Comments on: Yarn Boy and the Sneetches

By: eyduck

eyduck — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 20:05:43 +0000

New York has actually recognized the disenfranchised male knitter and an all guy knitting night where manly men can gather to watch football and knit has ensued.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/ 20060…ife_knitting_dc

New York is so cool…

By: Jennie

Jennie — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 20:05:11 +0000

The stigma of men knitting is crazy. People are always blown away to find out thay my greasy, aircraft mechanic of bear shaped husband cooks, sews, needlepoints, and learned how to knit along with his “manly” hobbies. I use him for colorway advice on a very regular basis.

I do have to admit that you being a male knitter is one of the main reasons I visited your site. I find it fascinating that so many men through out history knit and it is being reintroduced in to the male culture again.

By: yarn boy

yarn boy — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 20:04:55 +0000

Whoa. Thanks, Nara! That goes in the same category as these hand-knit naked suits:

http://www.lizabetholiveria.com/…altz/ maltz.html

By: yarn boy

yarn boy — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 20:04:20 +0000

Ruth, you can find the handwarmers in “Stitch and Bitch Nation” by Debbie Stoller. A cautionary note: the stitch guide for the pattern, as it appears in the book, has some big errors in it. I found corrections by googling “stitch bitch nation pattern corrections”

By: Ruth

Ruth — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 20:04:04 +0000

Hey, it’s always great to find someone with similar interests regardless the gender, but could you please divulge the directions for the handwarmers? Also, must say ImagiKnits is my favorite yarn store!

By: Lisa

Lisa — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 20:03:47 +0000

At the same time, wouldn’t it be nice if, one day, the reaction to Yarn Boy was, “So what?”

Actually, that has always been my reaction, to most things, but also to your web site. I just like the way you write, the layout is clean and nice to look at.

My significant-other-boy knits too. He knit a Frankenstien blanket for his cigar humidor, using left-over yarn from a Dr. Who scarf I knit for him. He’s not ashamed to admit that he can knit. My co-worker and I knit in the office together all of the time. He’s also a Maaaaaauhn, in the very manly sense, and our co-workers that see us knit, but don’t knit ask for lessons.

So you see…not everyone cares. I would wager that most people don’t care, and if they do, then maybe they are bored with their own knitting/life/blog/whatever.

I work with many men. Most of them don’t care that I’m female, nor do they care that I am their boss or that I make more money than they do. And if they do care or that bothers them, then I don’t care – I say: “so what”.

By: tevana

tevana — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 20:03:18 +0000

It’s not so much that you’re a boy who knits, it’s that you’re a straight MARRIED boy who knits…there are very few of you around, and as I read about the stuff you’ve knit I wondered if there were others out there like you…..

By: nicole

nicole — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 20:03:00 +0000

i loved this entry — it really is true. i can definitely say though, that i am one of the people who does go “so what?” when the fuzzy line of gender and social order is crossed. i mean, shit, i grew up in a town where hookers were drag queens and my parents best friends were flaming gay, but hard-assed construction workers at the same time.

All it takes is exposure time. if people like you and those of us that are “different” from the norm speak out on what we really like and MAKE IT ok, then it WILL be.

Glad that your blog is here, it’s great to see what you have to say every entry

Oh yeah, love the handwarmers too, i was gonna make some in a solid color with cables on em. happy holidays!

By: Noah

Noah — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 20:02:45 +0000

Precisely true. If the non star sneetches were truely being oppressed, then mcbean would be a reprehensible carpetbagger. But as it stands, I’m not sure we should be shining the morality spotlight on him at all. You don’t want a trickster advising you on business decisions, but if he benefits from your poor decision, you can’t really blame him. Is it imoral to sell make up, for example? A simple fun thing, you can dress up and look different at will, but its still a class signifier, and isn’t that part of the allure?

By: yarn boy

yarn boy — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 20:02:30 +0000

My summary of the story does make the entrepreneur out to be the villian, and as such I think I’ve probably oversimplified it. But he’s only neutral insofar as he’s willing to take money from both sides, and this kind of neutrality hardly qualifies as moral neutrality.

The most important detail that Dr. Seuss left out of his story, though, is genuine oppression. At the beginning of the story, no one is stopping the starless Sneetches from having their own parties. If Dr. Seuss wanted to be more realistic, he’d have the star-bellied Sneetches beating up any non-star Sneetch who tried to have any fun.