All knitters are familiar with the obsession that sets in as an item nears completion. As we knit the final rows, heading for that bind-off, that grafting stitch, that last seam, pretty much everything falls to the wayside: eating, sleeping, personal hygiene, conscious thought, and taking care of one’s children. Time itself loses all meaning until whatever it is we’re working on is, at long last, off our needles.

The thing about Cookie A’s sock patterns is that obsession starts . . . well, pretty much right after casting on. Her lace patterns are addictive. Having knit more than a few of her designs at this point, I can now identify the features that put the monkey on my back:

• Twisted Rib. Sounds like an injury, but it’s taking the ‘knit one’ part of k1p1 ribbing and turning it into ‘knit one through the back loop.’ Cookie A is really into twisted rib. On paper, it looks like it’s going to be a pain in the ass, not to mention that it significantly increases the amount of time it takes to work the ribbing, but there’s something freakishly satisfying about working twisted knit stitches over and over again. They slip off the needle with a tactile plunk that makes regular knit stitches seem wimpy by comparison. Also, twisted rib looks way, way better than regular ribbing.
• Pattern Flow. In almost all of Cookie A’s lace patterns, the end of each pattern repeat sets up for the next one. Not only is this visually appealing, with all of the lines flowing together seamlessly, it makes it really hard to find a natural stopping point. I can’t tell you how many times, while knitting the above socks, I said, “Be right there, honey, just as soon as I finish this round.”
• Spoing! This is my private vocabulary word for what the lace pattern does when the socks are off my needles and Z puts them on her feet for the first time. What was a scrunched-up collection of knit and purl columns suddenly expands into the intended result. Sure, all lace patterns do this—after you’ve soaked them, blocked them, and let them dry out overnight. Lace socks, on the other hand, do it as soon as you put them on. And not only that, they unspoing when you take them off, only to spoing again the next time you wear them! Cookie A’s designs are especially pleasurable this way. They spoing like no other socks.

So what’s left to knit after a pair of Cookie A socks? Plenty, after a few weeks in rehab. The problem is, Cookie A is quite prolific. There’s always another pattern to come back to . . .

This is the Blue Lightning scarf, my second contribution to Knit Pick’s Independent Designer Program. Don’t be shy! The pattern is cheap! Go buy it!

This kind of science fiction detail avoidance is common among adult nerds. It’s a survival mechanism honed from years of being made fun of for having encyclopedic knowledge of the Dune series, for being able to recite large parts of the Star Wars script from memory, and for  knowing exactly what kind of crystals are decaying inside the Enterprise’s warp core. When I tried to out my friend by pointing out just how vague he was being about those Babylon 5 details, he said, “Well . . . I’m being sort of vague.”

So, although adult science fiction fans might be more secure in their love of the genre than we were as teenagers, most of us are still a little sketchy when it comes to celebrating it in a visible fashion. Well, dear reader, if you count yourself among these people, Justin Van Genderen has given us all a way out.

I didn’t ever expect my inner design freak to be united with my inner Star Wars fan, but this astronomically unlikely event has actually occurred. Mr. Van Genderen’s minimalist Star Wars prints are . . . dare I say it . . . beautiful? Check them out for yourself, and support this guy by buying one (or six). Better do it soon before George Lucas finds out that these exist, and that staring at any one of them for three hours is a much better use of your time than watching any of the prequels.

PS: I know I didn’t mention knitting even once in this post, but geekiness and designiness have been regular topics here, and I love giving a shout-out to cool stuff. So there.

darn |därn| verb [ trans. ] mend (knitted material or a hole in this) by weaving yarn across the hole with a needle.

For the purposes of this post, the crucial part of this definition is the word weaving. You see, when I give someone a hand-knit item, it comes with the Yarnboy Lifetime Guarantee (YLG), which allows the recipient of said item to return it to me for repairs at any time during the life of the item (or the recpient . . . thus far, all of my recipients are still alive*). There are a couple of reasonable limits to the YLG; for example, there’s no way in hell I’m going to repair lace. Secondly . . . um, gotta check the fine print.

