Knitting is a solitary sport, it is a doorway to the place in your mind where you can have some very interesting conversations with yourself. But then again we knit for others and that changes the game a little. When you knit for someone else, you want to appeal to their taste, their choice of color, their fashion sense and how they want the world to see them. The person I knit for the most other than myself is my daughter, since she is 6, it is quite easy to pick for her. Yet, when I ask her what she wants, she usually has clear preferences. She asked for a long sleeve cardigan this time, not a dress. When I told her I was going to mix the gray with another color, she picked blue even though I gave her a choice of purple, pink and a brightly colored striped sock yarn. Interestingly, I also decided to knit my sister a hitofude. I have finished mine, but forgot to post the finished object. I gave her a choice of colors and she said that given a choice of pink in the mix she could not choose anything else. I chose the pattern, the yarn and she just chose the yarn.
Knitting for someone else is special, it is a gift of time and effort. The average sweater takes at least 35 hours of knitting in my case. Or at least it does when you have an obsession for fingering weight yarn. I just love the drape and fabric produced when knit with a finer yarn. I have yet to knit a lace weight sweater, but I am sure it is just a question of time. Speaking about time, it is perhaps the best gift you can give anyone. When I knit something for someone, especially newborn babies it is my way of saying, you are loved, you are special, you deserve my time and my effort. I am giving you something irreplaceable. The blanket I knit or crocheted for you can never be replicated again, because while I can buy the same yarn and make an exact replica of it, the real cost of it was time. Time that can not be lived again. Whenever I look at something I made, I can remember how I felt while I worked on it, what else was going on in my life and how I made a conscious decision to invest in it.
It is a true labor of love.
