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Wool and knitting are primarily for the purpose of warmth and winter and as such, it is only natural to bathe ones entire body in woolly insulation when living in Chicago during the winter. It’s been .25 score since I was last in the windy city, but I remember the bone-chilling cold as if it were only yesterday. With these memories in mind, and in anticipation of a November visit with the Klein family, I decided to knit gifts for the lovely youngest Klein ladies–the gift of frostbite free noses.

This pattern is from the Knit Wit by Amy Singer. While this book has a lot of cute ideas, it is not a great reference guide. The nose warmers require wrapping stitches, which I’d never learned how to do properly and this book was no help. Instead, I found myself consulting ‘ole trusty, the stitch ‘n bitch. The nose warmers were great because they are a small enough project to give some solid stitch wrapping practice with room to mess up and start over. Also, I used worsted weight wool with tiny (size 2) needles, and it worked fine, but I would strongly suggest a pliable needle made out of bamboo.

Loosely, here is how to make them:

Tools:
1 skein of nice, thin yarn
appropriately sized double pointed needles

Warmer:
Cast on 20 stitches and purl one row.
Then knit until one stitch remains on right needle, wrap the stitch and turn.
Purl until one stitch remains on right needles, wrap the stitch and turn.
Continue until there are 8 wrapped stitches on each side and 4 live (unwrapped) stitches.
Knit to first wrapped stitch and knit together the wrap and it’s stitch. Repeat until all wrapped stitches are unwrapped and then bind off.

Tie:
Combine whatever 3 yarn colors you want into braided strands or appropriate length and sew onto sides

Tassel:Grab several colors of yarn and wrap around your fingers several times. Tie together the loops, cut, and affix to nose warmer.

During the “research” (googling the words “men knitting”) for this entry, I stumbled upon this wonderful page. I swear I’ll marry the first man I meet who has a subscription to “Men Knit” magazine. (Note: A quick perusal of the blogs indicates that I’m probably not going to have to worry about breaking that promise, if you know what I mean).

Maybe gender politics through knitting isn’t quite as controversial as through the lens of humor or dating. Here are some more cultural oddities concerning knitting (the last one may or may not be true as it is some fuzzy memory of something told to me years ago):

During WWI and WWII, the Red Cross launched a massive knitting campaign to send warm goodies to American soldiers. They even distributed patterns, had quality control, and bought enough yarn to wrap around the world at the equator 32 times.

In Japan, rich women often have personal knitters to whip them up anything their little fad-obsessed hearts desire. Japan also has what is probably the world’s only “fiber arts” school, where after 7-9 years of training one is proficient enough to knit top fashions by sight. If only my high school guidance counselor had told me about this life option…

Somewhere in the British Isles, the wives of fishermen used to knit sweaters for their husbands with a slight flaw so that if a sweater, but not a body, ever washed ashore, they’d be able to identify him…kind of like really fun dental records!

One of my favorite projects was the cell phone holder. It’s possibly the easiest project in the world, so it’s crucial to get yarn that really makes you happy. This project came from my beloved “Stitch ‘n Bitch” book (pages 178-179), but I didn’t follow the pattern at all. The pattern given in the book is pretty much a rectangle with some increasing and decreasing stitches at the top to account for the flap and antennae. I found that it was easier to simply figure out how big the cell phone was, and make an appropriately oversized rectangle.

To make:
First, measure the length and width of the cell phone. The size of the rectangle you’re going to knit is going to be twice the length plus an additional 3 inches, by the width of your cell phone plus 1 inch. (or in math speak ((L (of cell phone) x 2) + 3”) x (W (of cell phone) + 1”)).

Now figure out how many stitches in your particular yarn and on your particular needle size equal one inch (this info will be on the yarn label) and go to town with the garter stitch. This stitch is basically alternating a row of knit with a row of purl and looks like most socks.

Once the rectangle is finished, use a needle and thread to stitch up the two sides to equal the length of your cell phone, making sure to leave the extra 3” to be a flap at the top that will fold down over the cell phone and close on the front. I sewed some Velcro pieces on the holder as a closure, but you can probably use snaps as well. Finally, sew a decorative button on the front (yarn stores have really unique ones that can add a personal flourish, like a ram’s head, or piece of quartz!) and voila! Everyone can be as fashionable as my mom!

For a large group of Americans, visions of unconditional love are often pet-related. In honor of the loving spirit of both knitting and our lingually challenged companions, I thought it apropos to bring your attention to the spinning and knitting of pet hair. Cisco isn’t going to live forever, you know, so why not have a little memento? Saving a pet’s hair has some practical purposes too—someday cloning is going to be affordable for the masses!

What should you make with Sparky’s freshly spun hair? While I think the keepsake heart pattern a bit useless, the picture frame might go nicely with a room already covered in hair.

