Post-shopping plans

I finished my Christmas shopping today and sent the last present off to my family thanks to Amazon Prime.  Now that the gifts are all bought, my mental energy turns to post-holiday crafting ... which doesn't have to wait until after the holidays.

You see, this year I pretty much gave up on handmade gifts.  In the previous few years, I have spent November and December, at the very least, making scarves and hats and gloves and the like for family, in-laws, and assorted community members.  I've enjoyed thinking about their tastes, picking out yarn, and looking forward to the photos I'll get after Christmas of the recipients wearing their gifts.

But this year, all my knitting went into making things for the Craftin' for CASA Buy One, Give One sale.  I made seven items for sale and two items for donation.  Right up until the sale day, December 1, I couldn't make anything for anyone except the customers and the CASA clients.  There was a sense among our group that the more items we could put on sale, the better off we'd be.  And we were right; we could have sold twice as much, if we'd had the inventory.

When December 1 was finally past, it was too late to start a Christmas crafting program.  There were only two weeks left of gift acquisition and distribution.  After a few days flailing about considering whether I could get a couple of things made, I finally let go of the whole idea and let the internet take care of my gift list.

And that means that with a week and a half to go until Christmas, I'm free to start crafting for myself. But what to make?  I find myself browsing, dreaming, imagining, piling up the possibilities.  At this rate, I will probably fritter away my pre-holiday, post-shopping knitting window and enter the New Year with not a single new project underway.

A year on

Our kids are turning seven and ten this August. I guess they all feel like big ones, but these are huge, surely, by any stretch of the imagination. One goes from an age that people associate with kindergarten to the middle years of childhood -- on her way to tween-dom. The other is heading to double digits, with adolescence in his sights.

It's going to be big in another way, too. Cady Gray has learned to ride a two-wheeler on a beat-up freecycled bike, and now that she's getting independent with it, she needs a real bike of her own. So that's on the list for August. I'd like to get Archer a bigger Snap Circuits set. Cady Gray is ready for Narnia books and maybe even Harry Potter. I've already got a couple of new chess books in the closet for her brother's bookshelf.

What else should mark these momentous birthdays? Do you have gifts that have gone over well with kids like mine, or at similar ages? I'd love to get even more ideas.

Farewell, fourth grade

There are only a few days left in Archer's fourth-grade year -- and therefore in his whole elementary school career.  Next year he heads off to middle school (a foreign concept to me; my elementary education went through sixth grade, at which point we immediately went into junior high).

I asked a few weeks ago for ideas for teacher gifts.  What I decided on were bookmarks I could make out of leftover sock yarn, and little crochet baskets suitable to sit on a desk and corral post-its, stickers, and the like.

I gave all the special subject teachers (art, music, PE) gifts at Christmastime.  So I think I'll be sending these gifts to the administrators -- principal, assistant principal, etc. -- as well as the classroom teachers.

Time is running out.  Tomorrow Archer will get at least one award in the end-of-year ceremony (a note was sent home alerting us).  Soon he will be done with this school that has served us so well for five full years, headed out into a new adventure.  I know my little gifts are inadequate to express how much we owe to the school and its personnel.  But I hope they will be accepted in the spirit of our gratitude.

Apple for the teacher

Around the time final exams were happening at my university, I startled awake late one night with a sinking thought: I hadn't figured out what to give the kids' teachers at the end of their school year.  Just moments later I realized that they still had more than a month left before summer break, plenty of time for me to figure it out.  I relaxed and went back to sleep.

A couple of weeks later, the question is now more pressing -- especially if I want to make something for the teachers.  It's Archer's last year at this school, and I'd like to do something small for his special activity teachers, cafeteria monitor, therapist, and principal, in addition to his classroom teacher.  Cady Gray's teacher is a young and stylish woman for whom I'd like to make a hip hat or scarf.  I can't make those for everyone else, though, or I'll run out of time and ideas.

For Christmas, they all got crochet cup cozies with Starbucks gift cards.  I'm not sure about a similarly small and quick end of year idea, though.  Apple cozies are a possibility -- they're teacher-appropriate and very adorable and unusual, but I worry that they are not all that useful.

Do you have any go-to teacher gifts in your repertoire?  If you were a teacher receiving a handmade gift, what would you wish for?

A time to knit

Colder weather is finally here.  There's an edge to the wind and a chill in the rain.  And knitters everywhere are rejoicing, because that means it's time to wear those scarves, mittens, hats, and sweaters we spend all year making.

If you wear your handknits, sooner or later someone will admire them and make some comment like the following: "I wonder how much that would cost in a store?" Or, "How much would you charge to make me one?"

We have trouble answering, to be honest.  One of the reasons we knit for ourselves is to make unique items you couldn't buy for love or money.  People don't have any point of comparison, usually, to give you a compliment on the quality of your work -- so they try to imagine what the consumer price point would be as a measure of how much something like it would be valued.

When it comes to setting a price for our work -- well, where do you start?  A fair market value, consider the  cost of materials and an appropriate rate for labor, would quickly rise out of the realm of credibility for even a simple item, given how cheaply one can buy them ready-made.  Even catalog items that advertise themselves as handknit or handmade can be had far more inexpensively than even the stingiest calculation of a rate for my services.  (Which should tell us something about who's getting the shaft when those items sell for that price.)

Take a cozy striped scarf.  The nice yarn you admire could cost about $20-$50 all by itself, depending on the luxury factor.  Add in an hourly rate for the twenty hours or so it took me to make it ... well, you see how far into the stratosphere we are already, even at minimum wage.

I find it very flattering when people want me to knit them something.  But there are commissions, and there are commissions.  The students who think I can whip them up a pair of socks on demand just aren't being realistic -- nor, as a consequence, will they properly appreciate the work.  On the other hand, the friend who offers to trade her time and talent for mine, knowing that from me she can get something unavailable in retail, to her exact specifications, and willing to fill my kitchen with baked goods of similarly incalculable value in return -- that's a person who's "knitworthy," in the parlance of the craft.

In the end, it's all about finding a way to compare the value of one's work to the value of what's offered in exchange.  Often the appreciation of a knowledgeable recipient is enough.  For one-of-a-kind handcrafts, though, the most appropriate systems seem to be barter or gift.  Either agree in advance on an exchange of talents, or act in trust that your gift will be met by a gift in return that expresses the value placed on your work by the recipient.

Rocktober!

October started back a couple of days ago when I wasn't looking.  It's my birthday month, and our anniversary, too.  I'm taking two trips to conferences late in the month.  There's Halloween for the kids (which I will miss during my second conference).   And then when it's over, it will be almost the holidays and almost 2011.

But wait -- I'm getting ahead of myself.  First, the anniversary.  I've made an effort to stick to the vicinity of the traditional gifts (or their more expansive modern variations) for the past thirteen years.  It all culminated with number 13 in 2009 -- textiles!  Finally an excuse to knit my man a sweater.  I did!  And now there will never again be a prescribed anniversary gift that falls so squarely in my kitchen.

This year the traditional gift is ivory, and the modern gift is gold jewelry.  Hm.  Where do you go with that for a stay-at-home dad and freelance writer?  Piano is out -- budget will not allow.  I can't see Noel sporting a gold chain.  What else is made of ivory, or an environmentally and politically acceptable substitute thereunto?

Fourteen might be a challenge, readers.  If you have any suggestions, leave 'em in the comments.