Holiday Knitting

Ugh, I cannot wait for holiday knitting to be over. I have finished a hat for my brother, and am working on a scarf for my dad. I was planning to do more, but both the hat and the scarf were very time-consuming; I'm pretty sure I won't have time to finish a third.

The hat is double-knit in a 35mm film strip pattern, which took me much longer to learn and finish than I'd anticipated. The scarf is the Henry pattern from Knitty, and it's also a slow project. (End result is pretty satisfying, but it's so slooooow to work up).

By my calculations, I'll need to knit at least 5 rows a day in order to finish by the 24th. Each row is 452 stitches (the pattern is knit horizontally rather than vertically), and it takes me a bit less than 20 minutes to finish one row, so I need to set aside nearly two hours to knit a day in order to make it just in time.

I may have to cheat a bit and lose one set of repeats.



I'm fighting the urge to buy them something else "just in case" they don't like what I knit for them. Because, because! I don't get it; it wasn't this hard when I made my grandpa a scarf last year (my first present to anyone :D). But I worked hard on these gifts, and I chose the patterns specifically to match their tastes/preferences, so I will continue bravely resisting the urge to devalue my gift just because I made it. (Another set of quotes here too? Hm).



So looking forward to finishing this scarf and being able to work on something quick, and also not time-constrained! I'll probably pick out my next project based on how quick it is to work up :D