I don’t know if you noticed, but I like giving hand-made gifts. Really, you say sarcastically, that must have escaped my attention. Yes, really, I say. BUT. There’s a decided drawback to hand-made gifts, that is you have to actually make them. Like, it’s a lot of effort! And, to be honest, I don’t really like exerting myself. It makes me curse a lot. I read somewhere that a self-made garment carries the feelings the knitter had while making it, and in that case these gloves are full of frustration and anger. I’m sorry, Grandma! I hope they also absorbed that I wanted to make you something special.

I’m sort of ashamed to admit it, but these gloves are actually a birthday gift for my Grandma. There’s nothing to be ashamed of when you give your Grandma something for her birthday, you say? Yes, there is, if your Grandma’s birthday isn’t actually in March, but … no, I’m not gonna say it because you’ll laugh at me, it’s just very much not in March and let’s keep it at that. It’s a running gag in my family that I give my Grandma one sock for her birthday and then tell her she’ll get the second one for Christmas. Don’t look at me like that, I don’t actually do that, but I seem to have a hard time finishing things in time.

At first, I started the Birnam Gloves, which are so lovely and I want want want them. After I had frogged the cuff of the first one several times, I basically gave up and the project hibernated for longer than I care to admit. Then, in the spirit of sensibility that has possessed me lately, I frogged the entire thing and started Christelle Nihoul’s Wood Elves Gloves. Isn’t the pattern beautiful? Yes/yes? Well, it was also a pain in the ass to make it. Never, never again, I tell you. The result though? Totally worth it. I’m not sure if it’s a tree or a flower or some kind of shrubbery, but it’s pretty and that’s enough for me.

When I gave it to my Grandma, she was of course thrilled, but she couldn’t believe I actually made it – she always told me not to make gloves because the fingers were too hard to me. Why yes, my Grandma has absolute trust in my abilities. I didn’t tell her that I totally fucked up the first glove, although that was more due to my overthinking it than to the degree of difficulty. You know those patterns that don’t spell everything out, but let you guess part of the proceedings? For some reason, I thought this was one of these patterns. I’m really sorry, designer, that I misjudged you so much. Cookies? In fact, you basically could knit the fingers straight from the needles. Just like that. Good pattern writing, that.

I’m always looking for creative ways to wrap gifts, so when I saw the newspaper gift bag tutorial at How About Orange, I knew I had to try it. It was fun to make and the tutorial was easy to follow, but … I don’t know. I’m all for recycling stuff, that’s why I used an old newspaper as suggested instead of wrapping paper, but it still looks sort of cheap. I don’t know, if I got a gift bag like that, my first thought would be “oh, didn’t want to waste any wrapping paper on me, did ya”. Then I’d be like, “that’s kinda awesome, I want to know how it’s done”, because I’m curious like that.

It didn’t help that on the other side of the bag there’s a picture with a big fat red “gespart” (saved expenses) on it. I noticed that only after I finished the gift bag, before I more concentrated on not cutting out any pictures of corpses or people with guns. Boy, the world sure is a violent place! But I digress. On the other hand, it also says “hey, I sat down and made a gift bag just for you”, so that’s kinda awesome, right? Let’s just end this by saying I’m torn about this. It’s a cute idea and easy to make, but I don’t know about the whole recycled thing.