Until recently, no one had taken me up on the YLG. Either the items I knit are so awesome that they never fray, or  my recipients hate their hats, sweaters, socks, and scarves never make it out of the closet (or off the rack at Goodwill).  Then, a couple of months ago, my friend Ned returned a pair of socks with the surest sign of a well-loved item: a hole worn in each sole.

When I composed the YLG, I didn’t actually know how to repair anything. Oh sure, I could sew up a single broken stitch, but holes? For that, I consulted this article, following the directions for a hole that occupies more than one row of knitting. Which brings us to the definition above. Strictly speaking, what I did to Ned’s socks was not weaving at all (an actual woven repair follows these instructions); it was a total reconstruction of the knitting itself. Here are the results:

It was much harder than that article makes it look. Matching gauge is nearly impossible, as is matching yarn that has been underfoot, quite regularly, for over three years. Well, no matter; I warned Ned that the repair wouldn’t be pretty, and it isn’t. Like any good friend, he assured me that comfort was more important than style. Besides, the repair is on the sole, and who’s going to see that? Right? Anyway, as a word freak, the real question that bugs me is whether or not, by definition, I actually darned those socks.

__________

1. Parents

2. Parents of twins

True, group #2 is really a subset of group #1, but having multiple babies at the same time is so much its own crazy universe that one can really feel like one has left the regular one. But this is a knitting blog, and not a parenting blog, so what I really want to tell you about is the third club I just joined:

3. Geeky knitting designers

The sweaters you see on the left are The Fibonacci Twins, whose stripe pattern follows the famous number sequence. Sure, I could have just designed a couple of sweaters with regular stripes, but that would have disappointed my old college physics professor, who is single-handedly responsible for unseating my suspicion of anything mathematical, left over from a string of boring high school math classes. Not only did he unseat it, but he actually made me fascinated by mathematics. So much that I’ve spent some time calculating the odds of a spontaneous twin gestation. Pretty high, it turns out, when there are twins in your family and your spouse’s.

But this is a knitting blog, and not a pregnancy blog, so let’s get back to those sweaters. You can find the Fibonacci Sequence in all kinds of amazing places, like sunflowers, pinecones, artichokes, and pineapples. I’m currently working on a proof for finding the Fibonacci Sequence here:

I just know there’s an order to that swirl of hair on the back of Mr. S.’s head. He just won’t sit still long enough for me to count. But this is a knitting blog, not a baby blog, so let’s get back to that sweater he’s wearing. It’s my debut design for Knit Picks’s Independent Designers Program, which was just launched this month, and of which I’m now a proud participant. There’s some cool stuff over there, and the patterns are way cheap. I’ll have more designs showing up there before long.

Now, back to counting little hairs . . .

The second biggest reason things have been so quiet here is because most of the knitting I’ve been doing has been for publication. Most publications don’t like you to post pictures, patterns, hints, implications, or insinuations of what you’re working on. There are good reasons for this, but most of my ideas for this blog come from things that I’m knitting, so it limits what I’m able to publish here.

But since being a male knitter is such a charged and controversial issue, that leaves room for other charged and controversial issues. Today’s hot-button issue is running shorts.

This is a picture of me completing the 2005 Nike Women’s Marathon in San Francisco wearing my favorite running shorts. You might not be able to tell this on your computer screen, but those shorts are purple. Unlike any of my other running shorts, these are possessed of a magical power: they turn anyone who sees them into a twelve-year old.

