The Unbearable Cuteness of Knitting

1/31/2006

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.

Another Gender Question

1/26/2006

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!

The Latest Project, the Latest Controversy

1/19/2006

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.

Shameless Off-Topic Self-Promotion

1/16/2006

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.