Chapter 128: The Handicraft Craze

Chapter 128: Chapter 128: The Handicraft Craze

The matter between the Research Institute and the Martinez family was not concealed at all, yet what was worth mentioning was that it did not affect the citizens across the Galaxy in the slightest. At most they clicked into the post to take a look before leaving behind a few absurdly simple characters such as: "huh, knew it right away", "ha ha", "yeah, got it", "oh, is that so",...

It seemed they were already sick to death of the words Research Institute up to their necks.

Now hearing the news that the other side had suffered a loss before the four-clan alliance (which rumor had it even had Umbra backing them from behind), they only felt gloating satisfaction as though reading a joke, laughing it off before scrolling past.

What they cared about at this moment was probably only entertainment topics.

The resounding success of the fashion show [Origin of Life] not only brought Isabella’s name stepping up to the peak of fame, but also inadvertently sparked a social phenomenon that lay completely outside everyone’s expectations.

That was the craze of making handmade crafts (Handmade) sweeping across every single corner of the Lumina Galaxy!

The cause stemmed from the fact that the price of the high-end clothing line woven from Cryomollis Silk was far too expensive and the initial production output had to be prioritized for supplying the Military, so ordinary people even holding billions in cash had to line up waiting until their necks stretched long just to buy a single undershirt.

However, the second product line introduced during the show - the models of sweaters, scarves, berets, handbags, and decorative stuffed animals knitted and crocheted entirely by hand from temperature-regulating wool yarn and high-grade bamboo fiber - struck right at the beauty-loving psychology of all the netizens!

Previously, on the Vlog channel [Isabella Handmade], Isabella only posted basic knitting and crochet tutorial videos while accepting a few small retail orders because the wool raw materials on hand were limited. Yet at present, the thirty-five-hectare factory producing temperature-regulating wool yarn and natural bamboo fiber on the industrial planet had gone into operation at maximum capacity, producing hundreds of yarn models with a rich color palette, as soft and smooth as rabbit fur while the cost was exceedingly affordable.

Merely two days after the press conference on the Capital planet, Passing Shower officially opened public sales for the "DIY Handmade Knitting and Crochet Material Kit" on the online shopping cart, including a set of polished bamboo knitting needles and crochet hooks, skeins of temperature-regulating wool yarn in all colors accompanied by access rights to the video library teaching every single crochet stitch from basic to advanced by Isabella herself!

Not a single person anticipated that the destructive power of these round, colorful skeins of yarn would be so terrifying!

In a hyper-technological society where everything from clothes and footwear down to household appliances was mass-stamped out by machine assembly lines in merely a few seconds, the concept of "using one’s very own hands to slowly knit each stitch of thread to create a one-of-a-kind item to gift to a loved one" brought an irresistible spiritual appeal!

Within just the first week of opening sales, ten million knitting and crochet kits were sold out completely.

At universities, company offices, all the way to senior citizen resorts, everywhere one went people heard the newest greeting question: "Which row have you crocheted up to today? Double crochet or single crochet?"

On the Interstellar Connection network, the hashtag #ShowingOffMyFirstKnittingAndCrochetWork# quickly surpassed even political news to climb up and sit grandly at the Top 1 spot on the trending chart for half a month straight, with every range of emotion from admiring exclamations to laughing until tears flowed:

[Responding to the movement of Goddess Isabella, I stayed up for three nights straight to crochet a pink wool hat to gift to my Omega girlfriend! When I brought it out my girlfriend was moved to tears right on the spot... because she said looking at the hat I crocheted looked identical to the warped-rim hotpot pot of Brother Sunflower!]

[Ha ha ha person upstairs do not be sad, look at my calico cat work right here! Clearly I followed every single step identically to Sister Isabella’s video; I have no idea why once I finished stuffing the cotton and sewing the eyes in, her cat looks innocent and adorable, whereas my cat looks like a genetically mutated Black Carapace Bug getting ready to go bite people!]

[Oh my, how did you all make such bizarre shapes? My mother has suffered from senile insomnia and anxiety for five years now; since the day I bought this bamboo fiber yarn set home for her to sit knitting a scarf, every single day she sits counting yarn stitches so attentively that she forgets even to snap in irritation at my father, and when night comes she even sleeps soundly straight through until morning! The psychologist said the repetitive fine motor movements of the fingers when knitting yarn combined with the soft tactile sensation of natural fibers has an extremely good effect on reducing nervous tension!]

