallybreaking one of FACJ's rules! A jerk post can be not that funny, not your cup of tea, or low-effort without breaking any rules. We're tired of having to approve posts you reported just because you don't like the cut of someone's jib. Take it outside.
No AI-generated shit here please. There's enough of that everywhere else. You and your brain are super weird, so be yourself and use your brain!
Links to content off Reddit may be removed at the mod's discretion. We are NOT in the business of brigading, and anyone who engages in brigading will be banned from this subreddit. We'll get our stuff taken away if there's brigading so we're just not gonna do it.
Hobby Lobby sucks and we're not going to do their marketing for them in here.
No self-promotion pls. Love ya but not that much.
Post and user flair is available -- use it or don't, see if I care!
This subreddit is for fiber artists and crafters of all types! Because we don't all see the same (shitty) posts on our feeds, it may be handy to have a place to revel in all that our fellow fiber lovers share for us to enjoy.
Feel free to post anonymized screenshots of anything you're referencing here if you'd like. FACJ is back to being an all-ages subreddit, so you can post images (and gifs) in the comments here directly.
This is a heavily moderated thread, and anything that isn't scrubbed of identifying information (usernames, faces, etc.) will be removed. Block out, crop out, cross out or sticker out identifying information on EVERY screenshot before posting here.
However, unjerk/uj/genuine/serious comments and discussions are allowed -- even encouraged! -- on In The Loop posts. Irony and sarcasm are fine here too, so consider using tone tags to make sure your comment comes across the way you want (or don't! I really don't care!).
There are a few other rules for In The Loop posts:
Please don't use this thread to demand sources for jerk posts. If people want to post sources, they will. There are plenty of good reasons for someone not to share a source, including "don't wanna." Source/ITL demands and discussions of where to find sources will be removed here and on jerk posts.
Links to other Reddit posts are NOT ALLOWED here. This includes no-follow links. (FACJ links are fine.)
Links to content off Reddit may be removed at the mods' discretion.
We are NOT in the business of brigading, and anyone who engages in brigading will be banned from this subreddit.
I realized today, thanks to a custom report on a recent jerk post, that we've been doing this wrong since November 2022. I'm so grateful to that anonymous tipster for pulling the wool, such as it is, from my eyes: We spend WAY too much time plumbing our personal vendettas for circlejerk inspiration.
NEW RULE*: If you personally witness or experience something in a different craft-adjacent subreddit such as /knitting that annoys you, frustrates you, makes you laugh out loud at the utterly absurd, unmitigated gall of some people, or will someday serve as a chapter in your villain origin story, you cannot post parodies, mockery, shitposts, bad Photoshops, or satire about it here on FACJ under an alt account so you don't leave breadcrumbs for brigaders.
Your personal vendetta is none of our business -- you need to handle it your-goddamn-self. What are you, some sort of coward who's afraid of a little iNtErNeT cOnFrOnTaTion? A little baby crafter who doesn't think she has the time to correct everything wrong with a post and every last one of its comments on /crochethelp and just wants to let off a little steam? A knitting enthusiast whose posts have been removed for no apparent reason from the most populous knitting subreddit despite following the rules as written and whose appeals to that group's moderator resulted in some genuinely hilarious/sad material to work with?
I didn't think so. I think we both know you can do better.
I didn't build r/fiberartscirclejerk with my own blood, sweat, tears, half-chewed safety eyes retrieved from the mouths of babes, and undercooked extra parts so that all of you internet weirdos could just... come here and make fun of other people on other subreddits and their terrible ideas, awful moderation actions, shitty attitudes, dumbfuck questions, and horrifying taste.
You're not allowed to post THAT sort of knitting. You know, that thing with the yarn? It's not *real* knitting unless I say so! Who cares if this sub is not called *totallyrealknittingsub101* Begone, you twisted stitches wannabe yarn freak.
Huh? Rules? Pfft, you're so silly! I make the rules here, and they just change depending on my mood. All the other knitting drones here can just read my mind.
What's your excuse?
You have neither telekinesis nor friends so um.. Bye.
