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

[kaberett]

(1) If he's got increasing & decreasing down, I think he ought to manage!

(2) I'd go with bamboo, cotton or silk. I'd expect acrylic to be quite scratchy. Cotton or bamboo might make the most sense from the point of view of being able to launder them easily?

Also, a quick google turned up this awesomeness [NSFW!].

[linaelyn]

First of all, GO YOU for encouraging your friend in the hospital. Knitting might work, then again, his tubing, tiredness, inexperience and such might interfere with completing a final product. But the act of having something to do is a palliative against the evils of being trapped and bored in the hospital.

Chiming in on the cotton or bamboo bandwagon, with a personal preference for cotton, myself. Silk I found to be lovely for texture but fiddly to work with as a beginner (I had trouble with proper tensioning) and the expense makes it less appealing for a project that might not work out. Something self-striping, perhaps? that could be fun for a willy-warmer.

Best of luck, knittily and medically!

[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.

[domtheknight]

I agree, cotton seems like a really good option and bamboo would be good, too.

Some acrylics do get softer if you wash them.

[epershand]

He should be able to manage, although something that narrow might be annoying if he's not comfortable with either using DPs (best context confusion acronym!) or the magic loop.

Re: yarn, I'd look at light yarns (maybe sport or fingering weight) marketed for babies. Baby skin is overwhelmingly sensitive, so there's a lot of care taken to make baby yarn non-abrasive.

[nonniemous]

I'd agree with Bamboo, or something with alpaca content. Acrylic will be too harsh in the long run.

You can get lovely soft yarns for not much from KnitPicks. Their wools are not scratchy at all. Your LYS should be able to help you pick a good yarn that won't be too harsh or too expensive.

As for a pattern, do a quick ravelry or google search. There is a penis chapstick cozy, but if he's a new knitter it might be easier to do a willie warmer.

And a POX upon the homophobic idiot in the other bed.

ETA: apologize for the edits and the hmtl fail!

[untonuggan]

What about baby yarn? I figure anything soft enough for a baby's bottom should be soft enough for a baby-maker, right?

Okay, sorry for the humor. Go your friend, boo homophobic person. I think they make nice lavender baby yarn...

[wildebeest]

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/seamless-willie-warmer This free pattern looks like it's well within a beginner's grasp. It would be a good first project to get warmed up on DPNs, because it's so small you can rip out and try again a lot.

I would try to find him a very soft self-striping bright rainbow yarn, maybe a baby yarn or a very soft sock yarn. But self-striping rainbow would be so fun to annoy the other guy with.

Good on you for helping your friend stay entertained in the hospital! And I hope his horrible roommate gets a big scar...

[dragonfly]

Can I just say, I love this post? From the two guys in love getting married to the knitting a penis to annoy the homophobic roommate, to what kind of yarn to use for a willy warmer. I just <3 this post so much.

Ravelry had the answer!

[neotoma]

In the form of six patterns for the knitted 'willie warmer', all of which are free.

Looking at what people have used to make them, quality sock yarn and merino superwash in worsted come up a lot.

[aderam]

I have nothing useful to add other than that I agree with what other people have said.

But I just wanted you to know that this post brings great joy to my day. I laughed out loud! It's wonderful. Tell your friend that I hope he gets well soon, has a lovely wedding, and enjoys irritating the hell out of his hospital roommate! Rock on!

[synecdochic]

I was going to suggest bamboo or a linen/cotton blend for feel an easy washability!

[elmyraemilie]

Great icon!

[kaberett]

Oooooh - cotton/merino blend?

[dhae_knight_1]

That? Is a great story. Alas, I come with no thoughts, other than an overpowering urge to share that I have, actually, written knitting porn. Non-specific (and fandom related), but still advocating sock-knitting as a sex-toy.

[azurelunatic]

This is an amazing question and I wish your friend Josh all the luck in annoying his homophobic twit roommate and making willy-warmers that don't itch.

[evilawyer]

Shouldn't be too hard it he can manage increasing and decreasing on double pointed needles. Silk is soft. Some cashmeres might work. 100% baby alpaca would, I think, feel good if he could get it, but it might be a little hard for him to work with at this stage of his knitting experience. Worth a try, though --- it's soft, soft, soft.

