It’s not been a century, but in 2002 the first blog entry was posted on QueerJoe and now 16 years later and over 2000 blog entries logged, it is truly amazing even to me to see all that’s happened between now and then.

A Timeline of Knitting

First of all, the featured photo (above) is a cropped photo of the cover of a fascinating photographic history of knitting, unsurprising called People Knitting – A Century of Photographs by Barbara Levine.  I saw a random sampling of some of the photos and it looks like a beautifully done book.  Sounds like it would be a perfect holiday gift for your knitter friends, no?

A Whirlwind History

So, back on November 11, 2002, I took the plunge and got a Blogspot account and purchased the domain queerjoe.com so that I could start to document my knitting and life as a queer man.  It was back before Ravelry, before Facebook, before smart-phones.  I didn’t know what I was doing in so many ways…technically on the internet, I was more incompetent than abled, and I was still fumbling to become an expert knitter.  But I loved reading WendyKnits by Wendy Johnson and The Knitting Curmudgeon by Marilyn Roberts…the only two knitting blogs that I knew of at the time.

I loved how prolific Wendy was as she seemed to knit a Fair-Isle sweater each week and I love the “fuck you if you don’t like it” tone of Marilyn…I wanted to be the equivalent of their love child.

Since then, here are some of the highlights (and reviewing old blog entries…it appears I have lost some blog content from older posts):

11/24/2002 – First blog photo accomplished (Scottish Sweater made for my sister-out-of-law (at the time))

11/25/2002 – First mention of the kid alpaca bedspread (aka coffin cover)

12/6/2002 – Published infamous underwear pattern

12/17/2002 – London Beanie Pattern Published

12/19/2002 – First (unwitting) Blog Hit Whore Post

1/2/2003 – Top-10 List of Male Knitting Observations

1/3/2003 – First Reader Survey

1/10/2003 – 100 Things About Me list was posted

6/10/2005 – Franklin is discovered and a Fresh Air Fund is created to bring him to Rhinebeck

12/8/2006 – Gage died (I still cry when I type this)

05/16/2008 – First Men’s Knitting Retreat

10/3/2016 – Retired!

10/19/2018 – Converted Blog to WordPress

I know I sped up the history, but I started to go down a rabbit-hole of fixing old blog entries, finding more mistakes in conversion, etc., etc., etc.

I’ll let folks discover QueerJoe history on their own with this brief little list to start them off.

Current Knitting

Made a lot of progress on Dolores (who seems like a fitting tribute to my sweet 16).

I have two arms, a tail and some “hair” to go before I do the embroidery and her first outfit.  She doesn’t mind being armless and naked.