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NSFW: Knitting Wool Boobs For Kids Trends In U.K. [Pictures]

By Maryam Louise
Published on: 20:02 PST, Feb 17, 2015

If you love to knit, the United Kingdom has a pattern for wool boobs that you will not want to miss. Usually, the types of knitting or crocheting stories in the news are not related to wool boobs and instead appear to have wholesome headlines like the one about Australia’s oldest man knitting sweaters for penguins. So what is going on with England’s fixation on creating all these wool boobs — and linking the whole thing to kids?

Reported in The Guardian UK, a group of people in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland in a small village of 40 called Tolsta Chaolais, on the Isle of Lewis are distributing wool boobs to kids and adults alike. Is this some sort of cult or possible problem caused by geographic and social isolation?

Overall, the local group Knit and Knatter has distributed over 150 wool boobs to their community and plan to create 100 more in the near future. The locals are gladly taking these wool boobs and are not shocked about giving them to children.

As it appears, The Guardian UK explains that the wool boobs, “Will serve as breastfeeding demonstration aids as part of a project across Scotland. Popular with midwives and health visitors, they are used to show the best way to get a baby to latch on properly and how to mould or hold your breast to get the nipple in the right position for the baby’s mouth. They’re also used to teach how to express milk and how to deal with problems like blocked ducts.”

However, the Knitting Experience claims that this has a history that goes back to at least 2007 in Brunswick, Maine, and was related to, “A unique charity knit program, Knitted Knockers, to provide soft, comfortable, and free knitted prosthetic breasts to breast cancer survivors.” They include a wool boob called “tit-bits” on Knitty.

Of course, if you start passing out wool boobs to everyone, someone is going to think its a little odd. The Guardian UK states that one woman did not feel comfortable joining in for the wool boob making parties. Despite this, there is a history of this kind of knitted teaching aids (such as a knitted fetus or placenta) in England.

The writer of The Guardian UK articles wrote, “Ten years ago, I remember my first NCT teacher passing around knitted boobs and an elasticated handmade womb, through which she passed a doll with a very large head. Somehow, such aids are at once laughable, sobering and useful.”

For now, it appears that the wool boob is exclusively a trend on a remote island in Scotland, but it could spread to America soon. After all, wool boobs are another variation on Etsy’s famous pro-breastfeeding boob hats for newborns. The idea is that the baby boob hats look like a woman’s bare breast while she is nursing the baby.

The baby boob caps made in flesh tones can really draw the eye if the child is wearing the hat in public while being nursed uncovered — because some Americans are not accustomed to seeing a bare breast in public, a MS Magazine article discusses. Naturally, wool boobs and baby boob hats are meant to draw awareness to the fact that women’s breasts — and therefore breastfeeding in public — are nothing shocking, and in fact totally normal baby feeding equipment.

Either way, the wool boob knitting pattern definitely brings a question to mind about what else can a nipple be knitted on? So far, it’s just hats and independent wool boobs — but time will tell. For instance, a breast cancer survivor was criticized in England for wearing just the boob hats as a shirt — and now The Mirror UK reports that a flash mob of knitted boob hat wearers is organizing in support of her.

So there are alternative uses for baby boob hats, but what kind of creative uses will come about with the crocheted or knitted wool boobs? For now, to make your own wool boob, you can download the knitted or crocheted breast pattern on the Lactation Consultants of Great Britain website. Post your pictures to my @MaryamLouise Twitter account. For more inspiration on wool boob knitting, consult Google Images for the term “knitted breast.”

[All images via Getty Images.]

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