the quacking fiber addict

Does anyone else want to take this stray home and *feed* her?... From Vogue Knitting Fall05

The American/ British anorexia trend seems to be invading everything these days. It was bad enough when there was Heroin Couture, but now... ugh.

The fact that people are buying into this unhealthily skinny look (read: starved, malnourished, or just plain sticklike) really bothers me. I belonged to a women's group last year. Half of the girls in it had eating disorders. They monitored everything they ate down to the calorie. It was frightening. Like every other American female, I can obssess over my weight - but I try to focus on other things, like knitting. But that's becoming ever more impossible.

I've noticed a trend in knitting books and magazines now - more and more slender sizing. Impossibly slender sizing. If an "extra-large" large sweater measures at the BUST to 40 inches, what size does that make half the women I know? I don't suggest you answer that.

40 inches? It sounds innocent, until you take into consideration that to make a sweater that fits you have to subtract an average of 4 inches off the finished size. Or, 2 inches for a fitted sweater. So, here's the math: If your sweater is 40 inches at the bust, your chest can only be at it's largest point 38 inches. And that's if you don't want to wear something under the sweater. Yeah, that's gonna happen with a wool cardi. I remember being told in Health Class, in high school, that the average bra size is 38-B. Unh-huh. So, what does that mean for those of us that are "average"?

Doesn't this bother anyone? I reallyreally love many modern, funky patterns. But I don't want to have to adapt them so I can make a sweater that fits! This is time I reallyreally don't have.

Ever since my teen years I have not been able to find shirts that fit me in most stores. I usually have to get shirts that are either too tight (in women's) or too big (in men's). Fine, I've accepted that clothing designers are sick people that have an unhealthy obssession with little boys. Whatever. I thought, though, that by branching into knitting my own sweaters I could evade this problem. Apparently not.

So, on behalf of all buxom women and other curvy individuals, I protest the anorexic trend knitting patterns are following. I know I can't be the only woman out there. Maybe I'll write my own book: Voluptuous Knits, or something. Any takers?