Gifting quandary

My general philosophy regarding gifts of any kind is that, once they've been given, the recipients are free to do what they will with them. This means they can spend gifted money however they see fit, put gifts on display or in the attic, or even re-gift the gifts if they want. Once the gift is out of my hands, it must be let go.

About a year ago, I gave a friend a handknit dishcloth made of inexpensive cotton. The yarn wasn't even freshly purchased, just some leftovers I had laying around. Still, I was a bit taken aback when she IG'd that she had unraveled her "favorite dishcloth" to satisfy a late night knitting urge.

According to my gifting philosophy, this is perfectly okay. But when I considered giving her another handmade gift this year, I paused. Was I going to be putting hours of work into something that might subsequently be deconstructed?

Has this ever happened to you? Do you have standards regarding who is knit-worthy? What kind of recipient reaction crosses the line when it comes to handmade gifts?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Summer slow down

I'm not much of a knitter during the summer except for cotton. This year not even cotton is calling to me. There are several projects on the needles, several more on looms, lots of ideas floating around, etc. But there are also end-of-school-year events and gardening and dog walking and gardening and car shopping and gardening.... You get the idea. Hopefully, I will be posting some FOs soon. Enjoy your holiday weekend!

Helical yes!

Another pair of tube socks for my g'daughter, from leftover yarn. When it became apparent I would not have enough of the self-striping 'Jollyville', I decided to give helical stripes another try.

Pattern: Short-row toe and heel basic socks, by Wendy D. Johnson
Yarn: Simply Socks Yarn Co Poste Yarn Striping, in 'Jollyville' and Simply Sock in 'Silver Lining'
Needles: US1
Modifications: tube socks - no heel

While knitting helical stripes is fun, I'm not sold on the look of them, perhaps because of the color combinations I have ended up with. The jog between color changes in the self-striping yarn is more apparent, too.

I do like to match the stripes when using self-striping yarns, which eliminates counting rows. One error I made this time, however, was to cast on the toes at a color break, which meant the woven-in end did not match. Oh, well! Wabi sabi!