My collection of running shorts includes three other colors; black, blue, and maroon. None of those other shorts have the same power as the purple ones. My purple shorts have inspired people to hoot, holler, forget what they were talking about before I showed up, or simply descend into babbling nonsense. On one occasion, they turned an entire schoolyard of girls into shrieking fools. I don’t think I could have gotten the same response if I’d run by wearing nothing at all. They’ve also caused people to call me a few names:

• “stinking faggot”
• “dirty faggot”
• “god-damned faggot”
• “faggot-assed faggot”
• “faggot”

This raises an obvious question—aside from why so many homophobes are stupid enough to live in San Francisco—which is, what is up with the color purple? True, those shorts are cut rather high, but I show about as much leg in my other shorts, and I don’t get anywhere near the same reaction. I get similar responses when I knit in public, but nowhere near the same number, and never with as much virulence. What is it about a man in purple that inspires such idiocy?

This is not a rhetorical question. I would really like to know what you think. There is a lot at stake here. I love those purple shorts, but I love not being shouted at even more, so it’s likely those shorts are headed for retirement.

Halfdome was born out of necessity. I didn’t like many of the hat patterns out there, as most basic watchcaps feature an arrangement of decreases that make the hat look as if a mysterious hand has reached down from above and given it a good twist.  Raglan-style decreases took care of that problem, and any potential scalp-itching was elminated by using a cashmere-merino blend. All of these considerations had to do with my own hairless head, and even though most of my hair loss comes with my Y-chromosome, the remainder comes from my Mach 3 razor. Some people, though, have lost their hair for other reasons, and when I designed Halfdome, I didn’t realize I was designing it for them, too.

At least once I month, I get an email from someone (usually a woman) who has knit Halfdome for a loved one (usually a man) who has undergone chemotherapy and/or radiation treatments. The hair loss that results from these treatments is often accompanied by increased skin sensitivity, and the folks who write tell me that Halfdome is the perfect hat for someone who has undergone therapy for cancer.

These messages make me wish I’d learned to knit when I was eleven years old, which is when my maternal grandmother died. The tumors started in her brain, and eventually made their way into her bones. This was my first experience of cancer-related hair loss—or cancer-related anything, for that matter. My final memories of my grandmother are tinted with the discomfort that any child would have at seeing his grandmother bedridden, bald, and unable to speak, but they also include a vivid recollection of her eyes, which never lost their depth or intelligence. What an amazing thing it would have been to be able to knit a hat for her. Or for my paternal grandmother, who also died of cancer, in 2002. I was already a knitter by then, but I was a newbie, and my needles just weren’t fast enough.

So, here’s a much-belated thank you to everyone who has written to me about knitting Halfdome for someone with cancer. I’m always thrilled to hear from people who have knit my patterns, but the knowledge that one of my designs is bringing so much comfort during such a difficult time is a gift I never expected to receive.

Dear Interweave Knits,

I’m a really big fan of yours.  You’ve published some of my favorite patterns ever. The list is too long to get into here, so for now I’ll say that I’m particularly enamored of your summer 2006 issue. It contains the Mommy Snug, with which I knit for Z while she was pregnant with our twins. It also features the Cambridge Jacket, which I knit for myself and wear on an almost daily basis from November through April.

But let’s get back to those twins for a moment. They are eight months old now. Like any new parent who happens to also be a knitter, I can’t stop knitting things for my babies. I can’t stop looking at patterns and thinking to myself, “Oh my dear lord, Mr. S would look so cute in that pullover,” or “My stars, wouldn’t little Ms. M just be smashing in that cardigan!” I think I might have said both of these things, plus a few more, when I discovered the Pea Pod Baby Set on Ravelry. I may have even started jumping up and down. Imagine my disappointment when, my heart aflutter, I clicked on the link and . . . and . . . I can’t even write the words. The number 404 says it all.

I’m sure I’m speaking for many of my fellow knitters when I ask the question, what is up with this? Legal issues? Some obscure editorial policy? Did the pattern turn into a pumpkin after one month? Is Kate Gilbert trying to torture me? Sure, the pattern was free, but there are scores of us who wouldn’t mind forking over a few bucks for it.

