This might be kind of a delicate question, but I have no idea

[meretia]

My friend Josh is in the hospital without anything to do, so he's just dying for something to knit. Apparently even trying to knit with an IV in his hand is better than being as bored as he is, so I'm supposed to be finding patterns for his fiance to bring him.

He also has this obnoxious homophobic roommate at the hospital who was so terribly offended that he'd kiss his fiance good night and tell him he loves him. So when I was talking to Josh last night, the conversation went from how astonished and delighted he was by the knitted beard pattern he saw in the latest Knit Picks catalog that someone brought him to how he thinks he should knit a penis just to freak his roommate out (since he already expects that kind of jerk to be annoyed by him knitting at all, which is half the reason he's willing to try), do people make patterns for that? Once we started talking about the options he has there, he decided that since he and his boy are getting married in Windsor, Ontario on I think it's the 15th of February, he wants to knit him and his fiance matching willy warmers since it's bound to be pretty damn cold up there.

My question here is I guess two part:

1) I only taught him to knit a couple days before Thanksgiving this year. I know he's made two hats and I think might have started a third, but that's all he's knitted. I haven't actually looked at any specific patterns yet--basically all I could tell him was that I know patterns for willy warmers exist--but would this actually be easy enough for him to try at this point?

2)The thing I'd actually been concerned about is what the hell kind of yarn do you use for those things? Because plain wool seems like it might be pretty harsh for that kind of delicate tissue, and anything softer I can think of (alpaca, merino) seems like it'd get too warm pretty quickly. Some kind of acrylic?

Comments

[inoru_no_hoshi]

The first thing I thought of when I read this was this crochet project. *snerk*

I think if he can knit hats, then he probably has a decent enough grasp of knitting in the round to at least give this a go!

As for yarn... I was actually going to suggest merino, because it's probably one of the softest wools, but it IS very warm. Maybe a soft-ish acrylic like Baby Bernat? Definitely not Red Heart, though; I find most of those rough on the hands, and wouldn't want to put them on my bits.

A cotton/silk blend almost sounds like it would be the best for softness vs. breathable; failing a blend, one or the other alone might do. (kaberett linked me this page of silk and silk-blend yarns, as a demonstration that silk/cotton does exist. I proceeded to spend the next twenty minutes drooling over the pretty, pretty colors and pretending the prices weren't visible. >_>)

Oh-- I've heard some bamboo yarns are really soft but not overly warm? That might be an option.

[kaberett]

Oooooh - cotton/merino blend?

[meretia]

Heh, I misread the page the first time as meaning beanie like a hat, and was sitting there kind of going, "...so do you just like tack it to the front of the hat? Because I don't see how--ohhh!"

Baby yarn's a good idea, though, I hadn't thought of that! Right now he's just playing around with some scrap yarn I found in one of my bins and gave to him like, "I don't even know what this is, but it's pretty soft" and meaning to do it again in good yarn when he figures out what he's doing, so I'll have to see what I can find for him in baby yarn or bamboo.