Thursday, February 07, 2008

Two hands, no birds yet

I'm not sure that I'm a huge fan of Fair Isle knitting. I've done quite a bit of it lately (my mom's Christmas sweater, the too-large Cheesylove hat, now these Bird in Hand mittens), and I must admit that I'm getting a little tired of it. It's not hard with two colours, but all the stopping to pick up strands (I suppose I could learn to do it with one colour in each hand but that would require work and practice) and all the staring at the pattern and counting stitches is starting to drive me a bit mad.

I've finished both hands and am now starting to work on the thumbs. This should be the climax, where I finally get to make the little birdies, but I just want them to be finished already! It is also even harder to knit fair isle in the round on 22 stitches.

Bird in Hand progress_02

Notice that the right hand (on the right) is noticeably longer than the left hand. I knit the latter first, and got worried that I was knitting too tightly, so loosened up a bit for the second hand. I like the looser tension better, but now I have uneven mittens. Do you think that my right hand could be bigger than my left? I mean, the fingers on the right hand are slightly thicker....maybe I can block them out to be the same size, but I sort of doubt it will work.

On another note, here are my two favourite vices sitting next to me. Chocolate (peanut M&Ms, which I have been craving all day long) and yarn (Patternworks catalog). I've decided to abstain from the yarn shopping this year, which means I can't order any of the Koigu that they've got on sale (but you can! Koigu for $11.99 a skein!). But I'm still free to get fat eating chocolate. Hmm, maybe I picked the wrong thing to give up. =)

Lent, Day 2

4 comments:

Karen said...

Whee!! They look fab!! I love the colour combination!

Doing too much of one thing has a tendency to make one sick of it. I didn't really love Fair Isle when I did it for the Manly Mitts, and I did the one colour in each hand thing. Might be best to make your next project something non-Fair Isle to give yourself a break.

As for the size difference, I noticed that my hands are more or less the same length. I know my feet aren't the same size, so I thought it might apply to hands too, but it doesn't seem as pronounced. I think that once you wear the mitts, you won't notice the difference as much.

You sort your M&M's by colour? Wow. That's dedication. Is it the green ones that there was that urban legend about, about the colouring? Man...I'm craving chocolate now too :D

Knitted Gems said...

I love your mittens! They are very beautiful. And nobody will notice that one is longer than the other when they are on your hands.
Peanut M&Ms are my favorite too.

Adrienne said...

Thanks for the nice comments! The mittens don't feel too different on the hands, but if I find that it bugs me too much I guess I could just give them to my sister or something, who's not nearly as anal about these sorts of things!

As for the M&Ms, they were a bag of ALL green ones. In honour of Valentine's day (the bag had a seductive-looking green M&M with long eyelashes on it). So yes, the green ones are the supposedly aphrodisiacal ones. But I just like the colour the best. =)

Adrienne said...

But when I DO have multi-coloured M&Ms, I absolutely sort them by colour. I've seen other people do this too, sometimes when we have M&Ms at lab meeting I see other people lining up them up by colour too. I have to eat them evenly so that I always have the same number of each colour left. Except for the brown ones, I eat those first because they are not as attractive. =P