Knitting needles are the second most important part of any project (next to yarn). And it pays to invest in a pair that you feel comfortable with and excited to use. Picking needles is also a bit of a crap shoot at first. The kind of needle that will work best is highly individualized and can depend on things like: what kind of yarn you’re using, whether you’re a tight or loose knitter, how big your project is. The best way to figure it out is to try different kinds. You can even buy a few pairs and switch off in a project for comparison. The one thing I’ve learned is that you can NEVER have too many needles. Here’s a list of a few kinds of needles and the benefits/drawbacks:

1. metal:

pros:
– the cheapest and easiest kind to track down
–sturdy
–easy to knit with because of slickness (also con)

cons:
–slickness makes it easy for stitches to slip off
–ugly (in my opinion)
–could be confiscated by airport security
–cold
–COULD EXPLODE

2. bamboo:

pros:
–stitches don’t slip off needle as easily (also con)
–more flexible
–warm
–pretty/earthy (if you’re in the mood for hippie)

cons:
–bit harder to knit with because stitches don’t slip
off needle as easily
–more expensive, and harder to find—not at your local JoAnns

3. plastic:

pros:
–most flexible
–slick for ease of knitting (like metal and also a con)
–cheap
–lots of colorful/fashionable options including pink!
(if you’re in the mood for hip)

cons:
–not biodegradable
–slick for ease of loosing stitches

4. wood: See bamboo

I recently completed my first baby hat for my nephew. It’s modified from the pattern “Bzzz Hat for Queen Bees” on page 45 of the “Stitch and Bitch Nation”. I used a worsted weight blue cotton yarn and size 8 double pointed needles (DPN) and did the following:

Cast on 70 stitches (dividing the stitches between 3 DPN)
Knit one round
Purl (reverse stockinette stitch) for 4 rounds.
Knit for 2 rounds
Repeat 3 times, then
Purl for 4 rounds

Now you’re going to decrease the circumference for the top of the hat:

Knit 8, knit 2 together for one round
Knit 1 round
Purl 4 rounds

Knit 7, knit 2 together for 1 round
Knit 1 round
Purl 4 rounds

Knit 6, knit 2 together for 1 round
Knit 1 round
Purl 4 rounds

Knit 5, knit 2 together for 1 round
Knit 1 round
Purl 4 rounds

There should be somewhere near 40 stitches on your needles that you can now bind off by pulling the tail through all the remaining stitches with a yarn needle. Pull tail tight and weave through inside stitching and tie off.

Adorn with bee buttons found at most craft stores.
It’s delightfully cute, even on cats:

Knitting has come a long way since your grandma’s sweater. Not only is it a symbol of COOL, you can also produce a highly fashionable product. There are amazingly funky yarns and cutesy projects like cell phone holders and yoga mat bags that make the perfect gift for that special anti-materialism-pro-organic-homemade-crafty person in your life!

To christen this knitting blog, I have painstakingly typed in a passage from my favorite knitting book, Debbie Stoller’s “Stitch and Bitch”. I believe this passage sums up why this blog is at home with the accidental feminist:

“When I’d tell people about my latest obsession, I’d invariably get one of two responses. The first, “Can you teach me, too?” was a common and very welcome reply. But other friends responded with “Really?” or “How interesting,” both spoken with an air of disbelief, even a touch of disdain. After all, I had gotten a Ph.D. in the psychology of women and had started BUST, a feminist magazine—what was I doing knitting? Soon it occurred to me that if I had told these folks I’d been playing soccer, or learning karate, or taken up carpentry, they most likely would have said, “Cool,” because a girl doing a traditionally male activity—now, that’s feminist, right? But a girl doing a traditionally female activity—let alone one as frivolous and time-wasting as knitting—well, what were they to make of that?

It made me rethink me original feminist position. After all, it had been thirty years since the feminist revolution of the 1970s and housewives as we knew them had pretty much gone the way of the dinosaur, so why, dammit, wasn’t knitting receiving as much respect as any other hobby? Why was it still so looked down on? It seemed to me that the main difference between knitting and, say, fishing or woodworking or basketball, was that knitting had traditionally been done by women. As far as I could tell, that was the only reason it had gotten such a bad rap. And that’s when it dawned on me: All those people who looked down on knitting—and housework, and housewives—were not being feminist at all. In fact, they were being anti-feminist, since they seemed to think that only those things that men did, or had done, were worthwhile. Sure, feminism had changed the world, and young girls all across the country had formed soccer leagues, and were growing up to become doctors and astronauts and senators. But why weren’t boys learning to knit and sew? Why couldn’t we all—women and men alike—take the same kind of pride in the work our mothers had always done as we did in the work of our fathers?”

While I like the idea of expressing feminism by honoring work that is historically “women’s work” (or “squaw’s work” as my friend Leigh’s grandmother would say), I think she’s being a bit melodramatic about being ostracized for knitting. I mean, come on, we all know how cool it is!

Next up: bee-buttoned honeycomb baby hat! (say that five times fast!)