Tag Archives: mittens

January Mittens

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Last spring I started walking around our neighborhood with a few other friends/women. One dropped out due to health issues, one spends her winters in Florida, and one is still walking with me…weather permitting. We don’t walk when it’s raining, snowing, or sleeting. And we haven’t walked together since mid-December. I walked by myself during the second half of the month as my walking buddy was not able to due to prior commitments, doctor appointments, and family concerns.

WB (walking buddy) doesn’t have near the natural insulation (aka fat) that I do so she’s chilled rather easily.

I started knitting these January Mittens by Hanna Leväniemi last month which will keep WB’s hands warmer than gloves.

I am almost finished with the thumb and top shaping left to do on mitten #2

Though the pattern is designed for a child, my Fairisle knitting is looser so it should fit her hands fairly well. It fits my hand!

I’m using worsted weight yarns: Lion Brand Wool-Ease in Oxford and Caron Simply Soft in Ivory. It’s slow going as the US #2.5 (3mm) circular needles are too small for a worsted weight yarn and the stitches are crowded, however, the fabric is extremely dense which should keep one’s hands extremely warm.

An FO will be happening the next day or so!

Patti

Gifted Knit 2016 Part 2

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Still catching up on 2016 knits…

The other gifted knit was a pair of felted mittens for one of my grandson using a generic mitten pattern that I tweaked, made larger and then felted.

The wrist ribbing was knit with Lions Brand Wool-eze in a dark green that won’t felt and the hand part of the mitten was Cascade 220 in Primavera that did felt.

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Before felting, I drew around on of the mittens so I could see the difference.

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I felted the mittens by hand so they aren’t as “solid” and machine felted ones but I think they will do the job of keeping his hands relatively dry and warm.

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I filled two bowls with water, one cold and the other one HOT.

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The mittens soaked in the cold water for several minutes.

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Then dipped and swished in the hot water.

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Cold water…

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“scrubbing” the mittens to felt the yarn…

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…then back into the hot water.

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Add hot water periodically to keep the temperature contrast.  I had to wear rubber gloves to protect my hands from the heat.

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and repeat again, and again, and again until the item is felted to your liking.

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They didn’t felt as small as I thought but then again, I did this by hand.  Machine felting would have definitely been better but this was a small project and I wanted to have more control over the process.

The process took about 20 minutes of switching between the two bowls and rubbing the mittens together to get them to felt.

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They are a bit big but he can grow into them.

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If any one is interested in the pattern (I made up as I went along), just leave a comment below.

 

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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Casting off another way

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Casting off or binding off essentially means to take the knitted stitches off the needles resulting with a finished edge.

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Depending on what I’m knitting determines the bind off I use.  Sometimes this results in a TIGHT clean edge that does not stretch enough to go over heels, heads, or any other body part.

There are many other ways to bind off and I’m not going to go into those techniques but I will show you what was recommended on the Drinker’s Mitts.

Elizabeth Zimmermann’s sewn bind off:  Cut off a length of yarn about 3 times as long as the knitting and thread it onto a yarn needle. ( Seriously, the yarn should be at least three times as long as the knitting edge you want to bind off.  Don’t skimp on this!)

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*Insert the needle into the first 2 stitches on the knitting needle as if to purl and draw the yarn through.

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Reinsert the needle into the first stitch on the knitting needle as if to knit, draw the yarn through and slip the stitch off.*

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Repeat from * to *.

This leaves a cast on row that looks very similar to a long tail cast on.  It is stretchy and looks even.

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I still need to block these mitts and as soon as I have the other one finished, I will block them…and hope the wonky stitches relax and even out.

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