Gifting Knitting

This year I did not give very many knitting related gifts. Also, this blog post is short a few things that I cannot show - well, um – because I have suffered from an attack of inefficiency. By which, I mean that I have not put them in the post yet. So they will, um, need to be January gifts? Actually, depending on the post from here, they may even need to be considered Burns Night gifts? Ahem. Moving swiftly on...

Phyllo Yoked Pullover

The extremely capable and lovely Ms Ting helped me to reduce the size of, and stabilise, the neckline on the Phyllo Yoked Pullover that I finished earlier this year. So I was finally able to gift it to its intended recipient, a friend who happened to be stopping over in Vancouver over Christmas while en route to New Zealand. I did hope that she might wear it to our house for dinner one evening, so that I could snap a photo - however, this did not happen as she needs to find a suitable top to wear underneath it. So this is probably the very last time that you ever catch sight of this knit on my blog!

I decided not to mention that my Ravelry project page would suffer without a photo of the completed top on its intended wearer!

A Hat - To Be
Ta-dah! I ran out of time and exercised the ultimate knitter's fallback option: I packed two balls of wool, gift wrapped with a promise note!

The colour of this yarn drove its purchase and there should be more than enough for a hat (single or double stranded). This gift went to the Fella's Brother's Wife. It is one of her favourite colours and she asked me to make her a hat back in the autumn.

"So now I am just waiting to meet up with her for a coffee and a bit of hat pattern browsing. This way, she will get a hat in a colour that she likes from a pattern that she has picked out herself?!" She says brightly, trying to console herself for not managing to knit a hat in time for Christmas.

Dashing - Fingerless Mitts
Okay, okay - I am ashamed to admit that what it really boils down to is that I only managed to work one specific knit in time for the end of Christmas Day:

Pattern: Dashing (Large)
Designer: Cheryl Niamath
Source: Knitty, Spring 2007
Yarn: Dream in Colour Classy – Black Parade
Gift Recipient: Kid, the Fella's son
Above Photos: Secretly modelled by the Fella (just before they were wrapped and gifted)
Started: October 4^th (on the plane to Vancouver)
Finished: December 25^th, 22:00 (yes, that is 10:00pm on Christmas Day)

What can I tell you, this is me, first thing on Christmas Day, still working on Mitt 2:

Crikey, these mitts were almost a Boxing Day gift.

Now, I had been chugging away on this mitt very quietly with no questions being asked by anyone all week (right under the Kid's nose). That is, until Christmas Day when we all settled down to watch a DVD after dinner and out of nowhere, the Fella's mother decided to take an interest in my knitting.

Honestly any other time - any other knit or even if the Kid had been out of the room – I would have been delighted. However, she-would-not-let-it-go and kept asking questions throughout the film about what they were, what wool it was and who they were for. She kept picking them up, handling them, trying them on, just to work out what they were (their lack of thumbs did somewhat perplex her).

As Prince Caspian was going at full tilt, I thought that it might be obvious if I made a point of escorting her from the room to explain. So instead, I kept trying to keep my answers light, general and non specific. "Oh, nothing special, just something I am finishing off for a friend - ooh look, exciting bit - shall we watch the film?!"

She was not put off at all. She wasn't interested in the film; she was interested in my knitting. So I tried to whisper and use hand language (cue some frantic pointing at the Kid) to indicate the problem. She didn't get my hand gestures at all and my whispering backfired totally as it turns out that she is a little hard of hearing. So net result? She looks at me very oddly, as though I am a mad woman, "Pardon? What did you say? you'll really have to speak up, you know!"

At that point, I feel like everyone in the room is looking at me like I am being a complete weirdo (well they were all looking at me) for being so evasive about my knitting. Like, what is my problem? "Oh nothing, it's nothing - ooh look, exciting bit - shall we just watch the film?!"

There was no opportunity to explain before she left - so I think that I might need to visit, explain and apologise for being so cryptic. Just in case she thinks that I was being intentionally rude.

Now, okay, I must also confess - I did sweeten these Dashing with an i-Tunes gift card. After all, the Kid is a teen and knitted gifts are inherently lame, right?

Yet, do you know what? He opened his present and uttered the very word that every knitter hopes very secretly that they will hear after they have put hours of effort into some lovely wool and a good pattern,

"Cool."

(He's not the sort of teen that is given to lengthy dialogue - in fact, I suspect that he might be the kind that is able to go days without saying anything at all.)

Clearly, I like to think that this was expressed about the knitted part of his gift, not the i-Tunes card. Particularly as I kinneared this shot of my knit in action 48 hours later:

Re-sult!