As you all know, I knit.  A lot.  And people are always asking me to knit them things.  Because, I want to sit around and spend hundreds of hours making people things for free.  Yeah.

My friend, Al, asked me to make her some fingerless gloves and I agreed.  And, she offered to pay me (not a hard concept people).  I was like, ok.  I will charge you $20, plus you have to buy the yarn.  She agreed.  I thought, “Hell, I’m going to be knitting anyway, might as well make 20 bucks while I’m doing it.”  So. Wrong.

First of all, she chose this really intense, nice Noro. (Click the link if you don’t know about Noro to see it) This yarn is delicate, but pretty and I was excited to knit with it.  On size 3 needles.  For $20, total.  I’m insane.

So, I knit the gloves.  When I got to the thumbs, the pattern, which is in German and won’t be linked to here, there was no explanation of thumb making.  I hate it when patterns leave out stuff like that.  If there are thumbs in the pic, put the thumbs in the pattern, come on!

I winged it.  And, it looked really crappy.  Like, really crappy.  But, I did the best I could.  And I started on the next one.  And completed it.  Yay me!  Wait, not so fast! 

Oh no!  You guys, I knitted the thumbs on the same side!  Grr.  I had to pull the entire pattern out (the cabling part that took forever) to make sure it looked right when I re-knitted.  Ah!!  So frustrating.  (One time, I was making this jacket and I was very excited to have it finished and I went to sew it up and I had made the left sleeve twice! You would assume that doing this once would make me more careful.  No.)

Saturday, I decided to get to work on finish these crazy things.  I had put off for, like, a month (maybe more, sorry, Al!).  At 4pm, with plans to hand over my work at 9, I began frogging (for those non-knitters, this means pulling out your hard work. Worst. Knitting. Ever.).  I didn’t finish until 10!!  I went 6 hours straight working on those damn gloves.  With a few bathroom breaks.  I must say, they look fantastic.  Also, I never want to see them again.

Good news, while I was doing all of this very focused knitting, I was able to finish watching Harper’s Island.

So, I learned that I will never, ever knit anything for anyone for $20 again.  Especially if it involves knitting in the round and teeny yarn.

Al, you got a deal.  Enjoy these gloves, mi’lady.