Terrible grandma sweaters and other bad family gifts

I can't come close to that...sorry! My God that is hideous.

Oh....sorry.

My grandmother used to knit beautiful, perfectly crafted Aran sweaters.

They were very dear to me.

However, they were ALL stolen. I think I had three of them.

She also knitted a pine green wool cardigan for my grandfather. My father passed that one onto me, and that too was stolen.

Will someone steal my sweater? :(

It would be one thing if your grandma had MADE that sweater for you...but, um, you've still gotta wear it for her.

During the last few years of my grandpa's life, he took to giving things he had around as gifts. I got some nice coasters and wicked, WICKED can opener, but my 12 year-old cousin got a 25th Wedding Anniversary tea cozy.

haha I'm totally going to do this to my grandkids and laugh behind their back.

Gather friends you can trust, put it on, take a picture like you're out somewhere having a wonderful time, send picture to grandma and then drop it off in a charity bin on your way to the pub.

If it makes you feel any better, my ex-stepmother still makes and sends me - every year since I was 6! - flannel nightgowns with lace around the neck and wrist. Something like this: http://altura.speedera.net/ccimg.catalogcity.com/210000/211700/211737/Products/10447867.jpg

Please note, the following:

1 - I am not 75 years old;
2 - I don't, and haven't in a very long time, wear clothes in bed because
3 - I get really hot when I sleep and even in winter I use a fan and end up kicking all the covers off;
4 - I do not now, nor have I ever, enjoyed wearing flannel;
5 - I live in California, so even in winter, there's just no reason; and finally,
6 - I want to get laid again.

Before I tell this story, the historical tidbit is that nana loved to shop at garage sales. She planned her retirement around them. Anyway, years ago, for Christmas, my nana sent my brother this taped up box. We eagerly opened it (her presents hadn't been bad up to this point--mostly b/c she gave mom $$ to buy stuff, but we knew none of this then). He pulls out this plastic head. It looks more like a paperweight, only because it's flat on the non-face-side. The lips are grotesquely huge & the eyeballs are wide & white. It starts laughing, out of the blue, this god-awful maniacal laugh. I felt like it laughed forever. My brother quickly ran to my mother's lap & she quickly threw the head back in the box while petting my brother on his head & telling him "everything will be okay." It was really scary at the time! Since then, her gifts went slowly downhill until she just started defaulting on giving us a check at Christmas instead.

I'll trade you that maniacal head for my 900 flannel nightgowns.

damn you for making me laugh out loud at work!
that is truly hideous..
my nana is also renowned for bad gift giving. for instance, my mother gets a DICKY every year, no fail. i didn't even know they still MADE those things? where does she GET them?

id fuck you in flannel, baby.

Flannel nightgowns are like celibacy suits. Most disturbing to me is that fact that our relatives have probably put thought into these gifts, lovingly visualized us wearing this hideous garb in any number of fictive tableaus which bear absolutely no resemblance to our real lives, and embraced this vision.

Additionally, I don't think The Sweater advertises fuckability either, though I'm hard-pressed to say which would prove more repulsive to the opposite sex.

Awww...that sweater is sweet. Maybe it is really a secret code, much like many quilts and other decorative arts. :)

Perhaps you are right, and the sweater purports to tell a pictorial history of my extended family.

I will attempt to interpret the symbolism: the first panel in green represents my father, who hurries home bearing the good tidings that at seventeen he has decided to join the Marines shortly before the start of the Vietnam War. He walks contemplatively, enlistment papers in hand-- does he foresee the hysterics that will ensue when he arrives home and informs his Southern mother of his decision, how she will wail unceasingly for hours and threaten to throw herself off the roof? His face gives no indication; the snow drifts silently around him.

The light blue panel, with the woman in scarlet bustling away from the eye of the viewer, packages in hand, represents my great-aunt, who after her mother's death hurriedly absconded with a set of dishes coveted by her other two sisters, sparking a feud that would result in the complete severing of contact between them all and last for over 30 years, until the dish-plundering sister finally died.

In the red panel, the unbalanced tower of presents looming over the smiling child represents the affection and material comforts showered upon my young female cousin, while her step-brother and step-sister (not pictured) were deprived, mistreated, and essentially abandoned by their father to their evil step-mother until they turned 18, moved away and cut off all contact with the family.

Finally, the grinning snowman of the royal blue panel symbolizes our icy inter-familial relations disguised by a mask of forced amiability-- a smile made out of coal, if you will. The dog represents my good-natured grandfather to whom no one listens, trying desperately to carry a candy cane-cum-olive branch to his family, only to find his words unheeded and brushed aside like so much fruitless barking.

Truly, this sweater contains a rich and storied history.

Rumination has increased my hate for it tenfold.

Bravo!

Seriously, I think I've seen something just like that on exhibition at the Art Institute.

Is the dog wearing a scarf, or does it have a disembodied head?

I made that! I just haven't made the fallopian tubes yet.

i kinda wish i still had the sweatshirt my grandma gave to me whne i was in junior high. She had sewn DINOSAURS into it. I'd remove the sleeves, wear it to shows, and be so punk rock.

you did NOT! ahahahaha. oh dear...
(xpost)

Oh man, womb doll swinging in the tree, that is one of the best things ever. You can imagine it shouting "WOOOOOMMBB DOOOOLLLLLL!" as it swings.

Mental.

Ah-hem. When we were kids our grandmother used to make homemade sweets for us, but she always got the proportions wrong or would run out of stuff and just substitute whatever was lying around. She made us treacle toffee once, which is supposed to be like, well, toffee. But hers turned out like sugar glass. She broke the pieces out of the tray with a hammer and we all ran around the back garden with these huge shards of glass sticking out of our mouths. One wrong move and we'd have been history.

Laura I admire your interpretation of the symbolism!
You may not really be asking this, but if you absolutely have to show them that you're wearing it, I suggest going over to their house for a meal or something and arriving at the door wearing the thing. Make your excuses and remove it while eating if necessary, but make a point of putting it on again and posing with them for a picture before you leave. Pros: evidence for the grandparents that you wore the gift. Cons: evidence for yourself and everyone else that you had to wear the gift.

Thinking about this now, I don't know which is worse: receiving a gift like this and hating it (my mom once gave me SOCKS with BOUCLE-KNIT LLAMAS on them), or receiving it and actually loving it. In 4th grade I was given a red sweatshirt that had been decorated (in the vernacular NE Texas style of the late '80s--possibly still popular there) with a large appliqued unicorn made from white doily material--hooves, horn, and eyes all blinged out with rhinestones. It was totally my favorite thing to wear at the time.

I just found out that I have to go for a lobster dinner tonight with my grandparents at a nice restaurant in town (so my grandfather can have lobster "one more time") and I fear that I am expected to wear The Sweater.

wear the sweater to the lobster dinner. when you crack open a lobster and the green stuff comes out make sure some lands on the sweater. Shriek out "the lobster shit on my sweater!" and take it off. Of course this may result in grammy knitting you a sweater with lobsters on it.

I don't actually eat lobster. They are the insects of the sea. I'm not wearing the sweater, but I feel a little bad about it.

i was staying with a friend's family over the holidays one year, and my friend's grandmother sent her pink, fuzzy one-piece zipup pajamas (with feet). it was a bizarre present for a 16yr old no matter what, but it was about 3 sizes too small as well. she was mortified, and everyone else was in hysterics. it reminded me of the bit in a christmas story when ralphie's aunt sends him a pink bunny suit as an xmas gift.

i was just thinking the same thing lauren!
what a film... *sigh*