mittens in july

So, there’s a story to this mitten. Well, two stories. The first is why I made a pair of mittens in the middle of summer – in payment to a good friend of mine for babysitting my ridiculous, pretty-not-smart cat for a month. The second is the process of figuring these mittens out.

I started a couple months ago with two balls of St-Denis Nordique, knowing that I wanted to make fairisle mittens with squirrels on them. My first stop was the Squirrel Sampler Mitten pattern. I liked it, but it called for fingering weight yarn and 2.5mm needles, and I was sure that if I knit them with the St-Denis yarn my mittens would end up gigantic. So I did a few Ravelry searches, and stumbled upon the Squirrel and Oak Mittens. These seemed perfect! DK-weight yarn! A squirrel!

And then I knit the first mitten – yes, the entire mitten – and realized that they were way, way, way, way too small at my gauge in fairisle. I have very small hands for an adult, and kids-size gloves often fit me, but I could not even work my hand into this mitten.

But, having my gauge in fairisle with this yarn and needle combination, I went back to the Squirrel Sampler pattern. It still looked like it’d be far too large if I knit it as written. But that’s about when I remembered that, on the St-Denis blog, there are printable blank mitten charts, made for her yarn, in various sizes.

I worked out that, at my gauge (slightly larger than the blank chart gauge) I’d have medium-sized mittens for my friend F if I knit the size small chart – 62 stitches.

So then I, uh. Bought the Squirrel Sampler pattern, which is 72 stitches around, and recharted it to 62 stitches. In hindsight, I’m sure there were simpler solutions to this problem, but whatever. This worked out, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. Also, F likes her mittens and they fit, which is really the most important part.

So, yeah. My first fairisle experience was definitely a learning curve, but I’m glad I mastered this knitting skill. My Ravelry queue is suddenly much more attainable.

what i did with my summer vacation

So this summer, one of my goals was to make sure I traveled at least a little. This is year is the last one where I’ll have a “summer vacation” before I start studying in earnest and need to be a responsible grownup, and – since it’s been a goal of mine, for a few years now – I thought this year would be a good one to go to Comic Con with a few friends.

It. Was. Awesome.

I saw a lot of people dressed as superheroes, and met up with rad knitters for a bit, and saw a lot of really, really excellent panels that I can’t believe I was allowed to go to. One of the really interesting things about going was seeing the odd sort of subculture that develops within the convention itself – basic social rules suddenly change the second you get that badge and actually step into the convention hall. For instance, despite the fact that I’m sure most of the people at the convention are not three hour line sorts of people, once you’re there, it becomes totally reasonable to wait in line for something (like getting to see a panel with the cast of Fringe, be still my heart) for two or three hours. This may have happened to me more than once over my four day trip.

This is my Bellevue. When I left, I’d finished the body and most of one sleeve. Thanks to all of those long lines, it very nearly became The Sweater I Finished At Comic Con. As it is, I’m moving merrily along on the yoke (which goes quickly), and getting very excited about having this in my wardrobe.

“I collected the silk from my silkworm friends and spun it into thread on my spinning wheel.”

Oh man, the wheel. The wheel. I’ve been playing with it so much over the past week, and having so much fun spinning on it. It’s like a spindle, but better! Everything goes so quickly! I don’t drop it!

Laura came by and showed me how to use it last week, and since then I’ve been slowly working through a stack of Fleece Artist slivers as practice. I’m doing something a bit different with each one, and it’s kind of neat to be able to see myself getting better as I keep spinning.

This is my very first wheel-spun yarn, made from Fleece Artist merino.

It’s wildly, wildly overspun (I took pictures of the “nice” side on purpose, the other half of the skein is full of bits twisted over on itself), but look how nice it looks! It’s so much more even than my last handspun!

I also spun this yarn, out of Fleece Artist BFL.

I love it. It’s definitely the best I’ve spun to date, and I sort of wish I had more so I could really make something out of it. It was my first attempt at chain plying on a wheel, and then whole time I was doing it I was positive it was a disaster and I was wrecking my lovely singles, but it turned out so nicely. This is a bigger yarn, about 7 wpi, and I’ve only got 50m or so. I’m really hoping I can figure out something to make with it, though, because I’m so very proud of myself.