My top 2 categories of knitting patterns for gifts are mittens and hats. Both are smaller projects that need less time and less yarn to complete.
Hats!
Hats are a winter item that almost all of the recipients on my list wear (except my younger teenager and I’m convinced that someday he will give in and wear them too). And there are a ton of really great knitting patterns available for hats in almost endless variations. That means you have choices — plain and simple, colorwork, textured, or cables. I almost always pick a worsted weight yarn to narrow my pattern choices and also because it is my favorite weight to knit with. Plus, hats knit up so quickly at 4.5 to 5 stitches per inch!
Mostly I pick hats that I want to knit in yarns that I want to knit. That means I almost never pick a specific hat for a specific person. Instead, I fill a gift basket with many different hats and then let gift recipients dig through the gift basket to find the one they love best.
Mittens!
Mittens are not something that everyone wears. But I love knitting them. A lot. I love wearing them. A lot. And I feel that absolutely everyone who spends time outside in cold weather should have at least one pair of wool mittens. I’ve converted almost everyone I’ve gifted mittens into the kind of person who wears mittens at least some of the time (possibly only when they are building a snowman with me, but I’ll take that as a win since they’ll see how well wool keeps their hands warm and dry touching all that snow).
Whatever type of gift knitting you pick, it’s important to keep in mind that you are the one doing the knitting. So, you want to make sure that you choose a project that you will love knitting and gifting. If you know knitting with a large (or tiny) needle size will hurt your hands, don’t do it. If you know that knitting with black yarn will strain your eyes, knit the gift in a different color.
If you want an actual hat pattern and mitten pattern that I use most for gift knitting – it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I knit my Hot Chocolate Hat pattern for gifts all the time. I love that hat both to wear and to gift! For mittens, I use more of a recipe by following the mittens section in Ann Budd’s Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns.
Happy holidays and happy knitting!