[medicalmouse]

Hmm, with regards to yarn, Lion Brand makes a cotton/bamboo blend that I think might be good for your friend's purposes. It's very soft and if you go down a few needle sizes from the recommended the fabric is reasonably dense (nice and warm!), but still stretchy (it occurs to me that this could be a useful feature for this particular pattern).

[jenna_thorn]

Having knit with both, the hand IV is easier for me to work with than the elbow, as it allows greater movement. Remind him to have the nurse double tape it, but once she sees he's awake and moving, she'll do that anyway.

I'm with Lin, though. Having the pattern and yarn and knitting will be of more emotional use than the eventual product, so really, if he gets frustrated at the pattern (which he shouldn't, the willy warmer is just round and round, and if he's worked with dpns before, he's got that) the knitting random straight rectangles for bookmarks is still beneficial.

Good on you for supporting a friend! He's got a lot of knitterly fairy godmothers rooting for him from all over the interwebs. 8-)

[indywind]

+1.

All the useful comments have been handled by others, so just chiming in to say awesome and best wishes.

[meretia]

Ha, that's great! I guess they always have an option if knitting them himself doesn't work out.

But bamboo, I hadn't thought of that! I'd been meaning to find him some different fibers to play with so that he can see what stuff other than wool knits like anyway, so that could work out quite well.

[meretia]

Well, Josh isn't allowed to use his Blackberry in the hospital and he doesn't have a laptop, so his poor fiance, Andy, was practically begging to borrow any kind of yarn or patterns or half-finished projects I had just lying around to keep him occupied, so I felt like I kind of had to. He's been in since Thursday, so I felt bad enough just having to tell them sorry, I could email patterns for Andy to take and see if Josh liked them, but Monday was the earliest I'd have any time to get down there.

Is there a particular brand of cotton you'd recommend, though? I guess it all comes down to what you're used to seeing at the LYS; I'd been thinking the cotton yarns I've seen at mine might be a little harsh.

[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.

[meretia]

That's good to know, thanks. I apparently have no veins in my hands, so my experience with IVs has either been either my elbow or my forearm, which both resulted in a lot of stabbing myself, so I'd basically been telling him "dude, don't even try because ow." Not that I really expected it to make much of an impression on him when I said so if "dude, you almost died, of course we have to do anything you want for you" still hasn't, but it's one less thing for his poor fiance to stress over if I can tell him that Josh really isn't actually hurting himself that much trying to knit.

[meretia]

I'd forgotten that he must know how to use DPNs, since he finished both his hats. Even coming out from under anesthesia Thursday night, he was kind of fascinated and confused by the 1x1 rib I was knitting in the round, but he at least recognized what the needles were for. So I'm thinking that this might not be as hard a project for him as I first thought.

But oh man, I'd been thinking a lot about content, but I hadn't given much thought to the weight of the yarn. Duh, that probably would be a good thing to keep in mind.

[meretia]

Heh, the chapstick cozy was actually what started all this off. When he started talking about how he should just knit a penis for spite, I told him that there actually were plenty of patterns--I'd seen this one chapstick cozy on Ravelry! But he thought he'd be embarrassed to use it once it was done and there wasn't any point to making something he wasn't going to use, and here we are.

But yeah, I've been poking around on Ravelry looking at bamboo and cotton yarns and I need to take his fiance to the LYS anyway (because apparently leaving him with "here are some patterns, you know how to find the yarn store if he sees something he likes" is scary), so we'll probably just have to go pet some yarn and see what works.

[meretia]

I think that's actually what I was thinking of when I was wondering about acrylic; the really soft kind that tends to be labeled baby yarn. The only problem I've found with it so far is that it's all pastel, and apparently the way he deals with being in the hospital this long is to get really picky and whiny about the color of the project he's knitting mostly just to annoy his roommate.

[meretia]

That's actually the pattern out of the ones I sent that he decided he wanted to try.

He's such a good-natured guy, though, that he actually doesn't want to use rainbow yarn. Because he's apparently got just enough of a mean streak that he'll knit a project specifically to disturb the person who wanted had tell them how disgusting they were when Josh's fiance reached his limit at the end of a long day and needed some holding and comforting, but sitting there knitting rainbow peens, that's just picking a fight. Because that guy's sick too and so he should try to be nice when he can. Right now he's experimenting with the pattern in some navy mystery yarn I found in my stash.

[meretia]

I know! When I was first reading the email Josh's fiance sent me asking if they could borrow yarn because he wanted to knit this, it was all I could to not start giggling right there at work.

Josh is such a sunny guy normally; one of the inside jokes in their circle is that Andy and Josh are the closest real-life thing to what would happen if Malcolm Reynolds from "Firefly" decided to marry Adam Savage as he plays himself on "Mythbusters" in some weird TV world. And I mean, I know it's not funny that he's got the added stress of a roommate like this while he's recovering from an appendectomy, but... his answer to being really offended is spiteful knitting. That's adorable.

Re: Ravelry had the answer!

[meretia]

Oh gosh, it's nothing I'm going to double check from a work computer, but that's more than I found when I was browsing Rav's "mature content" patterns! I had seen that a lot of them called for plain sock or worsted yarn in wool, which kind of surprised me. I guess it depends on the kind of yarn you're used to, but the sock yarns at my LYS have always seemed rather scratchy to me, the ones I've handled.

[meretia]

I'm glad! It was about all I could do not to start laughing on desk at work when I read Josh's fiance Andy's email asking for yarn Josh could borrow, because Andy is kind of baffled by the purpose and use of a willy warmer, but this is the project he's decided to do. And apparently Josh is doing one for practice and/or waiting until he finds yarn he really likes before he makes them for real, so he's been experimenting with one in some scrap yarn I gave him, just knitting the tube longer and longer to bother his roommate.

I've had like no Internet time this week, but I went to see Josh on Monday and brought my computer with so I could show him the answers to this post and some of the yarns on Rav he might think about, and he was really kind of taken aback by how many people on parts of the Internet he's never been to want to wish him well. But I have passed on everyone's good wishes.

[meretia]

Oh gosh, cotton/linen--that just might be the thing that works!

Apparently Josh has reached the stage of recovery where he's crabby about everything, and when I saw him on Monday and looked at yarns on Ravelry with him, he was complaining that "but it doesn't come in any kind of colors" about pretty much everything we looked at. Meaning, I think, that he wanted some kind of bright variegated or self-striping yarn and most of what we saw was solid colors in fairly muted shades.

But I was looking on Rav to see what cotton/linen was out there, and there's a Berroco cotton/linen that comes in really bright colors that the LYS nearer me even carries! Might just be the thing.

[meretia]

He's being the most mature one out of all his friends about it. Anyone goes to visit, and they'll be saying things like, "No man, you know what you need to do? Get Andy (his fiance) to bring a tape measure and take his measurements! Show him how to put one of those things on!" or flirt with him really obnoxiously, but Josh just kind of tells us all to calm down since the other guy's sick too, no point in going out of your way to be mean to someone in the hospital.

But at the same time he's also either drawing the project out to have something to do in the hospital or until he finds yarn he likes better than the scrap yarn I let him borrow, so he's knitting the tube of the willy warmer he's experimenting with ridiculously long and asking Andy "big enough yet?" whenever he comes to visit.

[meretia]

Okay, that is amazing. There are a few options that seem fairly obvious to me, but how does one make sock-knitting into sexytiems?

[dhae_knight_1]

Just... Here: Off jumps Jack. :-)

[meretia]

He seems to have DPNs down pretty well. I do have some baby alpaca I could give him if he likes the color, but my concern with that yarn is that it gets so warm so quickly. I bought it to make a pair of slippers a few years ago and they were really comfortable, but they were so hot that I could never wear them for more than about twenty minutes at a time.

[evilawyer]

Hah! True. Maybe a lacy, open knit for air passage is called for.

[dragonfly]

That's adorable.

It totes is.

[herophelia]

cotton yarn, definitely. it will hold up longer through frequent washings, and since it's basically underwear, it will probably be washed quite often. it will also hold its relative size and shape well with cotton.