Yellow Rose Mitts from Yarnivore - Done!

Exquisite mitts!

Often I shy away from "dainty" or frilly looking accessories, opting for bold drama.  And I can't say I wouldn't adore these just as much in a bright, bold hue. There's just something I love, however, about how these turned out.  They have a certain vintage elegance to them.  A classy mitt, wouldn't you say?

Sure, the size 0 needles took patience and commitment, but don't lots of worthwhile things?  They were excellent traveling partners, and I look forward to wearing them.

And, it must be said:  I have BOTH of them!  No "second sock syndrome" here--hooray magic loop!

And hooray to Yarnivore for a knitting adventure in a new place, color, and style for this grateful knitter.

Yellow Rose Mitts from Yarnivore - Day 5

Thumbthing to think about...

Thumbs are important.

They separate us from many other species.  They give one-gesture opinions, they text, they wrestle, they are essential PlayStation equipment, Facebook icons, and way back before Aunt Allie was old enough, an extended one could gain you a form of transportation.

So don’t just rest those digits on the spacebar, show them some respect.

Thumbs in fingerless mitts are rather a one-note samba, a place to show a little style without having to go through the complications of gloves.  I’ve done hand or wrist warmers where the thumbs just peek through a hole in the tube, but I prefer a nicely crafted thumb as in these and these.

Here, our thumbs get a delicately sensible garter trim to finish off the stockinette of the palm and gusset.  Just enough of a detail to compliment the rose motif without competing with it.

What’s extra nice is that they work right off the magic loop.  I was thinking I’d have to cast the thumb tube back on to double-points (not something I was looking forward to), but nope, I’m all set.

Now I just have to finish off the hand and its own  border, and I’m done.  The color continues to charm, and I’m finding all those teeny stitches worth the effort.

Yellow Rose Mitts from Yarnivore - Day 4

If at first you don't K3TOG...

Let me just say this:  it is INSANELY difficult to knit three together on size 0 needles.   Especially with a beautiful but splitty yarn like this one.  

The number of times I wrestled that skinny little needle through those three loops only to come up with a single ply—well, it should be illegal.  Several not-nice things came out of my mouth after the third or fourth try on any given row.

So, I did what any smart knitter does—I found a work-around.  

The essential purpose of K3TOG is to decrease by two stitches, making a “point” of sorts.  It’s designed to lean one way, as the far easier—in this case—S1-K2TOG-PSSO (slip one, knit two together, pass slipped stitch over) accomplishes the same decrease leaning the other way.  So, I needed to decrease by two in the correct direction, as it were.  And I needed something that could be accomplished without nasty words or broken needles. 

I came up with knitting two of the three together—usually possible with sufficient grunting—, returning the knit stitch to the right hand needle, and then passing the final stitch over that one before returning it to the right hand needle.  It wasn’t perfect, but it leaned the correct direction, decreased the correct amount of stitches, and didn’t result in an angry knitter.  

Did I make up a stitch?  I don’t know. I later discovered that the folks at Heartstrings Fiber Arts came up with the same idea, so I know I'm probably not the first person to face this predicament.  

What I did do was make my knitting experience a whole lot nicer.  And on a weekend filled up by a killer set of revisions on my current book due Tuesday, that made all the difference in the world.

Yellow Rose Mitts from Yarnivore - Day 3

Magic markers...

Magic loop can be confusing.  With socks, you’re just doing the same thing for both pieces—there isn’t a “left” or “right”—and when you get to a “front” or “back” being important, you’ve got the gusset and heel there right in front of you.

Things are a bit different here.  Without a clear front or back, I might misconstrue whether or not I’ve made it clear around a round because every side looks the same.  I have learned this lesson through painful, lopsided experience.  To save myself from myself, I use different color stitch markers for the front and for the back. Since the working yarn always must come from the back to begin at the right side of each mitt, it only takes a few seconds of scanning to know exactly where I am when I return to my work.

My mitts and I traveled to North Carolina this weekend to visit my daughter, and I was once again reminded of the pleasures of travel knitting.  Airports these days are all about the wait—from security lines to boarding to “the fasten your seatbelt sign is still illuminated” to yesterday's 27-minute taxi upon landing (otherwise known as the complete tour of every inch of tarmac in O’Hare).  Did I stress?  Well, maybe a little bit, but mostly I happily knit.  Glad for the guilt-free time where opening my laptop is not permitted, but knitting most certainly is allowed.

Hooray for adventures accompanied by yarn!

Yellow Rose Mitts from Yarnivore - Day 2

Double-Pointless?

The results of my experiment were clear and useful:  I’m not a fan of bamboo double-pointed needles (dpn's) for this project.  For tiny stitches like these, I prefer the slide of metal needles and the simplicity of magic loop.

I have a line in one of my books, Homefront Hero, where a war hero is learning to knit socks on dpn’s, and he says, “I feel like I’m wrangling a porcupine!”  That’s exactly how I felt working this.  It’s not that I don’t like double-points—I don't mind them in larger sizes.  These itty bitty ones, however, gave me fits.  I found it poignant—and amusing—that they came with the following warning on the package:

“These should be used with all due care as these may cause injury if used improperly by an untrained/unfamiliar person.”

Maybe not injury, and I’m certainly trained, but they caused frustration and annoyance in this particular knitter on this particular project.

And so, it is with great delight that I share the news that the next section—the Rosebud Wrists—settled itself perfectly on a two-at-a-time magic loop circ. Hooray!  I’ll fly through the four repeats in happiness.

Until the thumb gusset, which may (or may not) require the reintroduction of dpns.  Ah, the adventure of knitting…

Yellow Rose Mitts from Yarnivore - Day 1

I love it, and it will require devotion...

Knitting can be a humbling adventure—especially when you consider yourself “experienced.”  K2tog on size 0 needles, for example.  This is enough to set my 50+ eyes to squinting, twitching, and my middle-aged fingers to cramping.  Were I to shoot a video of my face while doing all the “pass stitch over”s required on the cast on, I’m sure the faces I made would be mighty entertaining.  

And we’re not discussing how I had to call Caryn at Yarnivore to figure out where I went wrong and start over.  It happens to the best of us, right?

While the color of this super wash merino from The Sheepwalk Fiber Arts Studio—called “Love & Devotion”—is delicious, it’s somewhat splitty.  That nature can be frustrating when working on such a small scale.  I know—without a doubt—that I’ll have to do both of these mitts at once because I’ll never be able to convince myself I have enough patience to do the second once I finish the first.

And so…an experiment of sorts.

I much prefer magic loop—most especially two-at-a-time magic loop—to one-at-a-time-on-double-points when knitting such pieces. However, sometimes lacy patterns don’t always lend themselves to the immovable divisions of magic loop.  Some patterns you can tell it will divide up nicely.  Others, you can’t.

What to do?  Do both!  Do one magic loop and one on DPNs—at the same time.  After the first round of the Rose pattern (the part I think will give me trouble), I should know whether or not I can slide both of these onto a single circular needle ala magic loop.  Sure, I may have to split them up again when I get to the thumb, but I’m okay with that.

Onward—for science and craft!