December 17 and the sewing room looks like it has been struck by yarn & fabric terrorists. This year I PROMISED myself I would not make gifts—we have had such a busy year and I have made so many things and I have so many things still in progress….Then it started.
“One little gift won’t hurt…”
There it was, the fateful words….For the same unknown reason that women believe that cookie crumbs have no calories, having absolved myself of making gifts for people, I have become an absolute maniac about making gifts. As I write, one gift that I wasn’t going to make this year is in the embroidery machine, another gift I wasn’t going to make has been shipped off to New Jersey, and a “just in case” gift hat is drying on a bottle of Lysol wipes (none of our bowls are really the size of a human head—a serious flaw in housewares to a knitter). Still, I was under control until the baby sweater problem. When one of my friends asked if I had any extra baby sweaters she could buy for a friend’s soon to be new daughter, I was thrilled and promptly scurried (and yes, it was an actual scurry) out to the garage to raid my “baby gift” tub. Not only did I have one available for the right size & sex, I had several that would work and would be season appropriate. With babies, not only does one need to know the sex, but the due date, because only a mother who knits would put a sweater on a baby in the summer. Perfect—I even have options for her.
YOU KNOW….said that little voice in the back of my mind that doesn’t always use the best grammar and uses too many ellipses, there aren’t any boy 6-month-old sweaters, and there aren’t any 18-month old sweaters, and really, shouldn’t there be a few more hats “just in case.....?” Never mind that hats don’t take very long & even the most obtuse get some warning before a baby is born. Being the overachiever that I am, I sorted through yarn bins & patterns, and cast on….two new baby sweaters. Did I mention the overachiever part? Granted, one was because it doesn’t take very long to make—thereby soothing my now nagging fear that all my friends are about to burst into childbearing with only a few week’s notice (never mind the biological impossibilities implied). The other one is out of sheer curiosity. It’s called the “surprise” sweater because the entire time you are making it, it bears no resemblance at ALL to any article of clothing known to mankind. I think it should be called the “blind faith” sweater, because row after row of amorphous pink blob, I am going on, believing that this thing will someday have arms & fit a human baby. I don’t even know what size it will be, because the author of this book writes like I knit—“do this until you think it looks right, add a few of this, finish when you think it’s done.” That’s all fine and dandy for scarves or hats, or even normal sweaters because I know what I’m trying to achieve. I have no idea what part of the sweater I am currently working on, so I can’t tell if it looks right or not. Quite frankly, it looks a lot like the first Barbie blanket I made—oddly shaped and lacking in any real “itemness.” When this thing is finished, one sews 2 seams and Hey Presto, it is supposed to be a sweater. If it works, maybe I’ll try it on the old Barbie blanket—maybe it’s really a hat.
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