Yes, Men Knit, and It’s Not Even Shocking

This may be the first time ever I’ve seen a story about men knitting in a major publication that didn’t have the tone of “What? Men can knit?”

This piece from the Wall Street Journal is about a men’s knitting group formed as part of the summer knitting group at Bryant Park in New York City (there’s been a knitting meetup there every Tuesday through the summer, and today is the last one). It’s sponsored by Knitty City, and owner Pearl Chin said she thought it was important to reach out to male knitters because women knit everywhere and often in groups while the guys tend to knit solo.

It’s a really lovely story, and the video shows several of the men sharing their knitting stories and what they get out of it. One knit his child booties for years, while another picked it up as a creative outlet at the side of his mother, a seamstress.

The story but not the video includes Jared Flood, aka Brooklyn Tweed, who says he’s still a relatively solitary knitter because “I think for men who are knitting, there’s such a stigma with it still,” he said.

I hope more nice stories like this will remind people who don’t knit that it’s perfectly normal and a wonderful use of your time, no matter who you are.

[Photo by Natalie Keyssar for the Wall Street Journal.]

Next Pattern:

As I write this, it’s probably time to start thinking about winter knitting if you haven’t already. And it’s definitely time to think about gift knitting if you have any of that you plan to do for the holidays.

The Dreamy Waves Scarf from Knit Picks, designed by Stacey Winklepleck, would be a great project to go in either category.

It uses two different multicolored yarns and a simple repeating wave pattern to make a project that looks a lot more complicated and dramatic than it is. The gradient look happens naturally just by switching which yarn you’re knitting with.

This pattern uses worsted weight yarn so it’s a pretty quick project even though a scarf is large and this one is pretty wide. It measures 8.5 inches (21.5 cm) wide and 63 inches or 120 cm long. Of course you can make it longer or shorter as you like. As written it takes one ball of each color so it’s a pretty economical project, too.

It’s rated for intermediate knitters but if you know how to do various increases and decreases you’ll be all set. The pattern uses knit 2 together, make 1 left and right, centered double decrease and slip slip knit. All of the stitches are explained in a glossary in the pattern so even if you haven’t done all of them it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.

The pattern also includes tons of options for different colorways in yarn that Knit Picks sells, so you can see how different combinations knit up before you buy the yarn. That’s such a great idea!

Of course if you already have two multicolored yarns with long color runs on hand, you can absolutely use them, too. It might also be fun, but would give you a totally different look, to use a solid color and a bunch of scraps or one multicolored yarn to see how the different colors play together. So many options!

You can grab this free pattern and check out all the color options at Knit Picks.

[Photo: Knit Picks]

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