The Bird in Hand Mittens are done!
Pattern: Bird in Hand mittens, by Kate Gilbert
Size: I knit the smallest size (8 inches), on US1 needles
Yarn: Berroco Ultra Alpaca, colours 6294 (teal) and 6205 (brown)
Modifications: Cuff modifications by Alice at Kathryn Ivy
As you can see, I tried my very best to block out the left mitten (on the right in the photo) to the size of the right mitten (on the left). It's still a wee bit smaller, but much better than before.
Here is the birdie on the right thumb:
And the left thumb:
Do you think they actually look like birds? I redid the embroidery over and over again, but it never looked quite right, especially the little birdie legs. I really need to get better with the sewing somehow.
I wore the mittens today, and they feel sort of big (I think the hands are ok, but my wrists are much smaller than the mittens are). As though they'd fall off if it weren't for the thumbs holding them on my hands. Maybe I just need to get used to them? I'll wear them for the rest of the week and see how I feel about them. The alpaca seems pretty warm, though. And fuzzy. =)
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.
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. =)
I haven't really been blogging, but I HAVE been knitting. Random things here and there. I knit a bit on my mom's Ab Fab throw (no photo, too lazy). I knit a single sock (photos when I finish both socks. Am I a horrible blogger or what?). I knit some mitred squares (STILL to be blogged, see delinquent blogger, above). I started some mittens.
These are the Bird in Hand mittens by Kate Gilbert (did you know that there is a town called Bird in Hand in Pennsylvania? Thanks Google!). I don't know what's gotten into me, I don't even WEAR mittens. And yet here I am knitting fiddly fair isle mittens in worsted weight yarn (Berroco Ultra Alpaca) on US1 dpns. I'm clearly going mad (but I learned how to knit a picot cuff! It's so adorable! Also, fiddly!).
I'm incorporating the modifications to the pattern made by Alice of Kathryn Ivy, because I like her version of the cuffs better than the original. Hopefully I will be able to finish the pair without falling prey to Second Mitten Syndrome. Or something like that. =)
Edited to add: Oh wait, I DO have a photo of the Ab Fab throw in its very very early stages. Here it is. Fun with pink mohair!
Guess what I did this afternoon (before meeting up for dinner)? I knit a hat! I had two skeins of Queensland Uruguay DK that I bought on super-sale at Webs, and I'd always wanted to try the fair isle part of the Cheesylove pattern (without actually knitting the whole sweater of course!), so I thought I'd use the opportunity to put the two together.
I've knit enough plain stockinette hats now that the recipe is pretty much automatic, so I knit a small gauge swatch, cast on 96 stitches, knit some K2P2 ribbing, switched to stockinette, knit the fair isle pattern (bordered by some stripes), and decreased for the crown.
After my experience with the Main Street Fair Isle, I figured that I should probably knit the colourwork fairly loosely as I expected the hat to have to stretch a decent amount (my head is 21-22 inches around, the hat was knit to be 18-19 inches around unstretched) and I didn't want to risk the fair isle part being too small. So I knit VERY LOOSELY. The floats were VERY LONG. Too long, in fact. Why is it so hard to get the tension just right? The inside of my hat now consists of a lot of loopy bits. And there are a lot of loose stitches on the outside. Not the most attractive.
Another thing was that I decided that the ribbing was too long after having completed the entire hat, so I had to cut the yarn and unravel all of the ribbing so I could do it over again (from top down). Not a horrid thing, but a bit inconvenient.
Will I wear this hat? Who knows? It will probably be relatively warm due to the brim and the fair isle floats, but I may not be brave enough to wear this in public with all of its imperfections. Maybe a good blocking would fix it some?
Sophie doesn't really have an opinion, she pretty much hates hats in general.
I can be a bit paranoid sometimes when it comes to Christmas knitting. I generally start thinking about it in the late summer or early fall, and planning/collecting yarn/searching for patterns often consumes a great deal of my mental energy (only because it's so fun!). I am always scared that I won't have enough time to finish everything, and as a result I'm usually finished well ahead of time.
When it came to the Main Street Fair Isle, however, I was afraid that perhaps this project would sit on the back burner for a while, well beyond the Christmas season. I just wasn't all that motivated to work on it. First I had all those gauge issues with the first sleeve, and then I had to start the body 3 times (with more gauge problems), and I was getting tired of looking at all that maroon.
I decided to pick the project up again after finishing my sister's socks, and to try knitting the second sleeve starting with more stitches. This solution was deemed far more acceptable, and before I knew it I had 2 finished sleeves! Then I figured that I should finish the main part of the body and at least attach the sleeves, and soon I had reached the fair isle part. Who knew that a couple nights of tv would suffice to get all that accomplished?!? Clearly I have been doing way too much knitting on teeny tiny needles, or with fiddly annoying mohair (read: Kidsilk Haze).
So, fair isle! I'd never done it before, but how hard could it be, really? Then I realized that parts of the pattern called for 3 colours to a round. Ah, crap.
Green, blue, and purple on one round (at the left), and then maroon, blue, and green on the next round (at the right). That calls for a lot of floats in the back!
Also, I put in a lifeline in case I screwed things up beyond repair. This part of the fair isle turned out fairly well, but there are parts where I think I could have been a little looser with the floats (I tried my best). There is a bit of puckering here and there, but on the body the sweater lies more or less flat so it's not too bad. I think a good blocking should also even things out a bit.
The fair isle got much easier as I went along, mostly because the later rows only called for 2 colours per round (another lifeline couldn't hurt, though).
A photo of the colourwork along with the raglan decreases.
The sweater should be pretty much done soon, way before Christmas! I'm going to make my mom do the bind-off at the neck, because she's probably better/more experienced at doing a sewn k1,p1 bind-off than I am. So she'll get to participate in the making of her own Christmas gift, beyond providing commentary on the gauge/sizing. Oh, and she paid for the yarn, too. =P
