My friends, I’ve figured out a way to bring your holiday knitting under control and to cut your gift list down to size. I know you thought that a great way to show people how much you love them would be to knit them all presents. But hear me now: it is the reckless use of the word “all” that’s the root of your problem.
You may have forgotten that there are two kinds of people in the world: the knit-worthy and the hopelessly knit-immune.
We can all spot the knit-worthy. Their eyes light up when they see wool, and they delightedly wear slightly crooked sweaters, oversized hats, or mittens with thumbs that are two different sizes. They show people that they got a knit gift, and they wear it to holiday dinners. They put on hand-knit socks immediately and call them their “best socks,” or even their “real socks,” understanding immediately and instinctively that they’ve been wearing store-bought impostors until this moment.
These people understand the gift of knitting, and that hours of affection are hidden inside something like a hat. These are the people who should go back on your list for next year.
The knit-immune are easy to spot, too. They open a hand-knit present, stare at it for a second as if you’ve just given them a certificate for a dental cleaning (thoughtful, but not fun), then thank you ever so politely. Meanwhile, you can’t quite figure out why they aren’t throwing themselves on the floor, prostrating themselves with glee that they’ve gotten a plain brown hat.
If you’re like me, you didn’t give up on these people the first year. You figured it’s not that they don’t like hand knits (because that’s just not possible). You figured you just knit them the wrong thing, and that next year, in order to avoid this moment, you should knit mittens or a scarf instead of a hat.
But the flaw isn’t in the object. The knit-immune truly think that a knitted hat is just that, a hat, and for them it holds no magic. No sense of the hours you spent on it, no sense of the esteem you must hold them in to have spent those hours on them. Some people really don’t understand what knitting actually is, and those people are not knit-worthy.
You should — brace yourself — take them off the list.
This is ironic to the point of pain for most knitters, because the knit-immune are exactly who we want especially to knit things for. Knitters feel sadness for those folk, and in our hearts we’re all on a conversion mission: we don’t want everyone to knit, but we do want them all to respect it.
So you keep moving the knit-immune to the top of your list, burying them in fiber of all sorts, and trying to impart the joy of knitting, when taking them off the list could save you time and help prevent another one of those holiday knit-a-thons that your family has come to call the “episodes.”
You may have forgotten that there are two kinds of people in the world: the knit-worthy and the hopelessly knit-immune.
I’ve discovered the best people to put on your list, the people worth knitting for to the point of desperation, the people who truly respect, admire, and are made to feel deeply cherished by receiving a piece of knitting: other knitters. Knit for them, knit for the worthy, and pare back the list. Your very sanity may depend on it.
Stephanie Pearl-McPhee is a knitter and writer living in Toronto with her long-suffering husband and daughters. She’s written six books, the latest of which is Free-range knitter: The yarn harlot writes again. She blogs at yarnharlot.ca.
PERFECT GREEN GIFTS MADE WITH LOVE
We’ve created this handy
icon and sprinkled it throughout
the issue to mark lots of projects that make
great gifts. Now it’s easy to give the gift
of green. So start crafting!
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