friday mittens

These have been done for weeks, but the weather here has made them impossible to photograph. Last night we finally got snow, which is a lot friendlier to mittens than laying them in puddles of rain.

First, the Aran Islands mittens from Folk Mittens. Would you believe me if I told you they're made out of even more wool frogged from Crichton? Or that the snow was really that white? (It wasn't - I had to brighten up this whole picture for you to somewhat see the cables.) This was my first time doing cables, and the pattern was easy. They do take forever, though. I've been wanting to knit Demi from Rowan's Vintage Knits since last Christmas, and this was a good opportunity to learn that it's going to take quite a bit longer than I had first imagined.

The famous pirate mittens from Hello Yarn were next. If I had been thinking straight, I could have knitted two pairs of mittens in the time it took me to knit just this one pair. I can't really see myself knitting them again in the future, either. The skull chart was clear and handy, but I had to change a number of other things. I knitted the cuffs on US size 3s in order to make them a little more snug, and the rest of the mittens on US size 5s. I picked up way more stitches to close the gaps around the thumbs, and even then wasn't entirely satisfied with them. I also changed the mitten top decreasing to every other row, in order to make them a little bit longer. I just knit with the white for the stitches that weren't on the chart - I don't think it came out too badly. This was my first time working with Plymouth Encore, and I actually thought it was pretty nice. It's elastic enough that the stranding wasn't too much trouble.

I've also been working on a seed stitch scarf (38" done so far) and a sweater using one of Elizabeth Zimmermann's recipes. They're a bit too unwieldy to drag out into the snow, especially with the needles still in them, so I'll have to wait until we dry out a bit to take pictures. Oh, and I finished a sock from Knitting Vintage Socks, but because I'm being good I won't quite considered that a finished project yet.