How I spent the first day of the year

I finished these, finally!


I did the complete second mitten today, from cast-on to bind off. I hadn't intended on that, as I already had about 4" of the ribbing done, but I got so frustrated with the dpns and this yarn that I frogged it all and started again on magic loop. I knit most of the day -- it took a lot longer than I remember mitten #1 taking. I finished at 11:15.

They are OK -- the stripes almost match up (I think they are off by 2 rows). The second mitten has some problems, especially where I needed to pick up the stitches at the base of the thumb. It's a good thing that it's for a 7 year old -- one who will probably lose at least one of the mittens before the winter is over. I didn't sweat the details, just wanted them done.

The Bean was very excited when she came downstairs this morning and found the completed pair of mittens at her breakfast spot. Too bad that it's 45 degrees today.

The details:

• Pattern: An amalgam of two -- a basic mitten pattern was given to me by the LYS when I purchased yarn. However, it was knit back and forth, and I wanted to do a full project with dpns (ha!), so I converted it to in the round (with the help of my knitting instructor). When it came time for the decreases, I used another pattern that I found on the web to figure out how and when to decrease.
• Yarn: Martifil Stripe 7934, less than 1 skein ($16.00 per ball). It's really nice yarn, if a little splitty. There are few places where there was some dark blue "flashing" in spots (you can see it on the right mitten in the photo). Not my fault, though The Bean noticed right away, saying "you made a couple of mistakes." I made more than a couple mistakes, but this was not one of them.
• Needles: size 5 & 7, dpn (mitten #1) and magic loop(mitten #2)
• Time: Hard to judge. Mitten #1 took a couple of days, and mitten #2 took most of one day.
• New techniques learned: picking up stitches for the thumb (not so successful on my own -- mitten #1 was done under the guidance of my knitting instructor; I fudged mitten #2 and it is pretty messy.