fo: thrummed mittens

It is so, so satisfying to have these mittens done. They were a positive project experience from start to finish, which was such a delight. I’m so glad to have made them, too – playing with roving to make the thrums was a really satisfying, educational experience (that does not make me want to learn to spin, I swear), and I managed to split the colour changes just right to have two mittens that matched, exactly the way I was hoping they would.

They’re also going to be almost inhumanly warm, which you perhaps can’t tell from the photo above, but you can definitely tell in this picture.

Pattern: the Fleece Artist “thrum mitten” pattern from my LYS, sort of.
Yarn: Fleece Artist Merino Sliver roving, 50g, and one skein of Cascade 220 in black
Needles: 4mm dpns

Modifications: I did a lot of googling before I started this project, and came to a few decisions about things I wanted in my mittens that weren’t in the pattern I had. I wanted a bit of a ribbed cuff – so I knit that, instead of the cuff in the pattern. And then I wanted to have staggered rows of thrums, so I went ahead and did that, too. By the time I got to the top of the mitten and the thumb, I’d sort of given up on reading the pattern, so I went ahead and made them up – but I feel like they’re pretty close to what was written, so whatever.

I also added an idiot string – partly on the advice of Julie, who pointed out that these mittens are not going to fit in my pockets, which, if you’re me, means that there’s a good chance I’ll lose one. I also added it in part because I’ve always wanted to make myself mittens on a string. Just because.

I knit the string by picking up 3 stitches from the cuff, on the side opposite the thumb. I then worked roughly 342098 meters of i-cord, and when I felt that it was about as long as my armspan (plus a bit extra) I picked up three stitches from the cuff of the other mitten, in the same place, and grafted it to the i-cord.

It was wonderful. I wish that I could make these mittens not-black for just a minute, so that I could do a better job of showing you how well it worked out.

my heart is melting ’cause you’re hot like the summer heat

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)

we wouldn’t have to eat kraft dinner (but we would)

Belatedly, I suppose I should wish everyone a happy Real* Thanksgiving. I spent mine with my family, in Calgary, which was lovely – except for the fact that it was an absolutely ridiculous and completely unseasonable -13C outside. (That’s 9 degrees F.) I saw this coming, having checked the forecast before I left, so I made sure to pack my coat and a hat and a scarf and my mittens.

The mittens, of course, being the lovely purple ones that I made last month. I put them on in -13, and promptly realized that they were defective. Or, at least, completely inadequate for actual winter conditions, such as cold. (Now that I’m back in Ontario, I’m discovering that they are, in fact, wonderful for autumn.) However, I realize that I’m going to need real mittens for winter. Serious mittens, the kind that will keep my hands warm in the face of pretty much anything. The burly, stoic lumberjacks of the handknit mitten world.

Don’t worry. I’m on the case.

*that is, Canadian.

Song of the Entry: . . .duh. (Listen)