Thursday 7 March 2013

2012 The Uncharted Projects, Part 3: Knitting in the wings, just knitting in the wings...

For the past 3 or 4 years, I have had an aim when it comes to Christmas and its yearly ritual: namely, Christmas Shopping. I can't remember what prompted it but once the resolution was made, I couldn't see why I hadn't been doing it all along. The aim is simple: for at least 50% of the gifts I give to me homemade, second hand or bought from independent retailers. I usually succeed in doing this for well over 50% and I always feel much more satisfied with the gifts I give in this way. I always make preserves and biscuits for people (on one memorable secret Santa a few years ago, David Hasslehoff got chocolate shortbread...mind you, I never did find out if he liked it or not!) and in the past I've done paintings, made photo books, sewn cushions and crafted earrings from tiny baubles. The Christmas just gone, I had a new aim: to involve my latest crafting exploit by adding knitted gifts to my repertoire.

My main source of knitting based information, apart from my gran, is the wonderful 'Stitch and Bitch', which I'm fairly far behind the trend with but that makes it no less wonderful. As well as practical advice, it has some other useful knitting related tips one of which is relevant to the holiday season: do not knit for those who will not appreciate it. It tells a little tale of a woman who knitted a jumper for a lover. Jumpers, if you are not a knitter, take a relatively long time and, dependent on the pattern, would require quite a lot of effort and concentrated time to complete. If you want to show someone how much they mean to you through your crafting, by all means do it, but heed a cautionary tale that non-knitters may not appreciate just how unique and love-filled your gift was. Perhaps we have the ubiquity of mass-produced knitwear to blame for this, some people will inevitably have less appreciation for the skill involved. In any case, I did not set out to knit jumpers, not least because I knitted gifts for 5 people and to do so with jumpers I would probably have had to start this time last year...which would have been difficult since this time last year, I didn't know how to knit.

Instead I went for something simpler: wrist warmers.Regular readers will remember (perhaps) that my first foray into the knitting world was leg warmers, way back in March last year. Well the pattern for them also included one for arm warmers (a sort of fingerless glove affair, but with a hole for the thumb rather than another knitted bit) which I, perhaps foolishly thought would quick and easy.

I spent my Christmas at Hampstead Theatre, flying lights in and out. I hung out in the wings, but with one cue at the start and end of each scene, I had a bit of time to kill. Perfect time to knit! By the end of the first week after Press Night I had finished two pairs and thought I was well on my way to finishing all of them in time...

What a foolish thing to think! Cut to me on Christmas Eve, sitting at home with my mum and gran (two of the recipients of the aforementioned gifts...) waiting for them to go to bed so that I can finish them. It is nearly midnight and I have one day off (Christmas Day) and would dearly love to go to bed, but knit I must. It takes me until 2am but I finish both pairs, wrap them in what has become trademark brown paper with a little label saying 'Handmade for you with Love and Imagination Added' (see what I did there?).

Not content with torturing myself on Christmas Eve with a pair of knitting needles, I make myself a smaller pair on Christmas Day with some wool that reminds me of candy canes and then start on my secret santa present for boxing day. We had two shows on boxing day so had organised to do secret santa and have some food inbetween them to make it feel less crappy that we were working on boxing day. I knitted away manically on the bus on my way to work and nearly finished one. Pleased, and a little smug about my speed, I preset my lights, hoovered the stage and headed upstairs to finish one and start the second. I was definitely going to be done in time to give them to my secret santa recipient (also a knitter).

That's the problem with being cocky about things though, it'll come back to bite you in the arse. Just as I started the five rows of 1x1 rib that would finish off the first glove, I dropped a stitch. Now, if you are not a knitter, it's probably worth explaining that this is probably one of the most common problems. Usually, one can pick up the stitch, put it back on the needles and move on, forgetting all about it. Apparently, in this instance, this was not to be, not least because I didn't have a crochet hook, but also because I hadn't noticed the dropped stitch and it had worked its way all the way down to the bottom of the piece...

I tried to fix it, I promise, but at that point I decided to cut my losses. Gritting my teeth, I undid the whole peice, quietly calculating how much time I had to knit two more rather than just one. The answer came to about 2 1/2 hours. This was going to have to be speedy...

And I nearly made it too! I got one done in act one, or at least by the end of the interval. Being that the second act was only 40 minutes, though, I was very much up against it. By the curtain call, I had about 10 rows to go, along with sewing up the sides and finishing. With 5 minutes to go before the present swapping, I gave in. I had one completed and sewn but there was no way I would finish the second one in time. I sighed, put my backup present of chocolate shortbread into the present box and flopped down on the green room sofa, defeated by wool.

There is a happy ending to the story though. I finished them late and left a little wrapped parcel on the actor in question's dressing room table with a note apolgising for my lateness. She came to find me as soon as she got them to thank me, amused that we had pulled each other out of the hat (she gave me some wool and a beautiful brooch).

Its a good thing I finished. As I was giving her a hug to thank her for the wool I had a sudden realisation. It all worked out in the end, but I had definitely dodged a bullet by completing my project and not leaving someone who is allergic to gluten with chocolate shortbread...

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