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.

seasonally inappropriate!

I’ve been a little preoccupied, lately, in my knitting. I’ve got a couple of July birthdays coming up, and so a lot of my time has been spent on gift knitting that I can’t really share. This is awesome for me, because I love giving handknits to people who appreciate them, but kind of lame for the blog.

In the meantime, this is what I’ve been working on that I can share.

This past month, I’ve been living in a smaller city about an hour away from home, doing an internship-ish thing for school. In planning for this, I quickly realized that my cat – I’m sure you all remember, she’s the fuzzy one – wasn’t going to be able to come with me.

Fortunately, my good friend F now lives in the same city as I do. She loves cats, and she said she wouldn’t mind letting mine stay with her and her boyfriend for a little while. In exchange for doing me that amazing, awesome favour, she asked for mittens.

I asked her what kind of mittens, and she said that she wanted whatever kind I wanted to make. Then I asked her what colours she liked, and she told me that she liked. . .well, she gave me a list, but it was pretty well all possible colours. Finally – after a few hours of Ravelry browsing and some ambitious mitten plans swirling in my head, I asked her if she preferred birds, or squirrels.

She was very clear on that: she preferred squirrels.

fo: my andrea’s mitts

Progress on my new sweater is continuing – at a very satisfying pace, thanks to my break from school this week. (I feel like I am too old to call it “spring break,” but that’s totally what it is. Bring on the Arrested Development jokes)

I wanted to blog these mitts, though. I’ve been wearing them a lot this week, and I wanted to make sure I got some pictures up before they got too worn and fuzzy-looking.

These are the Andrea’s Mitts () I started in February. They languished on my craft table for an embarrassing while with only one thumb left to do, but once the weather started warming up, I wanted them finished so I could wear them. And man, am I wearing these a lot.

The main colour is 100% alpaca, and the contrasting stripes are alpaca-silk, which means that they are totally fuzzy and soft and warm, but also have a bit of a tendency to stretch out. That actually works perfectly with this pattern, which I wish I could say I planned on. The lace around the cuff turns out tight – much more than I expected, even though the pattern says that the cuff is pretty tight – which keeps them snug on my upper arms much better than ribbing ever would.

Plus, I feel like a pretty pretty princess when I wear them around.