The Dark Side of Noro

Now that my mother has received her birthday present, it's safe to post it here:

This is the Multidirectional Diagonal Scarf. I used Noro Silk Garden, color number 217. It contains the range of colors for which Noro is known and loved, but 217 is different from their others. The yellow that you see here is the brightest shade in the skein, and even though the yarn ranges through reds and purples, it keeps a few strands of black fibers running through all the way. The result is moody, pensive, and dark.

I didn't know this was going to happen when I picked out the yarn at the store. I chose it because my mother, who always leaves color selection up to me for her hand-knit items, is fond of deep purples, browns and reds, and I knew the colors would go well with her winter coat (she's also sensitive to wool, so any yarn with greater than 25% wool makes her itch). It was only when the scarf was one-third finished that I realized I was knitting a wonderfully dark item.

Knitting is not normally associated with dark. Yarn feels good; knit items are warm and cozy; our friends love us when we knit for them; baby items are cute. Knitting doesn't ordinarily bring out the shadowy undersides of our souls, so when I looked at this scarf and observed the way it coursed through yellow, brown, purple, and red--without ever really escaping the black--I was thrilled.

Now, there's an important distinction between dark and morbid; the latter is a fascination with death, destruction, and the associated color scheme; the former is an acknowledgment that being human is complicated, and that there are corners of our lives that aren't always comfortable for sitting. If you've looked any my writing, then you know that I find these places to be much more interesting than the ones that, say, Disney movies come from. I don't usually knit from those corners, but this scarf . . . well, this is a wonderful start.

Oh, by the way, my mom loves the scarf.

Posted 2.17.06

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Left vs. Right

Last week I took a survey on Quizilla to find out what kind of knitter I am. Many of you may have already taken this quiz. If so, then you saw that one of the choices for the question about how you, personally, follow pattern instructions was as follows:

SSK is the traditional right leaning decrease, and it matches the k2tog which produces a left leaning decrease.

As a freelance writer and proofreader, my immediate impulse upon reading this statement was to look for a way to contact the person who wrote it, since they'd clearly made a huge mistake. K2tog, or knit two together, is a right leaning decrease, and is in fact the only right-leaning decrease. Every other decrease, including slip-slip-knit (SSK) leans to the left.

I mentioned this to my wife (who henceforth shall be known as Z), from whom I'd received the link to the survey. A fellow proofreading freak, our evening dinner conversations often consist of the grammar, punctuation, and factual errors to which we've been subjected throughout the day. She informed me that I was the one who was mistaken, and that SSK always leans to the right, with k2tog going the other way.

Crazy? Well, Z is a left-handed knitter. She's forced to reverse many knitting pattern instructions, and has to put up with knitting books like Gertrude Taylor's America's Knitting Book, which contains this lovely little ditty:

If you are left-handed, you should not knit from left to right. Left-handed people write in the same direction as right-handed people do, so too, you should knit in the same direction as all knitters do, so that others will be able to help you.

This is ridiculous, of course, but apparently Z and I have been working our decreases in the opposite direction the whole time we've known each other. Who knew? So, I ask you: which way do your decreases go? Are you left-handed? If so, do you knit left-handed? What are the right-handed ways in which knitting instructions drive you nuts?

Oh, by the way, according to that survey, I'm a knitting purist. Whatever.

Posted 2.11.06

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Google's Greatest Hits

Like many web site owners, I like to use statistics tracking software to see how many visitors I get, where they come from, and what search terms people use to find my site. This last item has been particularly illuminating, and today I'd like to share some of my favorites. Let's just jump right in:

 

insane knitter blog

 

I don't consider myself an insane knitter, but if I were one, I'd definitely have an insane knitter blog. The more interesting question is, just what was this person looking for? I ask that question about a lot of the search terms on my list. Especially this one:

 

heterosexual knitting

 

I may be heterosexual, but I didn't realize I had transmitted it to my knitting. I mean, I can't even tell whether my hand-knit items are male or female. Given the rate at which they multiply, I guess we can assume that at least some of them are breeders. Anyway, the relationship between knitting and sexual orientation is apparently a much hotter topic than I thought:

 

does knitting make you gay?

 

It seems to me that simple observation would have cut off that search a long time ago. If it were true, there'd be a lot more lesbians in the world. I know, I know . . . when someone asks that question, they're only wondering if it turns men gay. Well, I can only speak for myself. I just got married last summer (to a woman) and . . . I'll just leave it at that. Meanwhile, it seems that other boys are causing a lot more trouble than I am:

 

pleasure boys having all the fun

 

Damn those pleasure boys! Every time someone wants to have a little fun, those friggin' pleasure boys have to come along and take it all for themselves. The fact that this term led someone to my site means that, while knitting might not make you gay, it definitely turns you into a pleasure boy. If only I'd known sooner!

