Completed: Heart (a knitting project)

Husbands are so difficult to buy for, aren't they?

Okay, maybe yours isn't, but mine kind of is. He always says he doesn't need anything (which, truth be told, he usually doesn't), and he feels uncomfortable with people giving him things. He likes tools to fix stuff around the house, but I have zero clue how to buy those (and since he doesn't exactly have a system to store things, I'm not entirely sure of what he does and doesn't have). It's rare that I find things at yard sales that I know 100% he can use, and while he likes funny t-shirts, his dresser drawers are stuffed FULL of them.

So that makes buying him stuff for Christmas (and his birthday, which is RIGHT after Christmas) a little challenging. He's a scientist, though, so all things science-related are always acceptable as a gift, which is why I knitted him strep throat. He'll get a kick out of that.

But I wanted to make him something else, too. Something that said 'I love you' but also 'I honor your inner (and outer) nerdy scientist.' Something that he could look at and know that I think he's fantastic and also my favorite geek in the whole world.

What better fits all of that than...

An anatomical heart!

No, really, an anatomical heart!

How cool is THAT??? 

I wish you could all feel it. It's got a bit of heft to it for being just yarn and fiberfill. It's about the size of my entire hand, probably fairly close to what a human heart would be (which makes it a bit weird to hold! Not that I've ever held a human heart before. A human brain, yes, thanks to a science event we went to back in Tennessee, but never a human heart). It's pretty solid, not at all squishy, and I'm ridiculously proud of it. 

Look at the valves!!! So, so cool.

Part of what my husband studies involves heart disease, so this is definitely an appropriate gift.

I used the Heart pattern from Knitty, and I knit it up in some scrap yarn I'd ordered from Knitpicks years ago to make some winter headbands for family members for Christmas. There was just enough to finish this; I probably have five or six yards left, so that was lucky.

The pattern is really well-written and easy to follow. I had to backtrack and rip a bunch of things out, but that's on me, not the pattern. As I mentioned in previous posts, I'm just kind of getting back into knitting after a years-long hiatus after having my daughter. I was never a very fancy knitter; I didn't do a ton of complicated things in the past and tended to shy away from patterns that looked too hard. That said, I had pinned this pattern years and years ago, thinking it looked pretty awesome, and then, like so many other pins, never did anything about it. And since I'm trying to change that aspect of my personality, this went on the needles after I finished with strep throat. I've got another project in the queue that will require me to learn some new knitting skills, so...eep. I'm a little nervous about that.

Knitting the heart was a little fussier than I expected, though. It's knit up on ridiculously tiny needles, and due to the shape of the heart (anyone else hearing Jackson Browne in their heads right now? Just me?), you kind of have to twist and push and move the needles around to get to the next stitch in certain spots. It made that knitting slow going and a bit painful to my fingertips. Binding off was an exercise in not screaming, at the yarn for having so little give, at the stitches for being so tiny, and at the needles for constantly stabbing into my fingers. 

So all in all, despite the challenges of sharp, finger-poking needles and tiny stitches that I felt like I needed to contort myself to get to from time to time, I'm absolutely thrilled with how this turned out. My husband is going to LOVE this. He has a collection of toys on display at his desk at work, and I'm assuming that that's where this will end up as well (since, again, they study heart-related things there). And if it does, I'll be pretty proud to have it on display- but if not, I'm happy with whatever he decides to do with it. My heart is his, after all. ;)

Are you working on anything fun?