Flint Knits

Happy Spring, all! In spite of the warming weather, I’ve got mittens on the brain, so I’m dipping into the backlog of finished knits to show and tell about.

I knit these mittens for my sister Lisa. I gave her the first one in December 07, and didn’t get the second one to her until December 08. Luckily, she’s really forgiving.

pattern: Bird in Hand mittens, by Kate Gilbert
yarn: Plymouth Galway
needles: US2 DPNs
[raveled]

These mittens have the darling-est details: the wee birds, the blossoms, the braided bits on the cuff. Plus, they’re great fun to knit.

If, like me, the Spring-ish weather hasn’t dulled your passion for mitten-knitting, this is a good day for you. Julia Vesper is releasing her kick-ass Chevron Love mitten kits. In the sea of amazing mittens that was the Great Mitten Swap of Aught Eight (the same swap that spawned my Elinor’s Mittens pattern, Elinor’s Vespergyle pattern, and Minty’s Marion mittens), Julia’s were the ones I couldn’t stop petting. Do yourself a favor and pick up a kit!

Thanks to heaps of help from Minty, and tireless test-knitting and thoughtful feedback from Alice, Brenda, Elizabeth, Elizabeth, Elspeth, Laura, Leigh, Mai, Mitt, Preita, and Whitney, the pattern for Elinor’s Mittens is available! $5 US gets you a download of the PDF file.

[ravelry link]
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These super-warm mittens feature a fat two-color cable, a tweedy palm, and a striped thumb with a swirled decrease at the tip.

I’d recommend this project for intermediate or advanced knitters–you don’t have to have experience with multicolor cables, but you should be comfortable with both cables and colorwork. The 6-page pattern includes charts for the cable, palm, and decreases.

Size is determined by what size needles you use (see specs below). Even at the looser gauges, though, the colorwork and cables mean these will be warm and wooly. And they knit up surprisingly fast in worsted-weight yarn. I recommend using a darker main color, and a lighter or brighter yarn for the contrast color.

FINISHED MEASUREMENTS: hand circumference = 6 (6.5, 7, 7.5, 8, 8.75) inches, unstretched.

GAUGE: 32 (30, 28, 26, 24, 22) stitches per 4” (10cm) in palm pattern, after blocking.

NEEDLES:

• US size 2 (3, 4, 5, 6, 7) needles of your choice for small-circumference circular knitting, or size needed to get gauge for your size
• US size 2 (2, 2, 3, 4, 5) needles, for cuff (or needles 1-2 sizes smaller than for hand)

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As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions or comments on the pattern.
And thanks for your support!
xo, Pam

UPDATE: Thanks so much to all the folks who offered to test-knit. I’ve got plenty of volunteers now. Seriously–thanks!

The middle west US is covered in snow, which means those of us who are responsible for cars or porches or sidewalks or pets spend a lot of time moving the stuff around. Which is cold. Which means … mittens.

I recently did a mitten swap with some friends, and came out of it with a gorgeous pair of Chevaliers from Ms. Fricknits.

Thanks, J!

I knitted for Elinor, and I decided to design my own pattern.

They feature a fat two-color cable running up the back, extra-long cuff, and a stripey thumb with swirling decreases (thanks to some clever tweaking from Minty). And, because they’ve got colorwork and cables in worsted-weight wooly-wool, they are WARM.

I’m planning to make them my very first pattern-for-sale. Want to test-knit a pair? Let me know! You should be an advanced knitter comfortable with colorwork and with cables, and you should have a couple skeins of Cascade 220 or other 100% wool worsted-weight yarn to devote to the cause.

ETA: Also, could you please include a link to your Ravelry projects or a blog or Flickr set or something? I suddenly have this fear that “advanced” and “comfortable” are relative terms. Thanks!

Thanks to everyone who’s moved their subscriptions over to the new site! I’m still figuring out how best to organize and use the space, but it’s all terribly exciting.

And, of course, big thanks to everyone who participated in the Monkey contest. My friend has been given the list of potential Monkey names. (I suspect that, when he agreed to this, he didn’t realize that there would be 198 entries to read. So, uh, it’s unclear when he will get around to choosing one. Will keep you all posted and notify the winner as soon as possible.)

And, as part of her ongoing search for The Perfect Yellow, Megan has started a Flickr group for yellow handknits. (One consequence of this group is that I’m pretty sure all the knitters on Flickr will soon own some Colinette Jitterbug yarn in Vincent’s Apron.)

This is all leading up, of course, to a show-and-tell of my own recent yellow knits.This summer, Ashley and I met at Threadbear when they happened to be having a massive sale on Koigu Kersti ($3/hank), and I picked up the last 3 hanks of a killer mustard color.

And last month, it became a Bainbridge scarf made from Minty’s clever pattern, with some minor mods.

Instead of having two pieces that tie in front, I wanted a tab-and-button fastening. So first, I made a horizontal buttonhole halfway along the tube.

Then, on the inside of the tube, I made a seed-stitch tab with a buttonhole at the end.

Finally, I sewed a button onto the outside of the scarf.
The scarf wraps around my neck, and the tab pokes through the slot and buttons the whole thing closed.

[Ravelry link]
pattern: Bainbridge Scarf, by Pepperknit
yarn: Koigu Kersti
needle: US6 Addi lace circular

With the leftover yarn, I made some garter stitch mitts from Ysolda’s new pattern.

[Ravelry link] With their perfect little thumb gussets, these have already replaced my former go-to fingerless mitts pattern. Love them, love them, wear them all the time.

So, if I wanted to turn two hanks of the Jitterbug yarn (pictured above) into some knee socks that were warm, and fun to knit, but not so bulky that I couldn’t wear them under close-fitting boots, what pattern would you recommend?

When I saw that photo in my last post, it hit home just how sad and tired my old fingerless mitts are. I made them from some truly ugly acrylic yarn (I got 2 skeins free at a garage sale) when Melanie Falick’s Weekend Knitting first came out, and have worn them like a second skin ever since. And acrylic? Not so much with the hard-wearing.

Since these are the fastest, easiest mitts ever, I pulled Weekend Knitting back out this weekend and, in between grading midterms (will it never end?), got started on a new pair.

pattern: Fingerless Mitts, by Ann Budd, from Melanie Falick’s Weekend Knitting
yarn: 1.5 balls Rowan Cotton Tape
needles: 6.5mm bamboo

The cotton tape has been in my stash for years, after I found it on clearance for $2/ball. I bought the last two balls in this fabulous terracotta red, and have been staring at it ever since. No more. It made the sproingiest, squishiest mitts ever, perfect for Spring and early Fall, when you don’t quite need the wool yet.

(Are you knitting mitts too? Then join in the Fingerless Mitts for Fall knitalong. There’s a great list of free patterns on the sidebar.)

p.s. Why can’t I do a three-needle bind-off that disappears into garter stitch??