 

oakland jew blog

 

This is my favorite. It was probably some nice Jewish girl looking for a nice Jewish boy in Oakland with a blog, but it sounds vaguely offensive in that old school way. Can't you just imagine the chat room exchange?

sknhed86: man, the internet used 2 b such a cool place   but now it sux
whtpwr69: you said it!!!!!!!!!!!! its all cuz of those   jew blogs
sknhed86: yeh, and dont even get me goin on the ones   from oakland

I could keep going with these search terms, because they're really just too hilarious. For now, I'll close with my second favorite. Whoever did this search, I hope my web site helped make their day just a little bit brighter:

 

hate knitting

 

Posted 2.5.06

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The Unbearable Cuteness of Knitting

I've never liked the word cute. My usage of cute usually indicates sarcasm, or that an aesthetic crime has been committed. Crimes of cuteness include most Hallmark cards, referring to Alfred Hitchcock as 'Hitch,' forcing kittens to be photographed inside a wicker basket, and every appearance of a talking animal in a Disney film. Actually, let's just make that every Disney film.

Many of my friends have started having babies, and this has resulted in a softening of my attitude towards cute. This isn't because babies are inherently adorable, but because I love to knit for my favorite babies (both arrived and forthcoming), and all of the items that I've knit for babies have turned out . . . well, cute. For example:

This is the dress with eyelets from Debbie Bliss's Baby Knits for Beginners. Pretty cute, huh? Well, here it is on the actual baby:

That's Ruby. For regular readers, this is Suzanne's first daughter, and Suzanne is the soon-to-be recipient of a Samus sweater. That dress there for her second daughter, but hey. It sure fits Ruby just fine.

It's not just the babies that have repositioned cuteness in my life. One of the things I've learned as a knitter is that when you knit for your friends, you're really knitting for their cats.

Elijah here is enjoying my friend Alana's hand warmers. Unfortunately for Elijah, Alana also enjoys her hand warmers. And while the things I knit for my friends are really for their cats, everything I knit is really for Maxine.

Posted 1.31.06

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Another Gender Question

Thanks to everyone who commented on the boys vs. men issue. Since the consensus appears to be that it's really no big deal, I won't be making any changes to my line of buttons. It's not like I'm trying to make a ton of money of these things anyway. Now I've got another issue for you to consider.

As a regular mass-transit rider, I have many opportunities during my week to squeeze in a half-hour of reading or knitting. If I can get a seat, it's knitting (unless I just got the latest issue of Harper's). My wife often does the same thing, and although we don't take the train at the same time, we do get the opportunity to compare notes at the end of the day. Recently, those notes contained the observation that almost no one on the train ever engages her in conversation about her knitting, while I can't knit a single public stitch without someone chatting me up about it.

Most of the time, this is just fine. I love talking about knitting, and having a conversation helps me tune out the five, six, or ten cell phone conversations within my earshot. I'm also a glutton for attention, and knitting in public is a great way to show off. But when I've had a long day, and I'm tired, and my stutter is giving me a particularly hard time, and all I want to do is get home to be with my wife and my cats, the last thing I want is to be stuck in a random conversation with a stranger. I've tried warding people off with my iPod headphones, but that doesn't work against the most persistent folks. Sometimes I'll opt out of knitting, even though it's what I really want to be doing.

Our culture has social barriers against talking to strangers, and we only step over them under a few circumstances: shared inconvenience, like being stuck in an elevator together, or a perceived shared interest, like when someone is reading the same book as you. Those barriers are different heights, depending on gender. A woman chatting up a woman comes across as pretty harmless, but a man chatting up a woman is a different story. Not too many other knitters on the train are talking to my wife about her knitting—so what is it about being a male knitter that lowers the threshold for public conversation? What goes through your mind when you see a guy knitting out in public? What's different about approaching a man about his knitting, versus approaching a woman?

Comments, comments, comments! Tell me what you think!

Posted 1.26.05

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The Latest Project, The Latest Controversy

When choosing a project, I often look for patterns that will teach me a new knitting technique, or a whole new skill. My current project, which more than meets that requirement, is Samus. I'm knitting it for my friend Suzanne, with whom I went to graduate school. She's expecting in three weeks. I've sized her sweater for non-pregnant fitting, so my deadline is fast approaching. This has made for some complications, because the new technique I'm learning from this pattern is sewing in grosgrain ribbon.

The idea of sticking my knitting into a sewing machine terrifies me, so I'm sewing this in by hand. I'm not the fastest hand-sewer in the world. It's taking me much longer than I thought it would. The ribbon in the picture above is only half of the job. I still have to do the other side, and then I have to sew in the zipper, which is the technique I learned from my last sweater. Can I do it all in three weeks? We'll see. I'm pretty psyched about how this sweater is turning out. Here is the bottom edge:

On another note, did you know that whether men and boys should knit at all is a controversial issue? Never mind whether my buttons should say boys or men, check out this highly educational exchange.

