Knitting Presents

At some point (or points, in my case), a knitter has to accept that she likes knitting so much that she must find people to give knitwear to lest she end up knitting a toilet cozy.

When it gets warmer and I can't get excited about knitting for myself, I start knitting presents.  A lot of the people for whom I knit have birthdays in the fall, so I'm never sure if I'm knitting for their birthday or for Christmas.*

I've recently finished two presents for a friend. First, I finished the Fallberry Knits I talked about here.

Fallberry Mitts (mine ravelled here)

knit in Knitpicks Stroll Sport in Rainforest Heather colorway

I also knit a pair of legwarmers.

some cloudy day (mine ravelled here)

knit in Knitpicks Felici fingering in Groovy colorway

I've knit several pairs of kneesocks (which are just legwarmers with a sock attached, and hence the reason I'm talking about them), and the calf decreases always feel complicated. This pattern doesn't have any decreases at all. Some of the pictures show them as very slouchy, but we of the ample calves will not have much slouchiness. (I know because I tried these on. My calves are about the same size as the recipient's.) We all know my love for Felici yarn, and the striping on these kept me interested.  "Look! A purple stripe!" I like these and probably will use this as my go-to pattern if I need to do legwarmers. 

Both of these projects went really quickly and were a nice change from the slow and steady progress of the Garden Gate socks. It feels really good to have some more projects finished for the present pile!

*This is a lie. I can never hold back and end up giving them everything I've knitted for their birthdays and then knitting more stuff for Christmas. Hey, it's better than a crack habit.

Day Four: Knitting and Crochet Blog Week

Today's topic for Knitting and Crochet Blog Week is Whatever Happened To Your....?  I'm supposed to look back on a project I made awhile ago.

This one was handed right to me, quite literally.  On Sunday, a friend handed me a legwarmer I made for her in 2009.  The yarn had broken, and she hoped I could fix it.

Side thought:  Does anyone know why this happens?  It's not the first time I've seen it.  It just looks like the yarn snapped in that area.  Another friend had it happen in lots of places all over his sweater, and I thought that might be because we blocked it too strenuously.  Is this just something that happens with wear?

My friend said she wore these all the time during the winter.  I was thrilled.  Sometimes when I give away my knitting, I'm not sure how much it gets used.  This is probably more about the number of socks I've knit myself that don't get worn regularly than it is about other people, but I still always wonder.  It was really nice to hear that this gift gets used a lot.

I fixed it the best I could, tying together the broken yarn and darning it with scrap yarn leftover from this project.  It's not gorgeous, but it's sturdy.