WARNING! I officially retracted this endorsement a few weeks after writing it. See the retraction here. My nerdly excitement was so endearing, though, that I’m keeping this post around as an object lesson. Read on.

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If you are both a parent and a knitter, and your status as a knitter precedes your status as a parent, then you are familiar with this phenomenon: as soon as your child(ren) arrived, all of the objects in your house mysteriously rearranged themselves. Nothing was where you left it, and nothing stayed where you put it. Not your house keys, not your wallet, not your glasses, not your underwear, and certainly not your shoes. If you were lucky enough to have some time to knit, then you probably discovered that your notions had suffered the same fate.

I was never much good at keeping all of my notions in one place anyway, but as soon as Miss M and Mr. S arrived, my notions bag somehow emptied itself out. My needle gauge ended up under the bed, my stitch markers were in the bathroom, and my scissors . . . well, I won’t tell you where I found my scissors. It’s enough to say that every time I managed to sit down to knit, I had to get up another five or six times to find whatever stupid notion I’d lost.

Enter The Knit Kit. Back in February, Z discovered an advertisement for The Knit Kit on Ravelry, and she quickly discerned that it combined two of my favorite things: knitting notions and well-designed gadgetry (she also discerned that I wouldn’t want to share it once I had it, so she wisely ordered two of them). And she was correct.

I don’t usually use this space to shamelessly plug other people’s products (only my own), but The Knit Kit has saved me from wasting my precious knitting time. Since our Knit Knits arrived in the mail, I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve sat down to knit and suddenly thought, “Oh crap! Where are my sciss——” or “Oh crap! I forgot to grab my stitch mar——” only to follow it up with, “Wait! I have it right here! My life is not ruined after all!”

It’s not just the convenience, though. The designers of The Knit Kit gave it a few strokes of genius, not the least of which is the fact that the lock on the row counter actually works, and the little dials for the numbers are recessed, which means that tossing the Knit Kit into your notions bag won’t somehow magically advance you five rows ahead in your pattern.

Now, in case you’re wondering whether I’ve taken money to write this post, let me tell you my three complaints. Firstly, there is one notion missing from The Knit Kit: a gauge checker. It’s a little unfair to complain about this, though, since I’m not really sure where they would have put it, or how it would have fit. Number two: the pink accent is . . . well, pink. Never mind the gender issue, the number of locations that one can get away with the color pink is few and far between. The Knit Kit’s pink isn’t offensive, mind you, but it’s just . . . pink.

And number three? The Knit Kit bears an unfortunate resemblance, in appearance and feel, to another convenient carrying case:

But maybe this isn’t a criticism. Nothing wrong with being associated with sexual liberation, right? Which isn’t all you’ll be supporting if you buy The Knit Kit; you’ll be supporting intelligent design. The real kind.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve done one of these, mostly because the search phrases that pop up on my stats page get pretty repetitive after a while. It looks like March was the month that some really . . . um, interesting people found their way on to the ‘net, and there were so many humdingers and head scratchers that I couldn’t resist doing another round. For those of you who are new-ish readers, you can check out the earlier installations of Google’s Greatest Hits here. As you read these, please keep the following important things in mind:

1. People——actual, real-live human beings——typed these search phrases into a search engine.
2. The resulting searches turned up a link to this website.
3. The people doing those searches clicked on that link.

So! Let’s get going!

the good influnce that barbie has on girls

I’m not sure how this phrase led to yarnboy.com, but I know why the person came here: the search didn’t turn up any other websites. When I was a kid, the friends I had who were girls cut off their Barbies’ hair, pulled off their heads, gave them tattoos with permanent markers, and mangled them in ways too disturbing to describe here. The good influence? An opportunity to destroy an unattainable body image!

what to get a lesbian knitter

Easy! Lesbian yarn, lesbian needles, and a book of lesbian patterns. Why is this even a question?

if my son shows many feminine traits is he gay
can my son wear a skirt

Sigh . . . I’ve addressed these before, and they always break my heart. Anxiety about the sexual orientation of one’s progeny shows up in surprising amounts on my stats page every month. I picture some poor, anxious parent typing at their computer late at night after spending another evening watching their son dance around the living room in a skirt. The answer to both questions is, of course, yes. But speaking of skirts:

husband lifts my skirt
husband likes lifting my skirt

This doesn’t really strike me as a problem, given the number of husbands who prefer to lift skirts that aren’t on their wives. But if it is a problem, why not just ask your husband to stop? Seems much easier than looking for a solution on the internet. Or wearing pants all the time. But enough of this serious stuff! Let’s hear from the Department of Totally Random Google Searches:

nimoy s glove in invasion of the body snatchers

You know what’s really scary? I know exactly what that glove looks like without having to look it up. That’s scarier than the end of the movie itself, which, as you might recall, ends on a much bleaker note than the original 1956 version. Or maybe you don’t recall, which isn’t a bad thing. For you normal people who can’t remember exactly what Leonard Nimoy was wearing every time he appeared on a TV or movie screen, here’s a picture from Invasion of the Body Snatchers:

