Okay, next year I’m totally starting gift knitting earlier than November. Either that, or everybody is getting washcloths, because even a reasonably slow knitter (such as your humble narrator) can knock out a lace washcloth in a few hours. Even the fiddly ones made with fingering-weight yarn so skinny it’s bordering on laceweight can be finished in a week of only an hour or so every evening after work.
I’m also going to figure out a more accurate estimate of how long a pair of socks take. The last ones I made were only ankle-high, and a fairly open lace pattern as well, so they seemed to go by very quickly: 17 days, including days I worked on other projects or (shockingly) decided to read instead of knitting. These latest socks, for my mom, took about five weeks:
Again, that’s including days when I was too cranky or tired to focus on a pattern, or chose to read instead, or worked on another project. That’s also including the time I lost in the hospital, and additional time lost when, on the second sock, I realized I’d plonked the heel flap exactly 90 degrees out of whack, so the twisted-stitch pattern would have been on my mom’s shin rather than the outside of her ankle. (As a side note, I love the Panda Soy yarn used here — which is a brighter blue than it appears in the photo — but it is a splitty bitch from the nethermost rings of hell if you have to rip back and pick up stitches.) That was so demoralizing that I spent most of the next week in trauma-induced sock amnesia, not even daring to think about the socks lest I have a breakdown.
Still, they’re finished, and I like the results enough that I’m thinking about making them again, for myself, in purple. (The pattern is in Alt Fiber, for anyone interested.) That, of course, will be after I finish my dad’s Xmas necktie, which currently is about 80% finished — only 20 inches to go, but it’s the skinny part of the tie, so each round is only 24 stitches, and 10 rounds make an inch. So, only about 4800 stitches left, which isn’t too bad:
After the tie is finished, I think I’m going to take a little break from sock yarns for a while. I’m fantasizing about something on size 11 needles, with thick, fluffy yarn. What exactly that will be is unclear, but I think I could use a change. Maybe some wristlets or a beret in fat yarn, or a quick cowl in double-stranded worsted. Something that grows quickly. Then I can go back to my sock-weight yarns, and do the purple onion socks, without wanting to poke a size 1 DPN through my wrist.
