I don’t know if you guys have heard, but it was very, very cold here this weekend. Fortunately, I had the luxury of staying in and not accomplishing much, so I sat around with a few episodes of Lost Girl (so Canadian, trashy as only a show about sexy urban fantasy can be, so addictive) and made stuff.
1. I made this big orange thing, which I will blog about soon. It’s currently in my sink, getting a bath.
2. I worked on my Fiddlehead mittens. I actuallly finished most of the fairisle knitting for these mitts over the Christmas holidays, but I forgot to blog about any of it. They’re from a Tanis Fiber Arts kit I bought in the summer of 2009, in the Shadow/Deep Sea/Peacock/Seabreeze/Spearmit/Buttercup colourway. They got put aside for a while in my stash, and then for a while in my unfinished knitting pile.
This is in part because I am lazy, and in part because I occasionally need practical motivation to make stuff. (This may also fall under “I’m lazy,” it’s not totally clear.) But, the thing is, until recently, I already had a pair of mittens. My Bella’s Mittens from 2009 have lived in my coat pockets pretty much since then, and I loved them. They were purple. They kept my hands warm.
And then, on Friday, I lost them. I don’t know where or how. In fact, I spent most of the weekend thinking I’d just left them in my locker at work, but when I got there yesterday morning, I realized they really had disappeared.
Apparently, “my hands are cold” is the kind of motivation I need to finish a new pair of fancy mittens. Who knew.
They’re not totally done – the second mitten needs a bath and an inner mitten – but they’re more than halfway there.
Following advice from pretty much everyone on Ravelry, I knit the inner mitt quite a bit smaller than the pattern recommended. I ended up going down a needle size (from 3.75mm to 3.5mm) and decreasing to 45 stitches around. I also worked the hand and thumb decreases as the outer mittens. They fit into the outer mitts perfectly.
Hopefully soon, my hands won’t be so cold.