Now here’s what’s really scary: apparently, someone was looking for a pattern for that glove.

really knit stuff

Someone is either looking for stuff that’s really knit (as opposed to all that fake knit stuff) or wants to, you know, really knit stuff. It actually kind of makes me nervous, because I thought I was really knitting stuff, and now I think I might have been faking it all along.

cat vs deanna

This is either the smackdown of the century, or someone is contemplating a really unfortunate decision. If it’s the latter, well . . . I have to say that I completely sympathize. My cat is fourteen years old, and she’s outlasted all of my romantic relationships, with the happy exception of my current one (ie. my marriage). But if it’s the smackdown? Let the fur fly!

knitting won

So there was more than one mano-a-mano on my stats page last month. But in cat vs deanna, at least we know who’s fighting. I’m glad knitting came out on top in this one, but I’m dying to know who it was going up against. Maybe it was this person:

how do i stop poking my finger when i knit?

The other day, while I was out for a walk with little Mr. S and Little Ms. M,  I stopped for a cup of coffee and a pastry at one of my favorite local bakeries. It was a nice day, so rather than try squeezing my huge double stroller between two of the inside tables, I decided to sit outside. After a few minutes, a woman walked up to me and said, “You know, last week there were two men here with their little baby.”

I have no doubt this was true (this is the San Francisco Bay Area, after all), but it really doesn’t have anything to do with me. I’m married to a woman, and the route my kids traveled to get here is the typical one. The mysterious thing that inspired this woman to deliver her news was something that has been true about me since . . . well, since puberty, probably: everyone thinks I’m gay.

This isn’t a complaint. Men tend to express physical attraction directly and unambiguously, so a single walk through the Castro is enough to boost my ego for a week. It does, however raise the question of what about me is so fabulously gay¹. I have posed this question to many of my friends and acquaintances at various times in my life. The answers can be summarized as follows²:

1. “You’re in good shape, but you’re not a body builder.”
2. “You have good personal hygiene.”³
3. “You listen to Cocteau Twins.”
4. “You’re well-groomed.”⁴
5. “You have good posture.”
6. “You listen to Prince. And you dance to him.”
7. “Your fingernails are clipped.”
8. “You’re nice.”
9. “It’s because of your hat.”

That all of these items have been distinguished as gay signifiers is worth an entire dissertation, but as this is a knitting-focused blog, it’s number nine that’s under consideration today. That quote comes from my friend A, who elaborated on this point by explaining that a gay hat is identifiable by being:

• hand-made
• a skull-cap

I wanted further clarification, but this conversation happened over IM while we were both at our respective offices, and A was suddenly called away to do actual work, so I was left with the sudden realization that Halfdome (pictured above, middle) is pretty much the gayest hat ever designed.

I started looking at all my hats, like Jared Flood’s Turn-A-Square, which is my new favorite hat pattern. The first one pictured above was knit by me, and I found that I didn’t like the bottom edge covering my ears. So, Z knit one for me (the third one pictured above), and she began the decreases one and a half inches sooner. And you know what? I prefer that one. I just plain old don’t like hats covering my ears. And if my friend A is to be believed, this makes me as gay as the proverbial goose.

Except that I . . . you know . . . like women. Especially the one who knit hat number three.

So what do  you think? How gay are these hats? What would your gaydar (assuming you have one) say about a guy wearing these hats?

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¹ And despite the subject of this blog, I assure you it’s not the knitting. Do I walk around knitting all the time? Although I’d get my projects done much faster if I did, I can assure you that I do not.
² This list should totally piss you off, especially if you’re a straight guy. Nothing like a bunch of stereotypes to totally make your day.
³ This one is debatable, now that I have two four and a half-month old twins.
⁴ So is this one.

Every now and then, when I’m in a real narcissistic, time-wasting mood, I check out the stats page for this site to see who is linking to me. This usually leads me to bloggers who are kind enough to link back to me in their blogroll, or people who are knitting one of my designs. Sometimes, though, I discover that I’ve sparked some heretofore unexplored controversy!

Now, we’ve never shied away from controversy here at yarnboy.com. Longtime readers will recall that the simple fact of being a male knitter resulted in a bunch of right-wing Christians getting their knickers all knotted up (alas, the forum in which this occurred is no longer there, otherwise I’d gladly link to it again). I’ve even made a few attempts at intentionally inspiring some back-and-forth in this space, one of which was really informative and interesting. This time, though, my stats page has led me to a controversy that I didn’t even know existed, and——thanks to my inability to read or speak Russian, don’t totally understand. Apparently, it was all inspired by this photograph from a couple of posts back:

So here’s where I ask for your help. This is the original page in the original language. Do any of you read Russian? Can you please tell me what’s going on here? And since I always love hearing what you all think . . .

. . . do you think swaddling is wrong?