[This is the scarf I knitted for my father, it is my very first work. While this keychain made from leftover yarn is a reward I made for myself. I am still a student, watching Sister Passing Shower’s channel every day. My father saw that I liked it so he bought a basic knitting and crochet set as a birthday gift for me. My father’s salary is only one million six hundred thousand silver stars a month, yet he was still willing to buy a knitting and crochet set costing over three hundred thousand silver stars for me!]

[He is a wonderful father! Little one upstairs, you knit so beautifully. Looking at the address, your house is right on the street next to mine. Let me ask if you accept orders; I want to order a triangular shawl to gift to my mother. You only need to quote the labor fee, I will buy the yarn myself to send over to you!]

[+1, I also want to order four keychains for the four clumsy ones in our group; can you make a keychain shaped like a Queen Butterfly? I will also send the materials over to you myself!]

[+1...]

[+1...]

Thus the student girl who had only inadvertently shown off her product online unexpectedly received a part-time job to help her father, so overjoyed that lying asleep in the middle of the night she cried until her whole pillow was soaked through.

Not only that young girl alone, but a great many people unexpectedly received this job falling down from the sky as well, thanks to which the unemployment situation of a segment of workers was partially resolved.

Not only did young people and housewives go crazy over knitting and crochet, but the handicraft craze also spread to fields such as weaving rattan and bamboo baskets, making balancing bamboo dragonflies, folding paper cranes, and hand-molding pottery, which were currently being introduced as new experiential services on the tourist planet Sirius.

This yarn-knitting storm even blew away the cold, serious image of... the soldiers out on the front line and the big shots!

After the incident of "three thousand young insectoids crossing the border to propose marriage" at Wormhole No. 07, although the young insectoids captured and grounded by the Elders on the other side of the wormhole could no longer cross over directly, they still secretly went through the illicit signal transceiver station to log onto the human network... ordering wool yarn back to their lairs to practice knitting sweaters to gift to the human soldiers of their dreams!

The Insectoid race naturally possessed flexible joints; apart from the fathers and mothers whose entire bodies were round and plump, every single one of them was a professional artisan. Besides the existing knitting patterns, they could also create many different patterns on their own. Several insectoids even crocheted wool doll models following their own original forms; imagining when these lovely little insect models were placed into the palms of the human soldiers, every one of their faces flushed pink.

Meanwhile, over on the side of the human 2nd Legion barracks, after experiencing the first shock of their lives, the soldiers were also permitted to use their smart watches to browse the web during break times. After reading the comment that "sitting knitting yarn during break time helps train mental power concentration and finger dexterity when operating mech control levers very effectively", they immediately invited one another to buy yarn back to the barracks to sit knitting!

On a free afternoon at the Sirius villa, when Daniel was making a video call to his second brother Michael Mason to ask after the border situation, Liam sitting drinking tea beside him inadvertently glanced across the virtual screen and very nearly sprayed his entire mouthful of chrysanthemum tea straight into the face of Noah sitting opposite.

On the other end of the line, inside the communal break room of the 2nd Legion barracks, a lineup of over a dozen burly men standing nearly two meters tall, with muscles bulging like grizzly bears, were sitting gathered in a circle on iron chairs. Inside those hands as large as palm-leaf fans, which were originally only used to pulling the triggers of heavy laser guns, they were at this moment... gingerly holding two tiny bamboo knitting needles, their eyes wide open staring fixedly at the yarn threads as though defusing a nuclear bomb detonator!

"Damn! Captain! You crocheted into the wrong hole on the lower row already; your scarf suddenly bulged out into a triangle looking like the underpants of an Armored Bug over there!"

"Shut your mouth! Mind that green wool hat of yours; how the fuck are you knitting that the top of the hat has a hole pierced through as big as a rice bowl like that?!"

Even the cold young Major Michael Mason was holding a half-crocheted, crooked keychain shaped like... a small purple butterfly in his hand; seeing his younger brother and Liam staring fixedly through the screen, he hurriedly hid the wool keychain straight behind his back, coughing dryly twice before snapping the camera off!

Liam clutched his belly laughing uproariously on the sofa until tears flowed, while Daniel stood dazed like a goose for three seconds before screaming at the top of his lungs:

"Aha! I saw it clearly, Second Brother! You were crocheting a keychain shaped like a purple Queen Butterfly, were you not?! Have you set your sights on that beauty of the Insectoid race who ripped the mech door flying off with her bare hands at Wormhole No. 07 the other day?!"

On the other end of the line, Michael’s face flushed bright red as he scolded his younger brother: [What nonsense are you spouting! I only saw that this butterfly shape was easy to crochet so I tried it out!]

Daniel pursed his lips: "As if I would ever believe that! Brother, she has her eye on someone else already; do not go playing the game of forced love!"

