Gifts and Mushrooms

Posted by Emily

When I first began knitting, I was so enamored by the idea of giving people things I made with my own hands that I volunteered to make a great many projects for people. Since those early days of naivete, I've learned a few crucial things every knitter should know before offering to make something for someone else:

1) Set ground rules about the yarn. Key points: fiber, weight, and color. Make absolutely certain that your recipient knows that you will not knit a sweater out of black, fingering weight acryllic, for example. If necessary, offer to go to the yarn store with them, or to select the yarn yourself. Above all else, DO NOT AGREE TO USE YARN YOU WILL HATE. I cannot emphasize that enough.

2) The project should be within your 2S limit. The two s's are sanity and skill. If you have never done a lace project, don't agree to knit the most complex lace pattern you've ever seen for someone. If you absolutely loathe seaming, do not agree to make a project that requires you to use that horrible little needle with the eye more than your beloved pointy sticks.

3) Lastly, make a gift of your choosing for someone, particularly if they have no idea what options there are for hand-knit items. If they show the faintest hesitation when you ask what they would like you to make, start suggesting projects that you would be interested in making. Or take the decision out of their hands entirely and tell them you will surprise them.

4) Consider the usage quotient. You'll want to think about how often the recipient will wear or use the object you're making them. If you think the chances are low that they'll use your hand-knit, make it something simple so you won't regret the time and money you spent. If they end up wearing your hand-knit every day, add them to the Deserving-Of-Hand-Knits List. If they put away your knitting and never look at it again, well, there's a list for those people too.

If you observe these rules whenever you think about making a gift for someone, you'll be a much happier knitter. Trust me.

Anyway, I have a couple of FO's to show off. The first is a gift (Ravelry link). It was a request from a friend I know online. I agreed to make scarves for several of our mutual friends (see: The Great California Scarf Project and Shayzani's Scarf of Conciliation) and he wanted in on the hand-knit action. Specifically, he wanted dark green gloves. I bargained a little and talked him down to fingerless gloves, since I was okay with a thumb gusset, but scared of knitting ten tiny tubes for fingers. Guilt somehow overcame my bargaining though, and I procrastinated the gloves because I knew that the recipient wanted those ten tiny tubes. Earlier this month, I finally broke down and cranked them out, all ten digits. Nancy Lindberg's Fits Like A.... Glove pattern to the rescue!

I'm pretty happy with them. I used Knit Pick's Swish DK, which is soft and washable. It's a little stinky when wet, which I suspect is the dye. The gloves did bleed a LOT when I washed them, so hopefully they'll be less stinky the more they're washed. 

I also turned out a moebius (Ravelry link) and the Shroom hat from Knitty. For the moebius, I used the pattern from Cat Bordhi's Second Treasury of Magical Knitting book and Noro's Silk Garden Chunky. I loved the pattern. LOVED the pattern. Everything about it was awesome, from the cast-on to the applied i-cord bind-off. I will absolutely make more!

For the Shroom hat (Ravelry link), I used the recommended yarn - Spud and Chloë's Outer. The yarn was nice, but not my favorite. It's also contraband as the lys I work at doesn't carry it. (Shh, don't tell.) It fuzzed up quite a bit while knitting, which is not unexpected for a cotton-wool blend, I suppose. The biggest challenge was not the fault of the yarn or the pattern, but simply a by-product of Emily's Gauge (i.e. tight knitting). Those k3tog's were not my friend and I woke up the next morning with very sore triceps. I do like the hat a lot though!

Right now, I'm working on the Dawn stole (Ravelry link) from Grace Anne Farrow's A Fine Line book, featuring Isager yarns. The yarn and the book are all the rage at my lys and place of employment. Both the manager and the owner have shawls on the needles. I'm just jumping on the bandwagon, I suppose.

I only started the shawl because I forgot my sock when I went to work on Wednesday. That's a seven-hour shift at a yarn store without any knitting, which is one of Dante's circles of Hell, I'm sure. Anyway, I couldn't possibly survive without anything to knit, so I selected my four skeins of Isager 1, a pair of Addi Turbo Lace needles, and sat down to start knitting.

The great thing about most of the patterns from that book is that they're fairly mindless knitting, the perfect thing to bring to work at a yarn store. And I do have to admit, it does a lot for my confidence (and my employer) when customers compliment my project, ask about the yarn and the pattern, and hopefully purchase their own project.

Lastly, I want to add an addendum to my previous post about resolutions. I'm going to add a resolution about my other hobby, World of Warcraft. I want to get three more characters to level 80 by the end of the year, specifically my death knight, my priest, and my hunter. And if you didn't believe in my geekiness yet, let me point out that I have five level 80s already, a shaman, druid, paladin, warrior, and mage. I knit and play online computer games. I am a geek.