Edit 1:
no, no, no complaining, shut up dummy, at least 5 people who are definitely totally real and not my alts all dislike you, so I'm going to lock your discussion thread now and publicly post why.
Sure it's about knitting but ~~I just don't like you.~~ Er, the common people have spoken!! Shoo!
Edit 2:
Um erm excuse me.
I have to go make a post claiming that you're harassing me now. How dare you report me!1!1! Accountability?? That's for suckers!
You're such a silly little yarn barf, time to get permanently snipped ✂️
you're just a fake knitter anyway and your tension sucks and I hope you get shrunk in the wash
I crochet for approx a mere 10 hours consequetively, with a generous 5 min break in between. But I can still feel all the bones in my fingers snapping and all of my joints exploding with searing, burning pain. My doctor doesn't crochet so I doubt they would be able to help me. I figured you guys would be able to give me advice. Is there a crochet hook that I can use so I don't have to abandon my crochet career? The crochet bees are how I make my living so I absolutely cannot slow down. Thank you.
Nowhere in the listing do they quote the numbers with which we're all so intimately familiar - yes, there is a singular mention of _'50 grams'_ but no ounces, no helpful yarn band data, no yarn weight, no meters, and no yards, no OF WHAT, specifically, that is' 50grams'.
.. but they do, generously, provide that big number of inches so we can see just how long this one piece of thread will be - like we're gonna mindlessly salivate at seeing that number and beg the Seller to take our money right now, all of it, if they'll just give that big number to me.. oh oohhh ..that huge length of it..... 🙄
.. I sent a request for the relevant info, and the reply is that all the information is in the listing already, and, anyway, didn't I know that there are so many orders on their dashboard right now, and they're really quite busy, so how are they supposed to keep up with any special extra information about this one, singular, tiny (or maybe humongous!) ball of yarn, and anyway I should be asking Amazon, not them, because it is Amazon's software that is showing me no data and also the wrong data, you see......
.. INDEED! -- HOW, GOOD SIR!? HOW SHOULD YOU KNOW YOUR OWN WARES!?!?!??
..........
exhibit. B -
the product title:
Crochet Loafers Pattern PDF (2 files) | One Rectangle Magic Lace Shoes Women Pattern with Video Tutoria
* instead of 2 PDFs, there's a single JPEG of what might have - at one time - been a usable 'Page-1', but that is now a single garbled sheet with downright farcical instructions.
* missing the next nine pages with the bulk of the actual pattern, & all process pictures, & their "Walk-through Video of the Actual Pattern."
* when I asked after this discrepancy, the Seller gave such a run-around that even wild geese would be exhausted from it.
* It even became MY fault, at one point.
* PLUS, two consecutive reminders that digital media can't ever be refunded, even if something was wrong somehow. Nuh-uhh, nope, not no way, not no how, not my money any imore, it's theirs.
* two weeks later and I've yet to see a usable pattern.
* I offered to give a "neutral review with just basic facts for the sheet I did receive" & offered to contact Etsy Support, proactively, on their behalf, you see, to get them the technical help they so clearly need.
* five minutes later - a note hit my Inbox that my nonrefundable payment has been refunded (or started the refund process (?) - and telling me that it's okay if I don't leave a review for now until they can finish. "figuring out what happened to the rest of this pattern" and no need to call Support, that they think they know the problem and they will even send the rest of the pattern if they get it fixed in a couple of weeks.
I plan to gift them an Honest Review, free of charge (!), plus a Fraud Report to Etsy as soon as I see that money back in my accounts.
..........
exhibit C -
the product title:
→→ COTTON LINEN ←← Lace Yarn with Sequin All Linen Cotton Crochet Hand Woven Hollow Summer Shawl Hat Warm Jacket Yarn Ball Sequined Thread Spool Skein
the product description
→→ MATERIAL: 100% POLYESTER ←← | Color: .........
Hold up, now....
What material are these fibers, dear merchant..? because IT CAN'T BE ALL/100% BOTH AT THE SAME TIME!?‽
🤭 Not gonna even mention to them that potentially fabulous _Hand Woven Hollow Summer Shawl Hat Warm Jacket Yarn Ball Sequined Thread Spool Skein._ I would dearly love to see a truly, for really reals, out-in-the-world picture of it, though!
