I do occasionally finish projects. They don’t all live in the WIP (Work in Progress) graveyard for eternity. And sometimes, I even use some stash yarn to make them!
Enter this project. This past December, many of you know we went to visit friends in England. We were thinking about gifts and I wanted to make something for our friend Suzi. She’s always cold and has some arthritis in her hands — so when Mike and I talked about what to do, we wanted something with some silk content in it, and figured handwarmers were something I could probably finish before Christmas. Mind you — this conversation was happening the night before we left, on Dec 13.
So, I went stash diving. I found about 4 different skeins that I had inherited from my grandmother that were wool/silk blends. Mike picked the color he felt was best of those 4, and I packed a little knitting bag with needles, stitch markers, and yarn and tossed it in my carry-on to possibly start on the flight over. I failed to consider that on overnight flights, they turn off the lights. While I did take it out, cast on (started), and did about 2 rounds in the dark, I didn’t love how it looked when I saw it in the light — so I actually frogged it (rip it!) and started over once we were settled into our vacation home.
The first mitt went otherwise without incident, and I was doing okay time-wise to get them done. I finished it around the 21st – leaving me about 3.5 days to do the 2nd one — and we had fewer plans, so more knitting time.
So, I immediately cast on the second one. I’m working away on it, and go to rearrange some stitches, and I pulled the cable out of my circular needle on the night of the 22nd. That basically makes them useless. I had to find a knitting shop – and hope it would be open! — the next morning to have any hope of finishing to either get a replacement cable, or a new set of needles — and a yarn needle to weave in the ends, because I had forgotten to pack one of those.
As luck would have it, there were 2 shops within walking distance of our rental, and both were still open before the holiday! I went to the closer one, and while they had some needles that I liked, I didn’t love their yarn selection (because local hand-dyed yarn is always a great souvenir!), and more importantly, they didn’t take credit cards. We rarely carry cash anywhere, and even less likely in foreign countries. So I thanked the lady and went to the other shop.
Luckily, this shop also had needles close enough to the size I needed. Brits apparently don’t use the exact size I had been working with very often — but they had some wood double pointed that were a hair smaller, so I could work with that. Pro tip: when you are used to working with metal needles that slide easily and swap to wood, you can go down a size because you’ll need to loosen your tension to get the stitches to slide.
And they had some fantastic locally dyed yarn, so yes, some souvenir yarn came home with me. If you are ever in the area, check out Little Shop of Hobbies in Morecambe.
So, I get the project swapped over to the new needles, and keep plugging away. Side note: Double pointed needles make projects look very scary!
After continuing to plug away, I finished the project before they arrived for gift giving time on Christmas! I’d been working on them right in front of her a few times and she had no idea they were for her. She either loved them, or is very polite — because she used them a few times on the rest of our trip.
Nice job, Rockalilly. I like handwarmers mainly because my hands get cold; unfortunately, I think I am allergic to the yarn my wife used to knit mine.
While it is not as important now has it was, whenever I land in a new country, I stop at a bank’s ATM and get some local currency. I use a bank’s ATM since the exchange rates are the best and the surcharges are lower.
Any chance that Rockalily is going to sell some of her wares here?
Unlikely. I’ve done a few commissions over the years and they stress me out. Not to mention that when you work in a “living wage” hourly rate for the time spent making it, it becomes unaffordable for most people.
For example, using this project — it took me 11 days, and I’d say it averaged out to about an hour a day. Some days I didn’t work on it, others I did a few hours — but we’ll call it 11 hours. If we conservatively say $10/hour (which isn’t even a living wage), that’s $110 without even including materials. That particular skein runs around $20. I used a little over half for this project. I won’t include needles/stitch markers/etc. That would make these $120. No one is paying those rates, and the people who do sell their handmade goods are often not valuing their time as the skilled labor that it is in their pricing. That’s not to say some don’t price appropriately and there are some rare people who would pay those rates — it’s just an uncommon matchup.
All that to say, I knit for the people I love or projects that call to me, but I’m terrible with requests, because if I don’t love the project or yarn, I avoid working on it and it goes into that aforementioned WIP graveyard…or I frog it and the yarn lives in my stash forever.