The Mitten That Wasn’t
Have you ever started a project, only to have it become something completely different? My plan was to make mittens, but the wool had another opinion all together!
That mitten must have been knit and re-knit about 3 times while I played with colours–stripes, squares and different fiddly patterns. It turns out that fiddly patterns lose their charm when knitted in bulky weight yarn. Bulky yarn also leaves you with fewer stitches to play with. The wool decided that it wanted to have a bold, but interesting pattern like this! This pattern had been calling out to me for a while from my Ravelry queue, but I hadn’t ever tried it.
Image from Ravelry.com mittens not knit in bulky yarn!
With ideas swirling in my brain, I cast on (for the 4th time). Things were going great! The pattern was working! The wool was speaking to me….but I wasn’t really listening yet. I wasn’t listening when it screamed out “STOP!!! You need to decrease for the fingers now” I was too busy watching kids play basketball….
Luckily the game ended when it did.
I tried on my “mitten” and marveled at the lovely tumbling blocks, but noticed that it was already so much longer than my hand. It’s like when you are a little kid, and you try on a grown up sweater, and the sleeves hang down to your knees so you can’t use your hands well. Not the best quality for a mitten.
I marked carefully where I was going to start my decreases, and I ripped back. (but I still wasn’t listening!)
Decreasing and maintaining the pattern is a trick and a half, but I did it. I was so proud of myself. I finished the mitten, kitchener stitch and all…and tried it on.
Have you ever had one of those days? I tried on this mitten and it was about an inch too short. In my great haste to fix my previous error, I had ripped back way too far.
After a deep breath and lots of counting to ten, I undid the grafted fingertips, and ripped the mitten back again.
This time I was listening when it called out “I don’t want to be a mitten….I want to be an arm warmer!”
Hmmm…..arm warmers…..Why didn’t I think of that?!
Yarn: Cadena an alpaca/wool blend from Knit Picks. It feels so lovely, it is easy to knit (and also to rip out!)…thankfully progress is made really fast because it is a bulky weight.
