Josh Bennett Profiled in New York Times

I don’t really know what to say about this piece about knitwear designer Josh Bennett in the New York Times. I almost feel like it’s just men knitting season (exhibit A: the actually really nice story in the Wall Street Journal about men knitting at Bryant Park) but I don’t want to sound like Bennett isn’t worthy of a profile in the New York Times.

I will say that I hate the headline “Grandma Never Knit Like This.” I hate even more that the executive director of the Craft Yarn Council apparently invoked grandma, when she should know better. And I hate that photo of him knitting but clearly not knitting because that’s nowhere in the universe of how a person knits (and how are there three strands of yarn?).

The story is interesting in that it takes a different view on men knitting. Here’s a man who has had great success designing for big-name fashion designers, but he doesn’t knit in public. He learned to knit at age 8 and fully embraced it for a week until he thought “boys don’t knit” and stopped for 10 years.

It talks of the cattiness of the fashion knitting industry, the way ugliness can spread on the internet, and the idiosyncrasies of one knitter (no hats, socks or unnatural fibers, no sweater for his partner, even though they’ve been together eight years — the sweater curse does not have time limits).

And I think there’s some value to knitting being talked about in “mainstream” media, so I’ll just leave it at that. If you want to know about Bennett’s current fashion obsessions and favorite shows to watch while knitting, check out his list of five, too.

If you read the article I’d love to know what you think.

[Photo by Deidre Schoo, via the New York Times.]

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I can’t resist a pattern that’s both useful and a little silly, and that’s exactly how I feel about the Rybka pouch pattern from the delightfully named Rat and Sea Witch.

I know you’re going to ask, because I did, too. Rybka means little fish in Polish. (And because you’re also probably going to ask, Rat and Sea Witch comes from people’s attempts to say the designer’s name, Ratasiewicz, which if you say it fast kind of sounds like rat and sea witch.)

It’s easy to make a little fish bag in different sizes to suit your needs. The pattern has specific instructions for an Airpods Pro case and a pencil case, but you could change the length easily to hold more stuff, and change the size in general by working with a different weight of yarn.

The pattern calls for sock yarn and mohair held together to make a fingering weight gauge, but you could try it with heavier yarn and see what size bag you end up with.

Whatever size you make it, this looks like a fun project for holding trinkets or everyday items. The mouth of the fish is the mouth of the bag, and it closes with a drawstring that is also the strap. I wonder, too, if you could make one of these with a small clasp frame that could be the fish’s mouth and then you could just work I cord straps that would attach to the sides of the fish.

I could also see stripes, or fish of different colors to use up your yarn leftovers. How about a sunglasses case with a little loop to attach to your bag? Once you start thinking about all the ways you could use a fish-shaped bag in your life, I think you’ll see that you probably need more than one.

If you make one of these I would love to know how it went!

You can grab a copy of the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Rat and Sea Witch]

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