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My husband will be offering classes to other husbands of knitters just prior to black Friday. If you would like my husband to train your husband or boyfriend how to successfully shop with the knitter in mind for holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, or “just because” please pre-register your mate as soon as possible.

Curriculum will include a lab, two field trips to actual yarn stores as well as skill placement examinations and gift wrapping. Your significant other will learn purse holding, basic listening skills and will be able to appreciate the difference between periwinkle and lavender.

My husband bought me a yarn swift. This officially makes Matt the best husband EVER.

Gotta’ love a man that understands a serious yarn habit. It helps that he was so generous as to only put 21 candles on my birthday cake yesterday.

This is the garter stitch rectangle I had knit up in the prior post. The felt is formed. And it’s very pink. And extremely soft.

Now I suppose because I really liked that yarn and I have to spin more.

I know what’s it is destined to be; Lexi said as soon as she saw it “Yarn slippers!” For a three year old she’s pretty good at seeing uses for materials.

There’s barely enough for a pair of womans slippers, but plenty for preschooler big girl slippers. Big girl slippers for the soon to be 4 year old sound like a pretty good idea.

While the girl child is just now learning how to knit on a loom, the boy child has taken to sewing.

On my sewing machine.

Which, at times, hurts my brain. I have this standing rule with myself that I will not, ever, under any circumstances fix, fuss, or fiddle with my children’s craft projects– ever. Not because I’m mean and don’t want to help, but because I have perfectionist tendencies that I think my children can live without.

So that means I get to stand back and watch, give advice when I’m asked, and provide proper safety oversight. Fortunately Josey saw me impale my thumb with the needle of the machine a few years back, and he’s scarred for life duly cautious.

I was using a sewing machine (hell, lets be honest, I was using power tools and a gas lawn mower too) unsupervised when I was eight, it was a different time though. Still I boggle. What were my parents thinking? Every time Josey sits down at the sewing machine, my day stops and I’m right there until he’s done. I’m caught between feeling like a paranoid overprotective parent and a responsible one.

And before anyone gives me any guff for teaching my male child to sew or knit let me say this: It has nothing to do with undermining the macho factor, it has everything to do with learning to be a self sufficient adult.

Last winter I checked Spinning for Softness and Speed by Paula Simmons out from the Salem Library. (One thing I do have to say for our area, the libraries are knitter and spinner friendly places.)

The yarn pictured was the result of reading said book and trying the techniques therein, I wasn’t really fond of the yarn in particular at the time, but when I was sorting through my stash I came across it and I’m looking at it with different eyes.

So I decided to knit it up into a garter stitch rectangle, and throw it in the washing machine with some pinkish/crimson dye. It’s agitating with soap at the moment.

I have no idea what I’m going to use the cloth for, I guess it depends on how it turns out. One idea that I had was to embellish it with some ribbon or bits of fabric and just use it for holding the service dishes at dinner. (Doesn’t that sound fancy? I have cheap dishes, they need all the help they can get.)

Another idea was to felt it up firmly and use it as– felt. I just don’t know, it was a spur of the moment idea crafty impulse to do something and then worry about the consequences later.