my heart is melting ’cause you’re hot like the summer heat
Posted: October 20th, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: cascade 220, mittens, projects: thrummed mittens, things i knit, yarn i use | Tags: crafty, diy, fleece artist, handmade, knit, knitting, mittens, thrummed mittens, thrums | 3 Comments »
OMG THRUMMED MITTENS.
One of the things I really enjoyed about this project was getting to play with fiber. I am almost ashamed to admit this, but I have never actually touched unspun fiber before. Like, ever. I feel that, as someone who has knit for the last five years, this is something I should have got around to doing at some point, but – apparently not.
Anyway. I’ve been playing with some lovely blue and green Fleece Artist. . .something? Roving? that I bought from my local yarn shop after knit night. I sat down with it at home, took a look at it, took a look at the pattern, and was suddenly very, very glad for Google. Google meant I could find this post, and this one, and figure out how, exactly, to turn my nice braid of fiber into something that could go into my mittens.
I also had this idea in my head, once I figured out that I could make thrums by working with three or four inch sections of fiber, regarding the colour changes I’d like to see: I wanted to work out a way to take the gradual blue-to-green colour changes I saw in the fiber, and translate them into the finished mitts. What I ended up doing was dividing the fiber in half (one half for each mitten) and then sitting down with a lot of episodes of Bones, making all of the thrums for one mitten ahead of time, and separating them by colour. When I say it out loud like that, it sounds really crazy, but it seemed like the best way to go about things and it was actually very satisfying. Playing with fiber is really really fun. I am very concerned that I am going to want to take up spinning.
(Playing with fiber, as an aside, was also kind of instructive. I now feel like I understand the way fibers go together and why merino is so versatile and why spinning, like, works, in a way that I did not when people said “spinning works and wool is pretty great.”)
Anyway. The mittens are going pretty quickly, now.
Song of the Entry: Stereos – Summer Girl (Acoustic) (Listen)
Your thrummed mitt looks awesome!! If I may be so bold as to offer some advice- idiot strings. I can’t tell you the heartache I experienced after wearing my thrummed mitts out and losing one on the very first night they were out in the world. I was crushed. Because thrummed mitts are a world of awesome!!
Oh my god, yes Julie, I just might. I would be completely devastated if I lost one of these, and they’re definitely too big to squish into my pockets.
Oh, you are going to want to take up spinning. ;-) It is addictive as ALL get-out, and playing with/learning about fiber is one of the best parts. That, and making *your own* yarn!