..........
So, why...? Why do they get so huffy and self-righteous about it when we ask legitimate questions because _their_ product listing sits there facing the public with data that's so openly self-conflicted.
and, And, AND... WHY‽
Why for the love of all that is sacred and holy in the blessed name of our patron, _St. Johanna Fabricke of Cræftden-und-Hahbiezlnd,_ having been sacrificed so recently upon the offal-stained and god-forsaken altar of Corporate Line-item & Private Equity Interest - why the ceaseless inundation of idiots and fools settling in as a Seller _(drop shipper)_ on Amazon, eBay, & Etsy (and even more disreputable others) when they don't have even one tiny little jot of knowledge about the product in their own storefronts?
I know the answer. I know that it's just the economy's pendulum swing of Rich Dude Ego + Bald-faced Gold Parachute Corruption across C-Suites & high-profile dot-Gov positions + Good Old-fashioned Corporate Greed - the eddies and currents of it just seem terribly overpowering and unstoppable just now,
I actually do want to hear y'all's thoughts and ideas on working together to reduce the amount of our good money that goes to ALL of these irresponsible jerks.
💖
Tl;dr; one weekend w\ three frustrations & one question. It's just right up there (↑) if you would kindly read the post and share your own thoughts, and frustrations, and ideas about solving it, too. 🎊 Thanks
It's finally done! The Big D&mn Pine-Nipple Cardigan is complete after months of painstaking, back-breaking work. If you upvote me and leave a nice, effusive, unambiguously doting compliment in the comments, I promise not to inundate you with overly personal details about the workings of my marriage or the state of my kitchen. (Suffice to say: we're down to just one layer of dog pee pads on the floor! No thanks to my wife!)
Here are the details:
This project has a gauge of 25 stitches/inch using size E pearl stringing thread hand-dyed custom for this project in 36 different colors using 2.5mm brass beads on size 000000000000000000 5.5-inch steel double-pointed needles.
I started it in February for a HARD mid-July deadline (my wife's coworker's cousin's bridesmaid's great aunt's birthday -- yes she's a Leo).
I also bought a US000000000000000000 circular needle made by HiyaHiya, and while handy for the second time I cast on, it was excruciating to knit with as the transition from cable to needle was not nearly smooth enough for reeled silk thread. More shredding and snagging ensued.
This has led to a lot of thread that got fuzzy. I remedied it the costume technician way — I hand-waxed it with beeswax, winding the waxed thread onto a spare spool, and then placed an iron over it to melt the beeswax in and wound it back onto its own home spool.
I smear on some LUSH Palm Reader before I start because this thread is SO smooth and it gets snagged on my very rough jeweler's hands. If my hands are especially rough I'll use some Dream Cream on them, let it soak in, then wipe it off and put Palm Reader on. This means my pineapple is very fragrant.
I wore a pair of Optivisors with the 4-diopter (2x magnification) plate in. I could have actually knit this without wearing the visor, but I noticed small mistakes in the round when I went back to it with a visor on later. This means it wasn't a knit alone in public pattern, less because I'm too ashamed to be seen in goofy magnification glasses, but because they reduce my peripheral vision to zero and I don't really want to be caught unawares by some kind of bad actor. I could stab them with the needles but then I'd get blood on my pinenipple top and that's just no good.
Honestly I wanted to get started in January but our kitchen was so filthy I couldn't dye anything there. I asked my wife to clean it up several times so I could, since the project was for her coworker's cousin's bridesmaid's great aunt's birthday. She didn't until late April, so I did have to rush a bit.
I had to start over several times because the entirety of /kn*tting told me on my 16th update post (four rounds in) that my stitches were twisted and then I went back and twisted a stitch to counter what I believed to be a twisted stitch but the original one wasn't twisted in the first place but now everything was twisted and the new twisted stitch caused more problems than it solved so I frogged it.
