Boys vs. Men

1/13/2006

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.

Major and Minor Surgery

1/9/2006

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.

Bad-Ass Socks

1/4/2006

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 a roundhouse kick from 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 . . .