Men Who Knit Promoting and inspiring the art of knitting amongst men.

Here's the result of an attempt at a scarf that would look nice on a fussy dresser and coordinate with black jackets. We're talking flat, sophisticated, and of course, soft.

At the yarn shop I was not impressed by any of the finer gauge yarns, nor was I convinced I wanted to put that much love into the project, knowing my aversion to scarves.

After swatching, I decided the yarn called for a defined texture... fast forward to the final selection...The longer Matthew Shepard scarf proved to be a winner.

Once I worked out a couple glitches and adjusted what I think may have been errors in the chart, it turned out to be an engaging knit without being too overwhelming. I was able to knit the second lace panel almost entirely without referring to the chart. I did tweak the ribbing, since someone had brought up the complaint that the ribbed neck doesn't provide as much coverage as one might desire.

The yarn (currently on sale at loopyarn.com) was very nice to knit with, and stood up beautifully to ripping out four times. Oh, and I was pleased to find that the reverse side is just as spiffy as the front!

The thing that really gets me is that the design is offered for free, but with a request that the person using the pattern do something to open his heart to people different from him. That challenge affected my thoughts as I knit on the bus, and it took over my blog post. Take a look if you like:
http://willyg-strings-n-stuff.blogspot.com/2011/02/meditation-on-manscarf.html