[Get lost!] Michael roared in anger, subsequently hanging up the call without hesitation.

Laughter once again echoed boisterously throughout the villa living room.

Liam laughed to his heart’s content; when he turned his head back to get a tissue to wipe the tears at the corners of his eyes, he caught sight of a scene even more shocking than the group of soldiers of the 2nd Legion just now.

In the corner of the opposite sofa, right beside the cradle of baby Sane.

The noble former Crown Prince of the Empire, the sole 3S-grade God of War in the thousand-year history of the Lumina Galaxy, was sitting with a ramrod-straight back wearing an exceedingly solemn expression as though approving national documents.

Yet wrapped all around the man’s slender hands covered in calluses from holding weapons at this moment were threads of milky-white and pale-blue wool yarn. He was bowing his head, his sword-like eyebrows knitted tightly, gazing attentively at Isabella’s basic 3D tutorial textbook projecting suspended in front of his face, bit by bit using a bamboo crochet hook to thread through the wool yarn to... crochet a pair of tiny rabbit-head-shaped wool booties for his son!

Perhaps because the hands of a 3S-grade Alpha were too strong and unused to holding the petite crochet hook, or because the thread-looping movement was far too complex compared to piloting a Mecha to slaughter enemies, every time the yarn slipped off the tip of the hook, the air pressure around the Crown Prince’s body sank down a notch, causing Nirvana sitting batting at a virtual ball of yarn on the armrest of the chair to shrink its neck back as well.

Even so, the man patiently unraveled it to redo for the twelfth time without using his mental power to cheat at all. One rabbit-head-shaped wool bootie with two long ears looking slightly lopsided yet with fairly even stitches had already taken shape lying neatly on the tea table, while the second one was also half crocheted.

Seemingly sensing Liam’s astonished gaze looking at him, the rims of Noah’s ears beneath his hair flushed slightly red. He paused his hands lightly, raising his head to look at Liam with gentle dark-blue eyes, his low voice carrying a rare trace of shyness:

"Winter on Sirius is coming soon, and Sane’s feet often kick the blanket off. Back when you were pregnant I was not by your side to prepare newborn items for our child together with you... so I wanted to make an item for our child and you with my own hands."

He placed the rabbit-head wool bootie whose final knot had just been completed into the palm of his hand, holding it out in front of Liam like a student waiting for a teacher to grade his work:

"Although it is not very pretty yet... I used the best wool blended with Cryomollis Silk, so wearing it will be very warm. After I finish crocheting this pair of booties for our child, I... will knit a pair of gloves and a scarf for you to wear when going out to inspect the fields in the morning, is that alright?"

Liam looked at the large hands that had once crushed S-grade alloy now cherishing a wool bootie as small as a child’s fist, while on the man’s index finger there were even two red marks from being poked by the tip of the crochet hook when first practicing.

Liam’s chest trembled with a very light beat. The layer of ice on the surface of the lake seemed blown lightly by the spring breeze, melting away a little.

Liam did not answer immediately, only letting out a light snort through his nose, reaching out a hand to pick up that rabbit-head-shaped wool bootie with the slightly crooked left ear to measure it against the chubby foot kicking about wildly of baby Sane inside the cradle:

"The crochet stitch on the fourth row is off by two stitches, so the left rabbit ear looks like a droopy dog ear. With an aesthetic eye like this yet demanding to knit a scarf and gloves for me to wear outside, are you not afraid people will laugh until their noses rot?"

Seeing Noah’s gaze darken slightly because Noah thought he was genuinely criticizing it, only then did Liam leisurely pull his hand back, picking up the crochet hook and the skein of blue yarn on the table, pulling his cushioned stool to sit a little closer to Noah, his voice softer than usual by far:

"Give me your hand here; I will show you again how to hold the yarn to keep the thread tension on your little finger one single time only. Regardless, I taught myself this textbook before... Although my crocheting is nothing to write home about either, I grasp the theory very clearly. Watch closely; if you knit a scarf for me and still get the stitches crooked like this rabbit ear, I will not accept it!"

The distance between the two narrowed to less than a handspan, the pure natural jasmine fragrance blending into the warm scent of rum and golden orange inside the room flooded with afternoon sunlight.

Noah’s dark-blue eyes lit up brilliantly. He obediently placed his hand beneath the guidance of Liam’s soft, fair fingers, the corners of his lips curving up into a smile reaching deep to the bottom of his eyes:

"Alright. So long as you are not satisfied, I will unravel it to knit again... knitting for you for an entire lifetime is fine too."