A Gentle Jab

Tomorrow is Ian's graduation party, the next day marks four and a half years of us "being together" or "dating" or whatever you'd like to call it.  This is kind of a big weekend for me.

Because my mom sells kitchen supplies for The Pampered Chef, pretty much every viable occasion is met with some sort of kitchen gift.  There's already a stash in the garage of boxes for me.  This means that Ian is moving out with a small dorm kitchen package from my family (mostly Mom), which is somewhat colorful. Off the top of my head I only remember that the color-coated knife is green and the mini cutting board has pink edges (I insisted; Mom consented on the condition that it clearly be my fault), but I'm pretty sure there are a few other colors too.

And now there's going to be one more.  Why?  That requires a few stories:

A few weeks ago Ian picked me up for something or other, and I was quite cheerful because I had been "being productive" all morning.  When he asked what that meant, I told him it meant cleaning.  His immediate reaction was to snort.  "Well that's not productive."  I admit I was annoyed and frustrated for most of the rest of the car trip.  Cleaning?  Not productive?

When I started knitting dishrags Ian had no idea how I could possibly destroy something that had taken me so much time.  I was never able to adequately explain how they're made to be used and I get great satisfaction from seeing my work put to its proper use.

This last night (past midnight, so today), I wanted a quick fix, a project that wouldn't take very long that could be started and finished and give me a sense of accomplishment.  A dishrag would do the trick just fine, so I picked up my insanely bright orange kitchen cotton, and cast on three stitches.  I decided to play around and do some calculations while I was at it, so I popped on some TEDTalks and knit away.  Here's what happened.

Total Time: 56 minutes, 43 seconds
Stitches: 894 (30 stitches across at widest point, which is bigger than I make for myself but his hands are bigger)
Stitches Per Minute: 15.8
Yards Of Yarn: 22.3
Yards Per Minute: 0.39

Material Cost: $0.32 (Seriously, this stuff is cheap)
Time Cost: $6.77 (At minimum wage of $7.25/hr)
Total Cost: $7.10

For thirty-two cents and one hour of my time, I have a dishrag to add to the gift bag with the following label: "For if when you decide that cleaning is productive.  This is worth about seven dollars, so please use it.  Throw it in the wash with your clothes sometimes."  Or something to that effect.

I don't anticipate he'll actually use it, but I figure I will when I visit.  And it amuses me to put in this gentle jab at him, which I know he'll take in good fun.

So there we go.  An hour of my life well-spent, I think!  Or maybe that's just because I'm up late.