When I was in graduate school, one of my advisors would often send back my poems with two words scrawled in the margins: “Who cares?”

It was harsh, to be sure, but for an untried writer like myself, it was necessary to hear. The poems that received this curt dismissal were missing an initiating event, a reason for being, a spark that would engage a reader. The mere fact of words on a page isn’t enough, my advisor was saying, nor is the simple desire to write a poem. A poem needs to justify its existence. Without that justification . . . well, who cares?

Over the past few months I’ve received a handful of emails asking when I’m planning on blogging again. The thing is, I wasn’t planning on not blogging. It just kind of sputtered out on its own. I could have filled this space with occasional photographs of what I’m knitting, but if I did, it would have been just that: filler. The standard I’ve applied to this blog is the same standard my advisor applied to my graduate school writing. If I don’t have something interesting to say, I’m not going to waste my time (and yours) just making noise.

The truth is, I pretty much feel like I’ve shot my wad where interesting knitting topics are concerned. The gender stuff is covered; the Buddhist-like detachment required to rip out an entire sweater has been explored. I’ve already blogged about my deep and abiding hatred of cuteness, and how that squares (or doesn’t) with knitting baby items. And I’ve told you all about how much fun it is to be married to another knitter.

Does that mean this space is going to be silent? Well, probably not. I just submitted a pattern to knitty for the fall issue, and if it appears, you can bet I’ll be engaging in some more shameless self-promotion on this site. And if more of my fiction gets published, like my story “Daisy” just did, then I’ll certainly be announcing it here.

And if you have some kind of crazy angle on knitting that you want me to blog about, I’m always up for a good suggestion.

PS: Thank you everyone who checked out my entry in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest! I didn’t win, but I did get to find out that I’m part of an awesome community of fellow writers and readers. Thanks for the support!

Long-time readers of this blog will recall that, back in April, I landed an agent to represent my novel, The Accumulator. At that time, I promised to update this space news about whether you’ll be able to find my writing in your local book store. Well, I have bad news and good news.

I learned this past fall that none of the major publishing houses were interested in The Accumulator. This is not a huge surprise, in retrospect, given the amount of risk an editor would need to take on a young(ish) writer like myself whose publishing record is limited to poetry, radio commentaries, a short story that won’t be appearing in print until this April, and this blog. Facts don’t insulate us from disappointment, though, and that disappointment has a lot to do with why things have been so quiet here.

But here’s the good news: The Accumulator is now a semi-finalist in Amazon.com’s Breakthrough Novel Award contest, the end result of which is a publishing contract with Penguin. Which novels get ushered into the finals will be the decision of Penguin and Publishers Weekly, but a huge factor in that decision is customer reviews.

So here is where I need your help.

If you have the time and inclination, you can read an excerpt of The Accumulator here, on Amazon.com. And then, if you feel inspired (and you’re not put off by sex, drugs, or violence), write a review! The service you will be doing for me is incalculable, and will pretty much put you in the black, karma-wise.

And if I move on to the finals, my karma will be squarely in the red——and I will owe you all a thousand hand-knit sweaters.

This DNA scarf, which I mentioned in an earlier post, is now in the hands (and around the neck) of my cousin Matt. Matt has always been a big fan of my knitting, so I knew he’d appreciate pretty much anything I made for him. As a post-doctoral fellow in chemistry, I figured he’d get a good laugh out of receiving a scarf with a double-helix, and from a knitting perspective, this pattern was easily the best one out there on the ‘net. Little did I know, it’s also a slam dunk from a scientific perspective.

For one thing, the DNA on this scarf twists around to the right, regardless of the direction of the scarf. As Matt explained to me, this is called the “right-handedness” of DNA; if you were to place your thumb on one of the strands, you would have to twist your hand around rightwards in order to follow the strand upwards. The second big feature of the scarf is the asymmetrical quality of the double helix. See how the pattern shifts from side to side? This is because the two strands of DNA are not evenly spaced apart. The double helix has ” . . . a major groove and a minor groove.” (Thank you again, Matt.) Lastly, the scarf pattern features the correct number of base pairs (ie. ladder rungs) between turns of the helix.

Many visual representations of DNA blow it on one or all of these counts. Like, for example, this Israeli postage stamp:

The internet is rife with these kinds of errors, but the most egregious example is in the real world, and something of which I don’t have a photograph——a paperweight from the gift shop at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Which was, until last October, run by James Watson. As in Watson and Crick, two of the three scientists behind the discovery of DNA.

Why am I boring you with all of this? It shows what happens when we place ourselves in the care of a really good knitting designer. Not only was the pattern for this scarf easy to follow and fun to knit, but June Oshiro actually tricked me into creating an accurate representation of DNA, something I most certainly could not have done on my own. I’m not a scientist, but I hope that the patterns that I’ve put out into the world result in hand-knit items with even half the elegance.

Note to scientists: Did I make any errors in this post? Don’t be shy about letting me know.

If I’d been a more responsible blogger, I’d have told you about the survey from Knitting Daily that asked what men really want in a hand-knit sweater. As it is, I’m just in time to point you toward the results, which many of you have probably already seen.

The surveyors were cagey about the absolute number of responses, and they astutely avoided stating any results that would allow us to calculate it. Nevertheless, one of their numbers is quite surprising: 52% of the responders were non-knitting men. This makes me very happy, because . . . well, when I’m about to start knitting a sweater for a woman, here’s a typical example of her side of the conversation:

“Oh boy! I really prefer cardigans to pullovers. They’re much more flattering to my shape. Maybe a cable or two, but not too many. Gets too busy, you know? And can you bring it in a bit around the waist? That would be fabulous. Let’s see . . . colors . . . I like light-ish greens, some blues. No pink. And how about . . .”

But what happens when I ask a man?

“Um . . . I don’t know. How about brown?”

I’m generalizing, of course (sort of), but the fact is that when you’re planning out a sweater intended for a non-knitting male, you have to ask leading questions. The Knitting Daily survey asked those questions, which I’m adding to my repertoire the next time one of my guy-friends asks me to knit him something.

The other survey results were not so surprising. We males prefer dark colors and minimal texture, with exceptions made for minor ribbing and the occasional cable. All of this confirms a brute——but little-discussed——fact of knitting: the sweater your guy wants the most will be, from cast-on to bind-off, the most boring thing you’ve ever knit. It’ll look fabulous on him when you’re finished (and he will actually wear it), but in the meantime, it’s yard upon yard of stockinette stitch for you, with nary a cable in sight. But fear not! There are two things you can do about this:

1. Embrace Buddhism, which will cause you to realize that boredom is merely beginning of the path to The Four Noble Truths.
2. Take my men’s pullover sweater class at Article Pract in Oakland, at which we’ll be knitting this:

   

   Well, almost this. See how those raglan seams go right up the collar? That’s cheating. We’ll be doing it much better.

There’s a third option, of course. You can shift gears entirely and take my poetry class at the Writing Salon. Knitting and writing aren’t all that different from each other, really, except that . . . we’ll, never mind. Come and find out for yourself.