Rasta is Faster and Other Tips for Knitting Gifts with a Deadline

by Meg Dedolph

Friends, it’s the home stretch. No sooner are we going to finish loading the dishwasher on Thanksgiving night than the final Gift Making Sprint begins. We're not lining up for bargain TVs on Black Friday; we're casting on.

It’s the 500-yard dash (sometimes literally) of knitting and crocheting, as we all do our best to finish - or start - a little something for someone who’s proven themselves worthy of a handmade item in the last year.

I am a human being who makes things, so I too am in this crowded boat. Here’s some tips.

1. Malabrigo Rasta. Ikigai Chibi Paki. Or any of its other bulky/ chunky neighbors. 

Big yarn = faster knits. It doesn’t hurt that it comes in beautiful colors and is so soft you’ll want to use it to blot your tears as you try to make a pair of fingerless gloves in 20 minutes.

Here’s some fast patterns we love:

For someone’s head: https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/perky-little-hat

For someone’s hands: https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/quick-bulky-mitten

For someone’s neck: https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/sidewinder-cowl-2

Put on a holiday movie, cast on and you’ll be done by the time the Type-A big city  lawyer marries the handsome maple syrup farmer in her small Vermont hometown that she hasn’t visited since she left the day after high school graduation.

2. "Handmade" means that somebody's hands made it. They don't have to be your hands. Check out our Scarf Market, which  continues through December 24, for a beautiful selection of handmade scarves, cowls and shawls. Our customers made and donated these pieces, and this year, we are selling them in support of Broadway Youth Center, which helps LGBTQ+ youth.

3. Good intentions. Look, sometimes it just doesn’t work out. We can show you easy patterns and big yarn, but we still haven’t figured out how to wind up three extra days or make a mini-skein out of five hours.

If you love someone enough to make them something in December, you’re going to love them enough to do it in January when all this busy-ness has calmed down and you’re not running around like your hair is on fire. 

Wrap up the yarn, add a photo of the finished object or a copy of the pattern, and as soon as they open it, exclaim over the beautiful color and the softness of the yarn - take it back and explain that they’ll get it by the end of January.