E-Mail This Article to a Friend Alterna-crafts Womanly hobbies go counterculture BY DARCY SCANLON

Remember a few years back when knitting became all the rage? A revival of womanly cottage crafts was born out of the neo-feminist riot-grrl movement. Guitar-toting punk chicks sported their best friend’s DIY T-shirts at shows; Tupperware parties took a hipper turn as artists threw trunk shows spiked with cheap beer; the stitch-’n’-bitch phenomenon moved out of the dorm and into the bars. If you didn’t have a girlfriend who was sewing aprons, knitting scarves, or launching her own handbag line from the comfort of her Jamaica Plain apartment, you knew someone who did. Alas, things change. Indie rock became mainstream, and every housewife in the Back Bay now has her own line of homegrown accessories.

The new wave of crafts goes far beyond needles and skeins, scraps and thread: it’s plucked the pretense and injected big doses of counterculture. Take, for instance, Subversive Cross Stitch kits ($12/basic; $20–$75/deluxe), available at Subversivecrossstitch.com and Urban Outfitters. Each kit contains everything you need to cross-stitch priceless messages such as GO FUCK YOURSELF AND IRONY IS NOT DEAD. Or, if latch-hooking a piece of shaggy carpet art is more your thing, try to resist the Made with Sweet Love latch-hook-rug kits ($22–$33) from Madewithsweetlove.com. Choose from designs depicting a range of vintage porn stars, from Sydney Moon to Kitten Kaboodle, and latch-hook away. There’s really nothing quite like a ’70s-porn rug.

If you feel more at home in the kitchen, pick up a copy of Punk Rock Kitchen’s Cookie Chaos! ($12) by Connie Sewer, online at Punkrockkitchen.com and available soon at Pluto. The rock-and-roll-inspired cookbook comes with a guitar-shaped cookie cutter, and each recipe has a punk-soundtrack recommendation. Then, after you eat those cookies, you might also want to grab a copy of Maura Jasper and Hilken Mancini’s Punk Rock Aerobics: 75 Killer Moves, 50 Punk Classics, and 25 Reasons To Get Off Your Ass and Exercise ($17.95) from Newbury Comics.

Soy isn’t just a source of protein — it’s the base ingredient for your new candle-making hobby. For barely more than the price of a single Newbury Street scented candle, you can head to Easycandlekit.com and buy a Soy Candle Kit ($49.95), containing all you need to make four fragrant, long-burning candles. Do the math; an investment in a kit may have you hawking homemade candles on the corner of Dartmouth Street.

Whether you’re producing plush porn or baking with the Buzzcocks, crafts space can be at a premium in the typical two-bedroom apartment. For work space and emerald sequins, head over to Davis Square’s Spark Craft Studios. Part craft-supply store and part studio, Spark also offers instructional courses on everything from jewelry making to crocheting to scrapbooking. The only real requirement for the new wave of crafting is to make it your own.

Where to get it:

• Easy Candle Kit, www.easycandlekit.com

• Made with Sweet Love, www.madewithsweetlove.com

• Newbury Comics, various locations; www.newburycomics.com

• Pluto, 215 Elm Street, Somerville, (617) 666-2005; 603 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain, (617) 522-0054.

• Punk Rock Kitchen, www.punkrockkitchen.com

• Spark Craft Studios, 50 Grove Street, Somerville, (617) 718-9132; www.sparkcrafts.com

• Subversive Cross Stitch, www.subversivecrossstitch.com

• Urban Outfitters, 361 Newbury Street, Boston, (617) 236-0088; 11 JFK Street, Cambridge, (617) 864-0070; www.urbanoutfitters.com