The minefield of giving knitted gifts
It is that time of year when many knitters will be looking towards their stash with an air of panic, remembering the drunken resolution of last New Year’s Eve that saw them swear they’d pace their seasonal gift knitting through the entire year, and realising that they broke their promise almost straight away when they abandoned Uncle Jim’s socks when it got to the heel flap.
If you knit gifts for friends and family to be given during the festive period there is a good chance that your mind will currently be filled with a swirling mass of ideas for presents, but maybe also a nagging nervousness. Will your brother like the novelty jumper with the complicated intarsia motif you have planned for him? Will Auntie Nell appreciate and care for the shawl you have spent weeks diligently knitting? Do your family and friends deserve your hand-knits?
Yeah, er... thanks
There is an ever-more vocal group of ’selfish knitters’ (this is not a slur, it is often the title that they give themselves), who think that the best person to knit gifts for is yourself. Maybe only you (and perhaps other knitters) can understand the effort and value of a hand-knitted gift. The time spent not only knitting, but planning and gathering, creating and perfecting. Maybe only somebody that knits can understand the worth of a hand-knit. I say good on them! If you enjoy knitting for yourself alone, then wrap yourself in your squishy hand-knits and enjoy every moment.
On the ever-lively Ravelry boards I regularly read threads started by distressed and angry knitters, decrying that the recipient of their lovingly created gift was disliking of their new knit, or (and this might even be worse), that the recipient was totally nonplussed. Knitting allies, supportive of the gift-giver and their art, will declare the gift recipient unworthy of future hand-knits, and then often indulge in a strange ritual by which they will weigh and measure the worth of a hand-knitted gift. ”She clearly doesn’t understand how long it takes to knit a _____, she doesn’t understand its worth. If you value your time at £___ per hour, multiplied by ___ hours, plus the cost of materials…” Wait, wait, wait… That’s not a gift, that’s calculating wages.
I tend not to think in these terms. An average pair of socks might cost me £8 in materials, and take me 10-20 hours to knit but I do not measure a knitted gift’s worth by either criteria. I enjoy knitting, otherwise I wouldn’t bother knitting gifts. I wouldn’t bother knitting at all. I would no more try to work out the cost of my knitting time than a model railway enthusiast might measure the worth of his miniature version of Didcot station by timing himself on how long it took him to arrange his plastic trees and replica grassy embankments.
I am grateful that any time I have given a knitted gift the recipient has been graceful and joyous in receipt (at least to my face, anyway), but I try not to get too hung up about it. I also try to be sensible in what I give to people, and who I knit for. Much as I would love to knit my brothers a pair of socks each they are 16 years old and like video games and football (they also have size UK13 feet, and there isn’t enough time or yarn in the world) and I know that, really, they will be much more appreciative of something disc-shaped that fits inside an Xbox 360.
great post!
I couldn’t agree more! My family and the friends I knit for totally love handmade knitty goodness and all keep badgering me for jumpers. But they love their handknit socks! I have lots of friends who just aren’t in to that and so get something more mainstream.
I definitely don’t get hung up about it
I’m considering trying to be adopted into your family to snaffle a handknit out of you one Christmas
The money calculations normally come when the recipient thinks that, by making something handknit, the knitter is taking the cheap way out, and that it is not worth anything (at least that is how I normally view it).
Personally, I don’t knit for presents. I’m no good with deadlines, and most people I give knits to just wouldn’t appreciate them. This doesn’t mean anything bad about them, just that I get to knit more for myself and they get something they like!
Many (though not all) of the cost calculations do, as you say, come from when a Knitter feels a recipient has undervalued a gift (whether in monetary terms or not) but I always feel a pang of sadness to see people who supposedly enjoy their craft and hobby measure it’s value with a time/materials calculation.
My brother-in-law flies model aeroplanes and I can’t imagining him measuring the value of a morning’s flying by saying ‘well, my time is worth £14 per hour, multiplied by three hours – well, that’s a £42 flight!
I knit
random 
stuff 
all 
year 
long. Things that aren’t immediately snatched up by my immediate family go into a box. Come Christmastime, after gifts (not knits) have been exchanged, I put the box on the table and invite everybody to take whatever they want. Some people take nothing, some take more than one thing. Either way is fine by me. I’ve had the joy of knitting things that I want to knit without worrying about who they might end up with or whether they’ll be sufficiently appreciative. With an absence of expectations, I can’t lose and, therefore, we all win! 
I also mostly knit small items – scarves, mittens, socks, hats, etc, but I have to choose who is getting what as my family are spread far and wide all over the country, so things need to be sent to different places. Lovely to hear the way you do things, and to hear that your knits find great homes!
I think your way of doing things is lovely, like eskimimi though I don’t think we get enough family in one place for that to work out for me. Still, it’s an aspiration
I’ll never forget the year that I knit a wonderful scarf for my partner.
I finished it during the long plane ride across the Atlantic, on my way to a winter holiday in Switzerland. A few days later, we were climbing up a hill in the alps, pulling sleds behind us and I turned to find that delicate scarf tied around the sled blade, being used as a ROPE.
ARGH.
My heart was broken (and a break-up followed soon after, alas…)
Now, I try to cultivate a Buddhist attitude of ‘non-attachment’ towards knitted goods that I give to friends, family, and my partner (my current love loses things constantly – my knitted goodies probably end up being worn by appreciative strangers who made a lucky find on the subway)
By the way, I absolutely LOVE the idea of the box-of-knits-family-free-for-all. Talk about non-attachment!
A rope
What a great comment! Thankyou for taking the time to leave a reply – I love that you have now discovered a Zen element in the art if knitting gifts!
Zen gifting is definitely the way to go. My first christmas of giving handknitted goods, I said that hand knitted goods needed to be loved and worn and if they weren’t going to get loved by the recipient, to hand them back/on… not sure anyone did that, nor do I believe that everyone loved their gifts ;)
As you say, thinking of the recipients is important. My sis gets loads of free hats, she really has no need of handknitted ones. My nieces are messy under 5s, their mum would not thank me for delicate hand wash only items…
I’m going through the ‘omg what will I knit for Christmas!’ panic right now. I won’t knit nearly as many gifts as I did last year as 1) that took a lot of time and I couldn’t really put as much detail or thought into the gifts and b) not all of them were appreciated (not even a little bit!). So a few select people will get gifts this year, and they will be much better in quality than last year since I can personalize them more and do more complicated patterns and hopefully won’t be crunched for time. I am a little sad that I won’t be able to knit all of my gifts. I love being able to give away things that I have made with my own hands. It’s a nice feeling of accomplishment.