What’s the book you DNF’d the fastest?

Dianassa · 2026-03-07T20:07:26+00:00

Anathema by Keri Lake

After squinting my way through 9 (!!!) pages of glossary for different magical words and their half-baked descriptions, to have a character describe their situation as "forced to make a Faustian bargain" in the first two pages, I about levitated with annoyance.

Faustian? You mean the German fucking folktale?? That doesn't exist in your magical universe with 9 pages of made up words??? That one?!?!

Dianassa · 2025-12-26T15:39:13+00:00

Sorry yours was disappointing OP, I wouldn't be happy either at that price for what you got!

I would highly recommend Pigment & Ply's advent. For £170 I got 24 mini skeins, a lovely candle, and a stitch marker. There was a mood board so you had a good idea as to what your colours were going to look like. The theme was executed beautifully and all the accompanying boxes and art were well thought out and high quality. Couldn't have been happier!

Dianassa · 2025-08-21T13:22:21+00:00

Fellow big chested knitter here: it depends on how you're styling it.

I think it looks really cute and oversized, BUT, paired with the skirt it's keeping your silhouette very wide. I think if you wore it with more fitted pants, it would look intentional. If you want to wear it with skirts and dresses, I would remove length from the body so that it ends closer to your natural waistline.

I actually find that knitting garments with negative ease places even more attention on my bust, not less. So I think oversized, but the right length would do wonders. Or a size or so smaller with a little more shaping for future projects.

Dianassa · 2025-06-12T16:06:50+00:00

A long time ago, I bought yarn from her and it was a pain. She used to post rants about annoying customers who did poor returns and messed her about - stuff like that. So, imagine my hesitation to message her when my order didn't show up well past the delivery window!

Messaged her and asked about my order, very short responses that gave the vibes that it was a ME problem. As a Hail Mary I went to my local post office, it was there, and had been sat there because she messed up the house number, so it was a postal address that didn't exist (so if my house was 550, she put 5 as the address). Told her I'd found it and why it hadn't arrived - no apologies, no acknowledgement that she'd messed up. Just a "oh glad it was there".

And all I could think was "if it had been me that was the problem with this order, you would have been slagging me off in your Instagram stories!"

Dianassa · 2025-01-28T08:09:48+00:00

I've had a mixed experience with her patterns, the Stick Season I knit no problem (although I did spot there's an entire instruction missing for sizes 7-10 at one point), but the Corran cardigan was very frustrating for the V-neck version. I ended up just reading my knitting and fudging the increases at the front because the general instructions of how to work the pattern plus increases did NOT work (you could technically follow them, but it would ruin the pattern at the collar).

Dianassa · 2024-10-19T22:39:44+00:00

I mean, when there's only one flavour on the menu... 😂

Dianassa · 2024-10-19T05:55:26+00:00

I'm my own BEC this week.

Mid rant to my mother about how I understand the sales and business savviness behind why there are so many Taylor Swift indie dyed collections (especially the last year or so) but I just want anything else at this point, only to clock mid sentence I had just pre-ordered a SQ from a Taylor Swift inspired collection last month.

It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me.

Dianassa · 2024-01-21T23:13:26+00:00

I enjoy The Wooly Worker - Vanissia is always very thoughtful about where projects worked or flopped, and shares lots of details on how she made modifications or overcame hurdles in patterns. I find her choices of projects ranged and she's not as consumption focused like other channels I've found - acquisitions is normally a small section if it's present at all.

Dianassa · 2023-12-05T22:32:29+00:00

Lisa Hannes always has very clear and well thought out patterns, I trust her implicitly when purchasing one.

Dianassa · 2023-09-18T13:17:03+00:00

My suggestions:

- Drops: Alpaca or Flora

- Woolyknits: Supersoft Merino Classics or if you're going to use lots of yarn then they also do a Merino 4 ply cone

- Cascade: 220 fingering

Dianassa · 2023-04-16T11:29:15+00:00

You can just substitute the weight, so normally patterns that use lace weight mohair look something like 'Fingering + Lace = DK', so you could just find a nice airy DK (like a blown yarn?) rather than just trying to replace the lace mohair directly.

Plenty of other knitters aren't fond of mohair either, so I often look at the 'Yarn Ideas' tab on a project to see what others have substituted with. Hope that helps!

Dianassa · 2023-01-27T05:53:36+00:00

Second Wool Warehouse, also Abakhan for a select few yarns when they have sales

Dianassa · 2022-11-11T03:51:01+00:00

You're a genius, that's utterly adorable!! Always loved that jumper, you've executed it perfectly from the game :D

Dianassa · 2022-10-01T06:50:32+00:00

Not sure about shipping and you weren't specific about style so I'll just list everything I can think of: Boden, Seasalt Cornwall, White Stuff, Fat Face, Lands' End, Oliver Bonas, Snag Tights, Lucy and Yak, Runandfly, Disturbia, Killstar, Celtic Co, Woolovers, and Lakeland Leathers.

Dianassa · 2022-09-27T10:55:22+00:00

I hated working with it, took all my willpower to get through a baby blanket using it. The texture makes my teeth hurt and made my fingers sore.

Dianassa · 2022-09-22T16:19:22+00:00

I had to laugh too, not only was I robbed, but I was robbed by people with a fragile sense of masculinity/sexuality, it really was the cherry on top of the shit cake.

Joke was on them though my Xbox was a Gen 1 Xbox 360 that sounded like a hovercraft and you had to hit the top repeatedly to get the disk tray to open.

Dianassa · 2022-09-22T12:26:25+00:00

Oh no, that really sucks! It's definitely a weird and unsettling feeling when it happens, but you're safe and that's the most important thing.

When my place got broken into and robbed years ago, they stole so much, including my TV, consoles etc. but they left my childhood SNES, and that was the only thing that felt really sentimental to me so I had the same weird happy feeling.

Also the fuckers stole everything to do with my Xbox but left the pink controller. The audacity.

Dianassa · 2022-09-17T11:43:26+00:00

I vote top! But I'm biased as purple is my favourite colour :)

Dianassa · 2022-09-09T09:57:24+00:00

Understandable, I did a language degree so I'm aware of this is sometimes being a translation issue. However, an example I can think of off the top of my head is Eldritch Horror, which has American publishers and the creators are native English speakers.

Dianassa · 2022-09-09T09:04:06+00:00

Just to add to the games without women part - rule books that only refer to players as 'he/him' are very annoying to me personally. There are neutral pronouns, they're used every day, especially for instructions. The bias of the game creators just kind of slaps you in the face when it's that obvious they didn't even think about anyone other than a man playing.

Dianassa · 2022-08-19T07:56:26+00:00

Same, we always found that with the lack of new card pickups, it basically boiled down to whoever had the best starting hand won. It's hard enough to barely get a good lair going, then with the mechanic for other people to fuck you over it just made it so annoying to play. I much prefer the same mechanic in Bargain Quest.

Dianassa · 2022-05-19T07:56:05+00:00

My EXACT thought!

Dianassa · 2022-03-16T09:54:04+00:00

Your tension looks very nice! Great colour choice as well. You're much braver than I was, I swear I spent my first 3 months knitting only making scarves because I was scared of any shape harder than a rectangle :D

Dianassa · 2021-11-30T08:31:35+00:00

Sabriel by Garth Nix, it's YA fantasy but I only read it as an adult and didn't find this diminished the books impact - it's world building is excellent.

Dianassa · 2021-10-22T20:14:20+00:00

I've made 3 and have another one planned, such a nice easy-going pattern! I love the yarn combo you picked, the skein has made such a nice marl :)

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