At SRL for many months, us women in the shop have built up a frothy reservoir of angst toward Make Magazine for never putting forward women makers (as opposed to women crafters), and the whole overall “make is for boys, craft is for girls” vibe the empire exudes — don’t get me wrong, I’m friends with many of the Make people and love what they do and they’ve been very nice to SRL, but it’s just been irking us dirty-hands, hardware–robot-machine-hacking SRL grrrls for a while, and it’s even still a subject of discussion around the SRL shop and other environs.

So, that said, my new Chron column is up: Knitting for Adults Only. In it, I do snark on the girly-craft thing, but found my head totally turned by Nikol Lohr, the totally awesome author of Naughty Needles — and in my mini-interview, she likens the sexiness of knitting to the panty-wetting allure of someone who can rebuild a set of carburetors. My kind of girl, indeed — and I’m not kidding in the article when I say her new book totally goes on my porn shelf, it’s red-hot. Snip:

“Much to my surprise, San Francisco’s real sexual revolution seems to be happening neither on the streets of the Castro, nor in the sex-positive, women-owned sex shops, nor in Victorian apartments besieged by prolific feminist porn companies. Instead, it is happening in the last place I’d think to go shopping for a whip. At this very moment, the new discourse about reinventing intercourse (and many non-vanilla-flavored activities) is happening at the neighborhood yarn store.

(…) Two women wrestle in cavegirl bikinis. Pasties are modeled by a sexy lineup of women who could only belong in a San Francisco burlesque troupe. “Kinderwhore” is a knitting pattern for naughty schoolgirl socks shown on two mischievous adult schoolgirls. In one adorable photo, a demure model pouts amid a pile of sex toys and hand-crafted cozies for almost every sex toy that keeps Good Vibrations in business. Lest we forget that the ingredients for marital bliss can include love, a paddle and deft needles, one image shows a babe in latex playing cards on the back of a man made into a human table by way of the knitted blindfold and cuffs she’s administered.” Link (+ that’s Lohr in the sexy nurse uniform!)

Update: Boing Boing blogged me! Also, I had no idea Rachel and I were on the same meme trail — she also wrote about sexy knitting in her Voice column, and it’s (of course) a terrific piece! Mmmm, Rachel, yarn, cupcakes… ::sigh:: Don’t miss it.