Skants and Swants

Once upon a time, these "skants" were posted to Etsy by one of their vendors. Yes, that's a sweater being worn as a putative combined pants and skirt (pants + skirt = skants), and this unique one-of-a-kind piece was offered for sale to some lucky Etsy buyer for a mere $780(USD). The marvellous and sadly now defunct site Regretsy (which, if you've never heard of it, existed for the sole purpose of making fun of Etsy's more ridiculous listings and twee excesses) did a post about it that spawned something of a meme. Many Regretsy readers sent Regretsy owner April Winchell wonderful pictures of themselves posing in their own skants, which they had "made" from whatever sweaters they had sitting about.

I only wish I could link to the skants posts on Regretsy, which if I remember correctly had me laughing until tears streamed down my face. Alas, Regretsy is gone and we're left with only a scattering of photos to remind us of all its crazy former glory. I remember this one as being one of my favourite Regretsy reader skants photos. And I just had to post it for the benefit of my American readers, whose Thanksgiving celebrations are in the offing. Why create some time-intensive, tasteful Martha Stewart-esque centrepiece no one will even notice when you can do something like this that your family will remember for years to come?






Though we no longer have Regretsy, we do have knitting designer Steven West, who has taken up the skants baton by taking them to the next evolutionary level and calling them "swants". West's swants are not quite like their predecessor skants. Unlike skants, swants involve some sewing, and feature a crotch. West has posted a tutorial on how to make your own swants on his website. He's also posted a video of the swants-wearing Westknits Fun Squad demonstrating how one should wear swants to the tune of "On and Ever Onward", by The Dirty Projectors and Bjork.

If you should get inspired and proceed to make your own skants or swants, be sure to link to a picture of you modelling them either here in the comments or on this blog's Facebook page, so that we can be sure this brave new crafting direction is getting the level of workmanship and respect it deserves.