Posted 1.19.05

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Shameless Off-Topic Self-Promotion

In keeping with the timeless tradition of bending gender expectations, this past fall I ran the Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco. I have recorded a new radio commentary, which will air on KQED-FM this Wednesday, about the freakish mindset required to run a marathon. If you happen to live in the Bay Area, you can hear it on 88.5FM at 6:07AM, and again at 7:37AM, Pacific Standard Time. If you don't live in the Bay Area, you can hear it live on KQED's web site, or just wait until I put it up on the listening page of jesseloesberg.com.

Or you can just ignore the whole thing. It's not like it has anything to do with knitting anyway.


Posted 1.16.06

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Boys vs. Men

One of my favorite things to do to alleviate the tedium and drudgery of going to the laundromat is to spend the drying cycle at Article Pract, which is right down the street. I was especially excited to go there today, because I wanted to see how my 'boys knit' buttons were selling. I was pleased with what I saw——I gave them 50 buttons, and there are only 15 left——but I also learned something interesting. Some people didn't want to buy them because of the word 'boys.'

I picked the word 'boys' because of the name of this web site, but also because 'boys knit' rolls off the tongue better than 'men knit.' Those two 'n' sounds just kind of run into each other, whereas the 's' of boys transmutes quite wonderfully into the 'n'-sound in 'knit.' 'Boys knit' has a playful quality that other phrases lack. And besides, 'men knit' is already taken by menknit.net.

So what's the objection? Apparently, some men don't like to be called boys. I am entirely serious when I say that this never occurred to me. What's behind this? Is the word 'boys' too diminutive? Not masculine enough? Does it sound . . . gay?

These are not rhetorical questions. I am asking your opinion. Click on that comments link down there and tell me what you think.

Posted 1.13.06

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Major and Minor Surgery

This is my friend Nate. Nate was a huge help with my wedding this summer. He helped me pick out shoes, listened to me stress out about all the planning, hooked me up with a great jazz trio for the reception, and played cello at the ceremony. He's also the bass player for The Decemberists.

See that sweater he's wearing? That sweater is a small token of my appreciation for the aforementioned help, and a physical representation of how I feel about our friendship. That sweater was also just barely snatched from the jaws of a pattern that was doomed to fail.

I would say that this pattern is the Men's Zipped Raglan from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts, but the sweater that Nate is wearing is no longer that pattern. Maybe one of the sizes is written correctly, but the not the one I knitted (42"). If I'd followed the pattern to the letter, the knit/purl "stripes" on the sleeves and would not have matched up with the ones on the body, and the collar would have looked right around Nate's neck only if he happened to be an elephant.

I'm not sorry I came across this pattern, though. The modifications I made taught me pretty much everything I need to know about designing a sweater pattern, which I'm about to start knitting (once I'm done finishing this baby dress I'm working on, plus sewing the zipper on my friend Suzanne's sweater, and knitting a Danica scarf for my mother's birthday). And Last-Minute Knitted Gifts is hardly a wash, as it also features that bunny.

Most of all, that sweater is my first instance of a Cursed Project and a Transcendent Project converging in one pattern. You have to admit, Nate looks totally awesome in that sweater.

Posted 1.9.06

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Bad-Ass Socks

I've had a few requests to see the end result of the Cursed Project I mentioned earlier, so here we are. The skull was lifted from the wrist warmers in Stitch & Bitch Nation. The sock was modified from a fail-safe pattern that my dear friend Jane gave me a few years ago.

Don't they look dangerous? How'd you like to get kicked by a pair of those?

This goes to show that a Cursed Project can still turn out cool, if you have the strength and the will to break the curse. And just last night I learned that a Cursed Project can even turn out to be a Transcendent Project! More on that soon . . .

Posted 1.4.06

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blog archives

january 2006
november - december 2005

yarn boy's friends

nate, bassist
tim, novelist
luc, photographer
alana, comedian
narayan, etherfarmer
marissa, doctor-to-be
rose, writer and all around awesome person

favorite yarn shops

imagiknit, san francisco
article pract, oakland
central yarn shop, portland, maine
heath hen quilt & yarn shop, martha's vineyard

in no particular order

the anticraft
that geeky chick
you knit what?
my big fat needle
autumn sweater
hello yarn
. . . and knitting
my home in israel
queerjoe's knitting blog
pip and tom
little birds
a bird in the hand
jess hutch arts & crafts
amanda's sketchbook
whip up
knit and tonic

 

 

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 All images on this blog Copyright 2005 and 2006 by Jesse Loesberg. Got that? Jeez.