So, Interweave Knits, how about returning the love? Tell me how I can get this pattern. I’m not hard to find. When you’re ready to talk, I’m all ears.

Very Truly Yours,

Yarn Boy

When I was a teenager, my route into the house after school was around the back, across the deck, and through the sliding door. One day, I came home to find  a rope strung across the entrance to the deck. I didn’t feel like walking all the way back around to the front of the house, so I ducked under the rope and finished the last three yards of my trip home from school.

My father, it turned out, was sitting in the living room, reading the paper and drinking his coffee. He wanted to know why I’d ignored the rope.

“I couldn’t figure out why it was there,” I said.

My father pointed out that the deck was darker than it had been that morning, that he’d spent most of the day staining it, and my decision to ignore the rope was now permanently recorded on the downstairs carpet.

We could attribute this to the fact that I was fourteen years old at the time, but the truth is I’ve always been the person who needed to find out, first-hand, just how hot that stove is, whether that paint is still wet, if that man-eating tiger is really asleep. The number of times I’ve actually been eaten by that tiger haven’t outbalanced the times that I haven’t. And this is why I thought I could get away with using Debbie Bliss Cashmerino for a steeking project.

Of course, Eunny Jang’s instructions for the Deep-V Argyle Vest make it clear that one should only use a single-variety yarn, and that superwash yarns won’t hold up to steeking, but I thought I could, you know, get around that. After all, I’m the guy who ripped out three inches of an Aran cardigan, fixed a mistake, and slipped all the stitches back on to the needle, all inside of a 25-minute commute on BART. During rush hour. Surely I could figure out a way to get a combination of merino, cashmere, and microfiber to hold together after I cut it all up with scissors, right?

Well, what you see in the picture above is my ass being saved by Bugamor, who works at my local yarn shop. Bugamor possesses a great deal of skill with a sewing machine—skill that I’m (conspicuously) lacking. And it wasn’t just my ass she saved. As the steeked edges began to unravel, this vest became the most cursed project I’d ever knit. I couldn’t even bring myself to pick up the bag I’d hidden it in, lest my soul be filled with the darkest, heaviest weight this side of the river Styx. Bugamor, and her sewing machine, dispelled the curse.

Of course, I still have to sew down those steeked edges, weave in the yarn ends, and block the m***er f***er. But aside from all that, it’s pretty much done. Next up? Making a rock climbing rope using I-cord! Just because it’s never been done doesn’t mean you can’t do it! I’ll even use 100% wool this time!

By the way, you may have noticed a few changes around here. After three and a half years (!!!) I decided it was time for a new look.

I’m not too big on advertising. In any form. I don’t even like that my pants come with tags on the outside, which amounts to free advertising for whichever clothing company was lucky enough to get my dollar. (It’s actually worse than free advertising. After all, I paid them.) I only own three t-shirts with writing on them: my Yo La Tengo shirt, my Tip Top Bike Shop shirt, and this shirt, which my friend A gave me. My body isn’t a billboard, and neither is my blog.

Except when I plugged The Knit Kit. Which brings us  to why I should have kept to my initial policy.

As I mentioned earlier, Z pre-ordered two of these as soon as she learned about their imminent availability. I’m sorry to say that, in the month since I wrote that effusive post, both of our Knit Kits have failed. On mine, the row counter lock developed a habit of unlocking when the button got pushed, which is the knitters equivalent of someone busting into your car and switching the brake with the accelerator. On Z’s Knit Kit, the tape measure no longer retracts, and the lock on her row counter fared the same fate as mine.  I’ve heard multiple reports of the row counter button breaking off after only a few days of use. Z contacted the Knit Kit folks about a replacement several weeks ago, but despite a promise on their website to respond within 24 hours, she has yet to hear back from them.

The Knit Kit is a great idea, so this is a bit of a disappointment. My advice? Wait for The Knit Kit v. 2.0.