elizabeth_mn

My knitted mittens from a couple years ago have completely deteriorated; I darned several holes and the other day I finally just gave up.

So I took a few minutes and made these!


Cut and sewn from old sweaters which I felted in the washing machine.  I actually used the sleeves of the green striped one to make mittens for F a few years ago.  The pattern was given to me by a Treadle customer a few months ago; I believe it was her own draft and she asked if anyone wanted a copy.  (Of course we all did!)


Honestly, these were so easy and simple that it's actually pretty lame that I am giving them their own blog entry.  But I love them!

Made these yesterday.  Trying to use up the last of the blue Malabrigo merino.



I used the cupcake mitten from Itty-Bitty Nursery as a guide for sizes.  Since my yarn and gauge were different, I didn't follow the pattern, I just cast on 4" worth of stitches, ribbed for a while, stockinette-ed for a while, then decreased for a round top.

They are so simple that I think they almost don't merit their own entry, but I like them so much!  Thumbless mittens always make me giggle a little.

Yay!



Finished this last night. I made lots of modifications to the pattern, Fittin Mittens, which is really only a sort of template anyway. I made the hand narrower as I went up, I shortened the ribbing, and I started the thumb gusset lower. Mostly, what I tried to do was make the mitten shaped more like my own hand. And it fits pretty well!

The greatest modification I made was changing the top from square to round. Using what I learned from this Knitty article about shaping sleeve caps, I rewrote the top decreases to blend the angles.



Square top, pointy top, round top.

The squared-top mitten is directly from the pattern and decreases 2 sts on each side every other round, then uses kitchener stitch to graft the top together. (My pink mitten, above, is old and cruddy. You can see the square top better in my red mitten.)

For the pointy-top mitten, I decreased 2 sts each side on every round, then k2tog all around on the last round.

For the round-top mitten I drew the curve I wanted, then broke that curve into straight segments to figure out how severely to decrease and where and for how long. I ended up decreasing as set in the pattern - 2 sts on each side - every other round for 3 cycles, then decreased as set every round for 3 rounds, then I k2tog all the way around for two rounds and threaded the yarn through the last few sts.

I like it and I'm eager to start the next one.  Mittens are fun!  I'm dreading the time when I can look in the closet and say to myself "Okay, I think I have enough mittens now."

I finished knitting a little apple and a pear.  I re-did the leaf about 5 times because the one in the pattern just didn't look right to me.  Now I'm starting to have doubts about embroidering little happy faces on them.  They look so cute the way they are!  Besides, I already embroidered the apple once and ripped it out because it looked so crappy.  I really don't think I am any good at embroidering faces onto knitting.  I always try to make nice round eyes and they aways end up long and oval somehow.  My faces never look as cute as the ones in the patterns.

To avoid thinking about those, I started a new pair of mittens.  I bought some beautiful, wacky-multi-colored merino a couple years ago on a whim and I think it's just enough for a pair of mittens.  I'm knitting them at 6.5 sts/inch on a sz. 5.  I've just done about half the cuff now, but I have some vague plans to include some cabling to the back of the hand.

I knitted the thumb and wove in all the ends yesterday, which took a surprisingly short amount of time.  (Surprising because I am usually slower.) 

For the thumb, I decreased every row, without a row of plain knitting in between, for two rows, once I got to the decrease point, just like I did for the top of the hand.  I was worried about not having enough yarn for the 2nd one, but I weighed the completed mitten and the remaining yarn on my postal scale and it seems like it will be fine. 

Today I want to:
 
Cast on the 2nd mitten
Knit 10 more rows of sweater border
mend clothes
sew the fly zipper on the corduroys I'm making for the man
sew a new liner for my towel hamper

I'd better get moving!

I made this mitten.



Which would be great if the mitten actually, you know, fitted my hand.



( photos of the other side )

It's so tight and the stitches are so distorted when I try to pull it on.  I probably should have ripped it out sooner but I was so in love with the way the cables were looking that I guess I ignored everything else! 

I used a cable pattern from Super Stitches Knitting which I re-wrote the WS rows for to make it work circularly.

I wanted to make it tighter than my last pair because they are now so loose they almost fall off my hands.  I also tried a new gauge swatch method for cicular knitting: wrapping the yarn around the back and knitting every row flat to approximate circular.  Well, it truns out my gauge was 3.5 sts/ in on the swatch and 4 sts/ in in real life. 

Also, when I knit on DPNs I get really bad laddering unless I pull the corners extra tight.  With only 8 sts on each needle, that tightened up the gauge overall a bit.  That plus the tightening effect of the cables = super tight crappy mitten.

