Friday, January 30, 2009

Real Life Knitting Mystery:

Do any of you knitters remember the sock pattern designer Gina Silva, aka Gigi Silva, aka Momma Monkey, aka Monkey Toes? How 'bout the name Socktopia?

Yeah, she has* a lot of aliases.

If you don't remember her from her patterns, maybe you remember the memorial write-up done back in February of 2008?

Wellllll, strange things are afoot people.

Seeing as how she passed almost a year ago, would it surprise you to see that her user account has posted forum comments as recently as 4 months ago?

The Lazy, Stupid and Godless group over on ravelry are hot on the case. Over at the rubberneckers group, they're talking about it too.

Seems Gina/Gigi/MommaMonkey has been busted and it's all coming to a head. Due to only so many hours in a day, I rarely read the Knitty boards anymore and haven't been over there in about a week or so and I missed the start of this groundswell.

Man. I just LOVE the internet! Go pop you some corn, gather up your knitting project and watch this latest mystery get solved.

(*I used "has" because I think she's alive and stone cold busted)

***eta***

I think post number nine in this thread is very hinky as well. How can a real life friend die, and you act as the liaison but the real life friend isn't really dead?

Oh, another of Gina's online personas

Curiouser and curiouser

***eta (again)***

The Miss Cissy Wordpress link I put up has, like every other site tied to her, just gone belly up. The blog I linked was very sparse - starting around December of '07 and ending around March/April '08. No one had, until me today, ever left a comment there. My comment was for her post around late Feb/early March 08 (just after her "demise"). She'd blogged about some kick-ass pink Doc Martins recently purchased . . . and her just-broken hand. Since I'd just gone swimming in all her Munchausen_by_Internet issues, the post brought to mind Charlton Heston's NRA quote. Because of all those swirling thoughts in my head, I wondered in my comment if her 'broken hand' was her 'dead broken hand'.

Ayup. I did. A few hours later the site went tits up.

Does Gina/Gigi/Momma Monkey/MissCissy think she's exempt from the power of Google Cache?

After reading the posts of all the people she burned in swaps, contests and product - both on ravelry and on the knittyboards? They deserved better.

Knowing that there was a "memorial" and charitable knitting in Momma Monkey's name as Gina watched? Just. Wrong. Wrong Wrong Wrong.

10 comments:

Kashmir Knitter said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kath said...

Ohhhh....so that's what the kerfluffle was all about. I was out of the loop while I was overtown and just saw a post this morning on one of the Rav forums that referred to some controversy over her. I thought maybe someone was ripping off her designs or something like that but wow - so much juicier than I could imagine! I guess I'll go read up on it - thanks for the info!

weebug said...

i just love watching a good old fashioned who dun it unfold!

Anonymous said...

SCANDALOUS!!! You've just blown my mind with this.....who would think there would be so much drama in knitting?

Jeri said...

what a stinking turd. I never had any contact with her since I didn't get active on Rav until March of 2008, after she "died". I have knit her patterns and will agree she had talent, but day-um. I've spent the whole afternoon catching up with the threads on Rav and Knitty. So not-cool.

choo choo knits said...

MissCissy is still on Ravelry - read the "about me" section - nice!

Sounds like they are hot on her tail...

PlazaJen said...

Yeah, it's amazing how quickly an "innocent" person keeps switching her aliases, taking down sites, photo albums, etc. etc.....
One sick puppy, and the fraud she perpetrated is despicable.

BMT said...

I know this is super ancient, but I came late to the party and I can't find anything that says if it's really been concluded that she faked her death.

If so, I'm really disappointed, because I had a pending order with her when she went incommunicado.

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Katherine said...

I love that she just did something similar in the mineral makeup community. Just without the dying.