Christmas Gifts . . 2021

It seems like I’ve been busy finishing Christmas gifts for quite a while. Even when I wasn’t actively working on gifts, they were on my mind. The last gift was finishing a week ago and I’ve kinda missed not having gifts to work on. Last night I was thinking of all the knitting projects I want to make – mostly sweaters and bigger projects and I thought it would be nice to make some mittens, fingerless mitts and hats during the year and put those in a “Christmas” drawer and then next year, when I need small gifts for the mail lady, an neighbor or two, Addie’s after school lady and her teacher(s), or even someone I don’t know who is super helpful at the grocery store or in a restaurant . . assuming we’ll be able to go to restaurants by this time next year!

That line of thinking got me to thinking about when I make a sweater and I always have yarn left over. I usually get one extra skein “just in case” but sometimes I love a yarn and just buy it for a future project and there’s often a skein or two of that left over because I buy extra since I don’t know how much I need. I think, in the future, instead of sticking a skein or two back in a tub, I’ll just make mittens or hats or something that uses up smaller amounts of yarn and have that made and ready for gift giving.

Here’s the first project to go into the “Christmas Drawer”. The pattern is Susie Rogers’ Reading Mitts and it’s free. It calls for DK weight but can easily be made using sport or even worsted. It has S, M and L sizes so when I want to use worsted weight, I make the Small and use the size 5 needle as suggested for DK weight. When I want to use sport weight, I use the Large size and a smaller needle. There’s a lot of stretch. My advice though is to use a stretchy bind off for the thumb and for the end.

The yarn I’m using is one skein of Madelinetosh DK that was leftover from another project. I love the color. Came across it while digging for something else the other day so I knew right where it was.

One skein out of the yarn tubs. One gift soon to be finished for Christmas 2021.