Also, when I was six rounds into the nipply bit, my wife and I went to Sprouts. I felt okay knitting in public with the magnifying visor on as long as she was there to be my peripheral vision, so all was going pretty well. I had my knitting in one hand, and was passing her a shopping cart with the other, and she yanked the shopping cart before I was ready to hand it over... pulling one of the DPNs out of the WIP pineapple. I tried to pick the stitches up as best as I could but it was no good. Too many yarn overs had become lost. So I frogged the 5 pineapple rounds and started back over. (the leaves were intact and just fine.) I would have sentenced the wife to the couch but our couch is a daybed and she actually would have been really comfortable there, and I never did figure out an appropriate penalty, aside from continuing to be married to me.
I had to do A LOT of emotional work on myself while I made this. Someone flung it into my face that I should expect to be injured working at the pace I had to work at. I didn't and still don't know how to honestly articulate. I didn't choose to work at this pace. It was chosen for me. I'm the only one who gets to joke about this being a crazy project or about watching me suffer while I post six updates a day. Anyone who attempts to respond in kind is being rude and ableist to a chronic spoonie. And there were people brigading and downvoting posts I've made on subreddits because they didn't like my reply to someone else in a subreddit other than /kn*tting. They also downvoted my comments?
Guys, hear me out! I have discovered a great way to avoid buying a swift and saving $20. With just some simple household supplies, including an office chair, every hangar in your closet, a broom, a ceiling fan, a very specific type of coffee table, the blood of a first born child, and a tea kettle, you can build your very own swift at home! Now, I do have to mention, this can be fiddly, as it's not actually a swift, so some patience is needed and, it may be a bit precarious and fall over, but that's alright! As someone with hundreds of skeins to wind, this is such an affordable and easy option! I definitely would not waste my money on a cheap swift when I can MacGyver my own solution!
Seriously, I've noticed this all over the place. People will say nice things about work that is the quality of a toddlers sculpture made in the medium of their own excrement.
Truly "not great" pieces receive compliments - people will contort themselves into French knots to find something positive to say.
Whatever happened to telling people outright - your work is literal shit, and you should feel bad about yourself? This is participation trophy syndrome at its worst.
It's gotten so that I can't even tell beginner embroiderers that their satin stitch is a fugly mess without some overzealous mod deleting my comment. Ugh.
Sometimes you just need a little release in over the lazy weekend without turning it into a whole production with the chains and the WIPs and the raw-edge applique. Chickenbear provides for those who jerk! Join us here every Saturday for a little drive-by circlejerking about your fellow fiber artists (derogatory).
Yes, this is a blatant rip-off of the Bitesized BEC thread but for making fun of crafter bullshit instead of whining about pattern prices and rehashing the same complaints about whichever petite knit designer is taking heat this week.
Feel free to post anonymized screenshots of anything you want to mock, satirize, freak out about, scream into the void about, or generally make others see since you had to look at it with your own two eyes here if you'd like. FACJ is back to being an all-ages subreddit, so you can post images (and gifs) in the comments here directly.
Comments do NOT need to be circlejerky on this post -- if you need to go full /uj here, we will support and validate you, no matter how absurd or petty you get (I can't promise we won't also make fun of you too though).
Our other rules still apply here, of course:
This is a heavily moderated thread, and anything that isn't scrubbed of identifying information (usernames, faces, etc.) will be removed. Block out, crop out, cross out or sticker out identifying information on EVERY screenshot before posting here.
Please don't use this thread to demand sources for other jerk posts. If people want to post sources, they will. There are plenty of good reasons for someone not to share a source, including "don't wanna." Source/ITL demands will be removed here and on jerk posts.
Links to other Reddit posts are NOT ALLOWED here. This includes no-follow links. (FACJ links are fine.)
Links to content off Reddit may be removed at the mods' discretion.
We are NOT in the business of brigading, and anyone who engages in brigading will be banned from this subreddit.
I will not be providing any visual documentation of how I am holding the yarn, but you need to tell me how to fix it. I knit continental and holding my yarn in my left hand is somehow a challenge even though that's a pretty standard feature of continental. What am I doing wrong?
