Thursday, October 18, 2007

First Mittens

I recently knit my first pair of mittens. Mittens are so quick to knit and so easy, I knit three! Actually, I didn't knit three because it was so fun. I knit three because I messed up the increases on the first one and it was so much uglier than the second one that I felt obligated to make a replacement.

talkingmittens.jpg

There is a trick to making pretty increases that I had forgotten. When you increase, to avoid having big, gaping holes where you did your increases, you have to knit through the back of the loop, to twist the hole closed. You don't see holes in my ugly mitten because I went in and darned them closed. But it still looks lumpy and ugly.

increases.jpg

I knit these with double strands of yarn. One yellow and one cream-colored. The pattern of which color shows is completely random. I did the thumbs a different color under Vigo's design guidance. You might also notice that one of the mittens has a longer cuff than the others. That's because I was daydreaming.

To make these mittens, I used the recipe from Knitty. I love their basic recipes.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Socks for Vigo

Vigo socks

I have been knitting a fair amount lately. I have a couple sweaters I'm working on. One of them is stalled because I can't for the life of me understand the pattern and the other because I had to roll a skein of yarn into a ball before continuing and it completely threw me off track.

But, with the sweaters stalled, I knit those two hats and a pair of socks for Vigo, and I also just finished my first pair of mittens, also for Vigo. (Picture coming soon).

Vigo chose this yarn for socks about two years ago, so it's about time I got around to knitting them. It's some of that miraculous self-patterning yarn. I don't know if you can tell in the photo, but it has strands of metallic silver running through it.