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.]

Fall will be here before we know it, and that means there are holidays coming right behind where we might be entertaining at home. It’s always fun to have a hand knit touch in your home for other people to see, and if you’re going to be in the kitchen all day you might as well have some nice knit dish cloths to use.

I love this little plaid hand towel from Darling Jadore. Use a little bit of leftover cotton yarn from another project for the plaid portion. It looks like the horizontal stripes are worked as you knit and the vertical stripes are done with duplicate stitch, making this a quick and easy project even newer knitters can make.

Combine garter stitch and an easy eyelet pattern worked sideways to make the Annette Dish Towel from Cluck Cluck Boots, which is meant to be reminiscent of flour sack towels. It calls for DK weight yarn and you can work it in one color or two (or even three!).

Add a little more texture with this set of kitchen towels from Whileberry Creative. They’re mostly worked in garter stitch with borders in easy knit/purl patterns, and you can work them in sport or worsted weight yarn.

Two of Wands Shop has another cute allover knit and purl pattern they call the Seersucker Textured Tea Towel. It’s an easy repeating pattern worked in worsted weight yarn, and there’s a chart in the pattern you can use, but don’t have to, if you want to practice knitting from a chart.

The Classic Cloth dish towel from Handmade Home by Connie is another one that can use a little leftover yarn in a contrasting color, or you could color block it our use stripes throughout the pattern. This one uses worsted weight yarn and another easy repeating knit purl stitch pattern.

If you like to hang your towel on the oven handle or elsewhere but it’s always falling off, try the Stay Put kitchen towel from Fancy Step Knits. This project is worked in garter stitch and includes a hole partway through so you can pull the towel through itself over a rod or handle. Stripes are optional but a nice addition.

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