As I knit mostly for myself, it follows that I have to knit items I am likely to wear.
And I don’t like wearing a lot of knit items - I like knitting and creating things by hand but I hate the feel/look of anything other than sweaters and cardigans, which is quite unfortunate for a knitter.
You wouldn’t catch me dead in a knit skirt or dress, for example. Also, I can’t tolerate knit socks on my skin but I am thinking about giving this one a try again.
Sweaters and cardigans unfortunately take me a long time so I am glad to knit some small stuff for others when I get the chance. I really enjoy the process and I think I create beautiful stuff. I haven’t had the chance to knit for others too often, though.
I’ve also always been more of a “selfish” knitter and used to knit almost exclusively for my self. So I guess my most knit category would have to be sweaters (including sweater vests).
But in the last few years I’ve been knitting tons of baby things, and quite a number of baby hats, most notably this one:
I knit a lot of washcloths when I started. Then hats. Now I’m trying my hand at socks. But I want the socks to be more like slipper-socks because I can’t imagine knitting a pair that would be reasonable to wear with shoes.
Here is a pic of a breast cancer awareness washcloth that I made. I’ve named these nip-kins.
Definitely shawls. And not because I wear them a lot either. I just enjoy making them. One of the reasons is that they are often nice, not-too-large projects to try out new techniques or colour combinations. And if they turn out a bit larger than expected, it’s no big deal.
As most knitted item: probably socks. Most of them gifted away though. Actually I’m right now experimenting on a sock construction for 100% plant fiber socks.
But I enjoy tops and tees way more by now. Finished a dress recently I’m still looking forward to wear.
Just had a look tthrough my Ravelry projects for Science, and it’s quite interesting to see it change over time. Looks like right at the start I focused on a lot of accessories, especially cowls because I was playing with designing stuff of my own and it’s easy to design what is essentially just a rectangle. If I’d answered this question off the top of my head I’ve have said that.
But it turns out in my last three rows of projects, excluding the crochet ones, 73% of them were socks. So I guess that’s the actual real answer these days lol.
As for you not liking knit socks, OP, just been talking about this in a thread on the other knitting community actually. My first ever ones were in what turned out (now that I’ve used nicer stuff and can compare) to be in quite horrible itchy yarn so I hated them. My next ones were made from very fancy custom blended yarn with silk in it and they felt amazing. So it could be something as simple as that. I also find socks knitted with a gusset and heel flap fit my feet much better than, say, an afterthought heel (which I also did on those first socks, they were cursed lol).
Of course you might actually just hate knitted socks, which is fine. But there’s so much variation it’s hard to rule the whole genre out in one go 😄