The Knitting Fiend

Dear Amy: Here’s a scary homemade craft for your museum of hideous handmade gifts.

My wife’s office friend knitted me a woolen penis warmer. I opened this gift at a birthday party and was so embarrassed that I wanted to crawl into a hole.

– SR

Dear SR: I have to admit that I thought that you were putting me on. So I mentioned your craft to a colleague and was assured that the hand-knit penis warmer is, in fact, making the gift rounds.

Clearly, it must be stopped.

I was so shocked I googled to find patterns for wild willy warmer (aka peter heater or dick den)! Inspired, I wrote a haiku.

Since I think it’s irresponsible to type “hand knit willie warmer” in a blog and not provide links to patterns, I feel I must let readers know they can find knit willie warmers and/or patterns at: “Dangly Bits”, “Rose Des Rochers”, “QueerJoe” and “When Knitting Was a Manly Art.”

Nominations for best knitting blogs are still coming in! (I need to get cracking on writing the ballot.)

I am hoping to get more nominations in podcasts. I know there are several, and I’d like people to suggest some! If you are aware of good podcasts, please nominate them.

I know you want to enter your favorite knitting blog or podcast. To do so, visit Nominate a Knitting Blog! Remember, weird made up categories are welcome!

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This article will illustrate how to knit the first “point down triangle” for a seamless Argyle socks. Believe it or not, this is the part that describes the unusual techniques used to fuse different colored diamonds together. (The other parts of the knitting use relatively common techniques knitters use on other projects.)

Right now, you should have two point up triangles worked. The point up triangles are worked using short rows and wrapping stitches — both are fairly common techniques that I will show in another tutorial. While working this you should notice that every other stitch on each edge is wrapped. Once you’ve verified the point up triangles look ok, you will need to rearrange the stitches on the needles so you can fill in the “ditches” between the two point up triangle.

How to rearrange
The pattern will tell you how many stitches to have on the working needles. In my case, the sock has 40 stitches, so half plus 1 stitches equaled 40/2 + 1 = 21 stitches.

The instructions also told me to place 11 on the left needle and 10 on the right needle. (No matter how many stitches in your pattern, there will be one more on the left than on the right.)

The outer edge stitches are the “top tip” of the point up white triangles. So, you’ll be able to verify that by checking if they align with the markers the directions have you set when knitting the first row of the point up triangle. (Unless you skipped laying them because you figured that was optional? I did! )

When you have organized the stitches correctly you’ll also notice the stitch nearest the left tip is wrapped with the wrap sort of pulling it to the left; the stitch nearest the right tip is also wrapped, but with the wrap sort of pulling to the right. In the photo above left, I poked needle tips through the wraps to show they are really there.

You are going to start knitting with black; in principle, you pick up the black yarn now. However, in practice, you can leave it aside for a bit while you get ready to “knit through a stitch with its wrap”. (Some of you have done this when knitting short rows however you have approached the wrap from the other side. )

The goal of knitting through the wrap is to produce a nice untwisted knit stitch with the wrap hidden behind. The black yarn will pull through the wrap and the stitch thus preventing holes.
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