I don’t knit things for myself very often. I jokingly think of knitting for myself as ‘selfish knitting’. This stems from the fact that, for some reason, whenever I get the commonly asked question: “who are you knitting that for?” I feel a pang of selfish guilt as I sheepishly reply “myself…” I’ve never known why this is: I’m perfectly entitled to knit for myself, but it’s just a feeling I get.

I always want to knit things for myself (I have a Ravelry queue that probably extends beyond my lifetime), but instead I seem to fall into a familiar pattern of knitting gifts for friends and family each year; starting slowly at first, then knitting steadily through the summer months before building up to a pre-Christmas knitting frenzy each year.

I like it this way, so I’m not complaining. I like gifting my knits to people: knowing that I’ve given something unique and handmade, that I’ve spent hours working on; carefully devoting my time to each stitch with someone specific in mind. To me, there’s no gift more personal or thoughtful than that. Whenever I can’t think of that perfect present, I can always think of something to knit.

However, after several years of predominantly gift-knitting, culminating in a whole year dedicated to knitting for my wedding last year; I decided that this year – 2016 – would be my year. I vowed to spend the year knitting things for myself.

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