Category Archives: mittens

Gifted knits 2016 Part 1

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Fingerless mitts were on the needles of knitted gifts for my granddaughters this year.

The twins wanted mitts just like the ones I knit for their mother. I used some stash yarn I purchased years ago for sweaters for them (that didn’t get made).  The difference is the edging color so they can tell them apart.  Easy care acrylic yarn that is machine washable and dryable.

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Shirl’s Mitts.  Using worsted weight yarn and dropped down to size US 5 needle so they would be smaller.

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I understand that as soon as these were unwrapped on Christmas morning, the girls put them on and wore them all day!

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My other granddaughter wanted fingerless mitts as well.  I decided to use a more complicated pattern since I only had to make one pair.

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Point Reyes Mitts from Classic Elite. The pattern called for a wool/bamboo yarn but once again, I shopped from my stash.  The color was the important part along with easy care so I used Cleckheaton Country 8 ply yarn, 100% washable wool.  I also went down one size needle to US 3 to make them smaller.

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Fun pattern that is both written and charted.

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They fit her perfectly.

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The “other” mitts

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The Shaadi Mitts got the better of me so I decided to knit another pair of Shirl’s Mitts for my daughter.

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I started them while waiting for our plane to take off on our way to visit her and finished them a few days later. It’s hard to knit with three grandkids all wanting one’s attention.

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Cleckheaton Country 8 ply yarn in color 2250. They call it light green but I’d call it pistachio. I believe this color has been discontinued.

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Cheers to you!

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I renamed the Drinkers Mitts: Cheers to You! Mitts

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I really enjoyed knitting these.  The only issue was finding the right (or close enough) colors in my stash.  Most of the yarn is Knit Picks Stroll fingering weight yarn.  The beer mugs at the top are knit from an acrylic yarn that just didn’t seem to get along with the wool blend after blocking the mitts and want to recede into the background.  My ribbing isn’t as nice as I wish.

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My friend liked them.  A lot.  I wish I would have gotten a picture of her modeling them.  But alas I didn’t.

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Apart from the background color change, the Cosmopolitan drink (?) is now a Margarita as the pink I had didn’t go with the red.  If I make these again, I would add a row or two of plain knitting between the beer mugs and the ribbing.  Maybe it was using two different yarns (acrylic and wool) that caused the less than perfect transition.

And another one bites the dust

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The Shaadi Mitts I began last January then restarted them because they were too large (even with the right gauge) are no more.

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The pattern notes indicated that these mitts are challenging and I thought I was up to the task.  Well, sometime last spring I lost my knitting mojo and allowed them to languish in my knitting basket for months and months.

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And when I picked them up again, I forgot about how to hold the dominant yarn vs background yarn.

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The dominant yarn color goes under the background yarn color where as the receding (background) yarn color goes over.  It doesn’t seem like it would be that important but it is.  Very.

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The longer strand of yarn is the one under the shorter upper yarn which makes the longer yarn stand out more.  The shorter upper yarn pushes the longer strand out.

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You can see here that the purl stitches recede in the lower section but are more prominent in the upper section where I reversed the dominant and receding yarns.  For a better explanation visit these sites: Knitting Daily, Paper Tiger, and Ysolda Teague.

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On the front side the circles and spirals appeared smaller in the last sections.  This was all due to yarn dominance.

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(Oops!  I misspelled spiral.)

Then I screwed up the Bavarian twisted stitch.

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The mitts were still huge and I just wasn’t having any fun knitting them anymore.  What do you do about a unfun project?  Let it hibernate, rip it out, continue with the drudgery or throw it away?

Good-bye Shaadi Mitts.  Maybe another time.

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