Mitts and Mittens, oh my!

I have been knitting a lot of mitts and mittens this summer. You would think that I would want to knit tank tops or something cool for summer wear. But this summer mittens really took over my knitting.

In August before I went to Norway I sent off a couple of pair of very simple children's mittens to a Ravlery group project called For the Children of Pine Ridge. They were bright orange and purple. Should go over well with children on the reservation there if they are anything like my own children. I used my own pattern for these. I have knit so many basic mittens this way that I finally wrote up the pattern for it. You can find it here.


Then I started a pair of Latvian Mittens from the book of that name by Lizbeth Upitis. I chose 5 colors of Lamullgarn that I liked together. I really wanted to learn some new techniques from this book. There are beautiful scalloped edges, braids and rows and rows that use up to 3 colors at the same time in the row -- yes, I am a glutten for punishment when it comes to kntting. It was really hard to choose a pattern because there are so many beautiful mittens in this book. I finally decided to make mitten #5 because it was fairly simple designs, had the scalloped edge and only had a few rows knit with 3 colors in the row--I have my limits after all! The braids will have to be in the next pair.


The first mitten is just past the thumb opening. I am using 2mm needles with 72 stitches. Tiny, tiny! It grows very slowly. What was I thinking? They are beautiful though, right? They were starting to get a bit tedious and they are hard to take along. It gets to be a big bag full of knitting when you are using 3 balls of yarn at the same time. So they have been resting for a while.


Last week I happened to see that a designer was looking for some people to test knit a new pattern. Sure, why not? I only have .....ahem....lots of projects on the needles already. So I started another one. These were short fingerless mitts so they wouldn't take long, right?

The first mitt came out a little bigger than I need but should fit someone with just a slightly larger hand well. They are worsted weight in a nice denim blue and creamy white. They will be great for those cool winter days when your hands are getting cold but you still need them to type or knit. Or under mittens for those really cold days when you know you are going to have to take the mitten off at some point to dig the car keys out of your pocket.


I made that one mitt and decided to try a different yarn because it was a bit lighter and might fit me better. So came this one in a dark teal green and blue. Mmmm, nice colors and a good fit too. I finished the first blue and white one and made the green and blue one on our trip to Wisconsin this weekend for a wedding. That's why I took the pictures in the car. Great place to take pictures on a sunny day, by the way. It was perfect lighting. I really didn't need the warmth of the mitts though because it was well into the 70's the whole weekend. Beautiful trip too because the trees were gorgeous, but that is another story.


So, where was I? Oh yea, I made this one mitt and then started the second blue and white one..... but once again, I was distracted. I found some dark and light purple PT5 Sport yarns just calling out to be mitts for Amy. Amy loves purple. It is getting cold soon. So Amy needs mitts. Of course, I had to start those right away don't ya' know?