I was angry for about 10 minutes about this, now I'm just disappointed,  I'll need to rip the entire thing out and re-do it.

(Rationalizing my failure, now in convenient list form):

Lost:
10 hours
feeling in fingertips
confidence in gauge swatches

Gained:
knowledge that new gauge swatch method sucks
knowledge of how to convert a cable pattern from flat to circular knitting (a big deal, I think!)
insight as to how my gauge changes when knitting circularly
another reminder to check gauge often while knitting

I think after I rip it out I'll leave it for a while and work on my sweater for a week or two instead.

I have achieved mittens!



After all these years, I've finally managed to make a pair of mittens! Yay, my first mittens!

It's very odd, somewhere in the process of my last few knitted articles, I've actually started to enjoy knitting. I never thought that would happen! I've always considered knitting to be a means to an end: I need a hat, so I had better knit one. But I've really been enjoying the process this time. So much that after I finished these, I started another pair of mittens for my honeybunny, in bright red wool.

AND, I've also decided I'm going to start a sweater. It's pretty scary to me, but I bought a pattern and yarn and when I am done with the HB's red mittens, I'm going to start swatching.

This is the pattern I'm using.  It's a bolero, so it won't take quite as long as a full sweater, and it's bulky weight, too.  I went to my new favorite fiber shop, 3 Kittens, and bought yarn yesterday.

I think I've decided that I am a 'real' knitter now.  Ha!

One mitten done!

It turned out okay, and it sort of fits. I made it a litlte bit too long, but I guess I just must have been spacing out when I did that part, because the pattern was specific to the measurements. Oh well. I'm going to have to make the other one the same length, though, otherwise it will really bug me.

I got over my double-points panic attack. evelyn123 gave me a much-needed reminder that I should knit however I feel like, not how someonet tells me to, if that doesn't feel right. (Thanks again - sometimes I just need a little hand-holding, and that helped.) So I was ready to dive in and start the 2nd one, which I did about 2" of ribbing on last night.

All together, I like my mitten well enough, and I love the pattern. (I know I said the mitten was a little long, but that was my own error, not a flaw in the pattern.)  Nancy Lindberg has a few more formula-type patterns besides this one; there are 2 sets of hats and a sock pattern. I've used the hat pattern twice and boths hats turned out great.

I really like the fact that since it is a formula, you can use any yarn/any gauge. I reccommend them to anyone who wants to knit a simple garment without having to make a million gauge swatches, or anyone who likes to buy yarn first and think about a pattern later (this is what I do).

 Weekend's progress:

Went to a fabulous little yarn shop with undycatthat I never knew existed called 3 Kittens.  They are the only place I've ever seen locally that carries wool and silk embroidery threads, and they had a huge selection!  They had lots of cool knitting yarns, too.  It's in Lilydale, which is just south of the river from St. Paul, off 35E.  It's my new favorite fiber shop!



Now I'm determined to finish the squares and bars pillow so I can start something new with all my new threads!  I pulled it out and took photos of it just for the heck of it:


This weekend I also finally finished my red silk corset.

I finally got around to taking pictures of my mitten!


And I also made a little orange basket for the kitchen.

I feel so productive!  Today I still need to catch up on some mending and some more loose ends, but I'm still eager to start on a real new project.  Hopefully soon!

So after finishing the two winter hats last month (and they both have buttons on them and are completely done now) I decided I needed some mittens.  And of course, I had to have bright pink ones.  At first, I thought, "I'll make some dark, plain, black/grey mittens, that's practical and they will match everything."  Thank goodness I realized how silly an idea that was! Winter here already gets so bleak, I need a break from the grey, I need mittens that will make me smile.

I tried to find some more of the pink yarn I made the hat out of, the Malabrigo merino, but no one had any at any of the knitting shops around here.  So I ordered some online from some random yarn place.  Of course, the color is different, which was kind of to be expected what with dye lots and all.  The pink is a shade cooler and there is more white in the varegated random design.  But it's really suble and I still think it will match my hat well enough.

I started on a mitten last night.  I'm working in the round on double-points.  I originally wanted to work some flat mittens but I'm using the Knit to Fit pattern which is in the round.  I love Knit to Fit; there isn't really a pattern, it's more like a formula, so you can make any size, with any yarn, with any gauge.  I have the sock, hat, and mitten pattern, but so far I have only used the hat.

I've got about an inch of ribbing done, but already it feels like it's going pretty fast.  I hope it works out, my last few tries at mittens have been total disasters.