Don’t Be Jealous . . .

Bunny

I can’t take credit for the bunny. The pattern is from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson, and was was knit by my spouse. I can, however, take credit for receiving the bunny on my birthday, and for making it the first stuffed animal of my adult life. The bunny’s body is alpaca, and those pink ears are 100% angora. Perfect for absent-minded stroking while reading.

Feeling jealous? You should, and not just because of the bunny. All knitters know that the best recipient of a hand-knitted item is another knitter. Not only do knitters appreciate the item itself; they also know the time, energy, and skill that went into it. And when that other knitter is your spouse . . . well, it’s just kind of hard to beat.

Certain problems are unavoidable, though. That injunction against knitting a sweater for someone with whom you’re in love has not, thus far, been disproved by marriage (although neither of my attempts has resulted in divorce, and Tubey might be just the thing). My wife’s favorite thing to knit is scarves, and I don’t like having things around my neck. We manage, though. She appreciates each addition to her knitted sock collection . . . and I’ve got the bunny.

By the way, the construction of that crazy second sentence in the previous paragraph was no doubt influenced by Middlemarch by George Eliot, which I’m nearly done with. Hooray for 19th century novels!

The Cursed Project

The Cursed Project

You might not have ever knit a Transcendent Project, but you certainly have knit (or attempted to knit) a Cursed Project. The biggest problem with the Cursed (KUR-sehd) Project is that you don’t know that you’ve got one until you’re already committed to it.

Before I go on, I should make clear that a project being cursed doesn’t mean you don’t eventually finish it, nor does it mean that it’s not a cool project. I did finally finish the skull sock you see in the photograph above, and I even finished the second one. My father, who was the recipient of those socks, is probably wearing them as you read this. A Cursed Project is not an unfinished project. It’s just a project that unravels you as you unravel it.

How do you know you’ve got a Cursed Project on your hands? Ask yourself the following questions:

  1. Did your yarn snarl before you even finished casting on?
  2. Do you have to adjust your knitting budget to include a visit to the chiropractor?
  3. Instead of ripping out your work, have you considered throwing it out?
  4. Have you reread the pattern for biohazard signs?
  5. Did you consider handing your knitting over to your cat?
  6. Does the airlines’ earlier ban on knitting needles make perfect sense to you right now?
  7. Do those scissors suddenly look like a lot of fun?

If you answered YES to any of the above, you are knitting a Cursed Project, and there’s not a thing to be done about it. No one knows what brings on the curse. Quitting won’t help; the unknit stitches will call out to you in your dreams, slowly driving you insane. It pains me to say it, but there’s only one way to break the curse on such a project.

Finish it.

Yarn Boy and the Sneetches

I’ve been thinking lately about Dr. Seuss’s story The Sneetches. For those of you who don’t know, there are two kinds of Sneetches; ones with stars on their bellies, and ones without. The star-bellied Sneetches are always having all kinds of fun; barbecues on the beach, baseball games, and many other seaside activities. They’re also in the habit of excluding the non-star-bellied Sneetches, who mope around on the beach, doing nothing except wishing they had stars on their bellies.

Then, one day, along comes Sylvester McMonkey McBean, an intrepid entrepreneur who, for the nominal fee of three dollars, offers the non-star-bellied Sneetches a trip through his star-making machine. They jump at the chance, and a short while later every Sneetch on the beach has a star on his/her belly. The appalled star-bellied Sneetches (the original ones) realize that they can’t tell their social classes apart anymore. McMonkey McBean is prepared for this. He introduces his star-removal machine with the promise of guaranteeing societal order at ten bucks a pop.

Chaos ensues. Stars are removed, stars are applied and it’s not too much later that the Sneetches are sitting in an exhausted heap, unable to tell each other apart. Sylvester McMonkey McBean leaves town, dollars spewing from his truck/sled/thing, declaring that, ” . . . you can’t teach a Sneetch.”

The reason I’ve been thinking about this story is because I realized that, with Yarn Boy, I’m pulling the same stunt as Mr. McBean, albeit with gender distinctions, and not with something so simple as green belly stars. True, I’m not exactly raking in the bucks, nor am I taking advantage of those expectations for nefarious ends, but it does make me realize that when it comes to gender roles, we’re still pretty much in the dark ages. Only two Fortune 500 companies have female CEOs; women’s average salaries in 1999 were 84% of men’s; when we ask whether Hillary could really make a run for president in 2008, we’re not really asking about her politics. And further down the list, a male knitter is still a big deal.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the attention. I’m having buttloads of fun with this website, and I know I’m only pulling a small McBean. Exploiting gender expectations for a knitting web site isn’t on the same level as emphasizing race distinctions so you can sell guns to gangs, say, or playing on religious differences so that you can start a war. At the same time, wouldn’t it be nice if, one day, the reaction to Yarn Boy was, “So what?”

But enough of that. I just finished knitting the hand warmers from Stitch and Bitch Nation: