pokingmyeyesout

Me: "That's a color [of yarn] dad would like."
M: "I am not knitting sweaters for dad anymore. He is too fickle."
Me: "Yes, even if it is exactly what they asked for."

for some background ... I've knitted a vest and a henley sweater for Dad. I knitted the vest and henley exactly to custom pattern Mom sent. In both cases, I 'fixed' various issues with the sweaters when I visited. (reference funny story from last September)

Mom got the knitting bug from me and she re-started knitting last year (?). She was being nice to me and took a turn on sweater knitting duty. Oh, did I mention Mom told me he has always coveted hand knitted sweaters? She also tells me he wears the hand-knits sweaters all the time. And he wants a sweater a year. She ended up ripping two sleeves to take in an inch from the elbow. The sleeves were too big. And he was complaining there is too much fabric under the armpit. (Hi, lots of ease = lots of fabric).

I have also knitted a sweater for DH , it was exactly what he says he wanted. I checked reference material, sketched, double checked the lettering, showed him another finished sweater of the same base sweater, had him tried on someone's sweater of the same measurement he asked for, checked work in progress, fixed issues along the way ... and after he wore it once, he declared it too big.

So it is funny, the ironic kind, when I read the blog post Knits Men Want. There are no magic 10 rules for knitting for my dad and DH, and no 12 steps program to cure me of the urge to knit for them.