The State of the Gift Knitting

Isn't this a pretty candle? I bought this to support a local rescue and it is so nice! First of all, the scent is called "Christmas Tails" which I love, and the scent is nice and subtle. I lit this first thing on Christmas morning, and have used it a lot since then, and there is still a good amount of candle left. I'm so glad I was able to make a small contribution to this rescue, and I'm also glad the candle is such a good one.

So. Gift Knitting. Well, it started out in an excellent fashion. Do you remember this FO from early in the summer:

This is the beret I knit using some fingering weight and some mohair. Originally, I knit this for me. But then The Tim said, "You know, when I see that, I immediately think of Annie. It would be a good gift for her, and then you would already have one gift finished." Annie is one of my nieces, and I had to admit that he was right. So I decided this one would be a Christmas gift for her, and at some point I'd knit another one for me (I have enough of both yarns left). This also made me decide that Annie's family would all be getting knitted gifts this year.

So next up, I knit a Musselburgh hat for her partner:

And for his fifteen year old son AJ, I made fingerless mitts:

And I knit an Antler Toque for 10 year old Jan, and just now realized that I failed to take a photo before sending it! But it turned out really well, and hopefully will fit her.

And so, figuratively speaking, I was on fire! All that was left was to make the pair of fingerless mitts for The Tim when he lost one of the ones I'd made for him years ago. And I decided I wanted to knit him a scarf, and collected the yarns for that.

The first fingerless mitt happened pretty quickly. So I thought, well, I'll concentrate on the scarf for a while. I was feeling pretty good about getting both things finished by Christmas. 

And then.

Going along swimmingly on the scarf, I realized well into it that I had misread the pattern and made a MAJOR mistake. This really threw me for a loop, and I just had to walk away for a while. And it also meant that I didn't want to knit. At.All.Period.

So how did it all end up? Well, the good news is that I wrapped up the single fingerless mitt, and The Tim was thrilled because according to him, it was *exactly* the same color, etc. of the one he still had from his old set. I told him I would still make the second one, and he said, "Why do I need another one, now that I have a pair again?" Which on the one hand, I appreciated, but I told him I was still going to make the other one, and that way if he lost a single mitt again, he'd already have a replacement. So I cast that on last night, and managed to knit the cuff.

As for the scarf. I was so disappointed that I wasn't going to have it for Christmas for him. But after thinking about it, I decided that I can do a variation of the pattern and finish it and maybe even end up with a scarf I like better than the original design. He may receive a scarf for Valentine's Day, or ... well, Christmas comes every year, you know ... 😊

So on the one hand, I did very well with my gift knitting, finishing things in plenty of time for them to be mailed to the intended recipients. Then on the other hand (if my mother was still alive, right now she would interject, "she had warts" which amused me but also drove me nuts), I didn't finish two gifts I had been really excited to make for The Tim. I am thrilled that he was really only wanting a single mitt to go with the one he still had, because it made me feel like he received an actual gift. 

But I'm also not beating myself up at not quite meeting my goals. Both projects will still happen, and he'll receive them, so it isn't like things were a total fail. I'm more annoyed with myself than anything else, for missing a key instruction in the scarf pattern. Such is life though, and no one died, so it's all good.

The good news is that I've gotten over not wanting to knit at all and that's the best feeling. I already have approximately 4,590,270 things in mind that I would like to knit in 2024, so all that's left is to narrow it down to maybe 5 things. 

I'll keep you posted.