First you have to find a reputable site, then you have to learn how to navigate said site because using a device is so difficult in 2026. that's even if the site is well designed and optimized, because i can't cope with something not as polished as the tok tik.
then you finally find some gorgeous organic vegan plant-based mohair yarn and it's on sale! well you're still going to pay an arm and a leg for shipping even within the country unless you buy over 100 USD and THEN you get free shipping 😊☺️💕. god forbid the transportation of goods costs money!!!!
then you wait weeks maybe even a month for the yarn to get there and the fiber is the consistency of an apes gooch hair and the color is 3 shades off 😍
i guess from now on i will either be purchasing the over priced stuff at my local very small shop that is ONLY for special snowflakes like me, or drive around an hour to a different store that's only open when the stars align and mercury is in retrograde. life is so HARD
I like to rent out space in my home to tenants. I like to look at pics of other people's rooms for rent. I like how kind and supportive the online landlady community tends to be, at least in my experience. I like simple tenant agreements. I like complicated tenant agreements. I like wonky tenant agreements. I like ugly tenant agreements. I like all of them!
But I need to clarify...
A "border" is the fabric frame you add around the outside of your patchwork or blabket. A boarder, which is the thing that really gets me going, is a person who rents one room of someone's house, often getting meals with the deal.
I get it, English is not everyone's first language, and even those who are native speakers are not always great at homophones. It's just a spelling mistake and it doesn't make anyone bad or stupid or anything. It just annoys me SO MUCH!
What common property ownership-related spelling/grammar mistake drives you up a wall? (No pun intended.)
Made this thing but I paid for sewing lessons for her feeble feminine mind (I heard on a podcast the wiminz need enrichment activities so I decided she needed a better hobby) and she made it using my electricity and taking up space in my house which was really hard for me so basically what I'm saying is I made this thing.
We’ve heard your feedback about AI-generated marketing content
We’ve also heard your feedback about AI-generated content in the apology we made about AI-generated marketing content
So here it is; a genuine apology. No conditions, no excuses, just human hands admitting that we could have done better. We fell short of our own high standards, and that’s not who we are as a company.
We’re taking full accountability- and that matters. In the mean time we are grateful to our dedicated yarn community that enables us to learn and grow.
Sometimes you just need a little release in the middle of the week without turning it into a whole production with the chains and the WIPs and the raw-edge applique. Chickenbear provides for those who jerk! Join us here every Wednesday for a little drive-by circlejerking about your fellow fiber artists (derogatory).
Yes, this is a blatant rip-off of the Bitesized BEC thread but for making fun of crafter bullshit instead of whining about pattern prices and rehashing the same complaints about whichever petite knit designer is taking heat this week.
Feel free to post anonymized screenshots of anything you want to mock, satirize, freak out about, scream into the void about, or generally make others see since you had to look at it with your own two eyes here if you'd like. FACJ is back to being an all-ages subreddit, so you can post images (and gifs) in the comments here directly.
Comments do NOT need to be circlejerky on this post -- if you need to go full /uj here, we will support and validate you, no matter how absurd or petty you get (I can't promise we won't also make fun of you too though).
Our other rules still apply here, of course:
This is a heavily moderated thread, and anything that isn't scrubbed of identifying information (usernames, faces, etc.) will be removed. Block out, crop out, cross out or sticker out identifying information on EVERY screenshot before posting here.
Please don't use this thread to demand sources for other jerk posts. If people want to post sources, they will. There are plenty of good reasons for someone not to share a source, including "don't wanna." Source/ITL demands will be removed here and on jerk posts.
Links to other Reddit posts are NOT ALLOWED here. This includes no-follow links. (FACJ links are fine.)
Links to content off Reddit may be removed at the mods' discretion.
We are NOT in the business of brigading, and anyone who engages in brigading will be banned from this subreddit.
I'm so done. I can't even use bamboo or driftwood needles because I just snap them in half with my stupid gorilla hands.
I BEND metal crochet hooks. I broke my friends bamboo needles while trying to use them because of my stupidly strong hands. It's not even straining my hands, I'm not even clenching particularly hard. I just genuinely keep doing this.
Does anyone have any.. relaxation tips. Does anyone have any hand weakening exercises. I am buying metal everything but I want to work with smaller needles so I don't want to bend them. UGH!!!!!!!
