Songs as Stark as Black and White Stripes

I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but I managed to take one of my Endpaper Mitts to Arizona (where it was 85 degrees) and to lose it. I keep hoping that it was in my luggage and just got shuffled round when I unpacked, but so far there's no sign of it. I got a lot of use out of them, and there were things about them that bothered me, so it's not a tragedy. The purl seam between the front and the back looked really ugly on one of my mitts, and they didn't have quite as much hand and thumb coverage and I could have used. I do really miss having a pair of fingerless gloves, though--we're still getting some frosty mornings, and full mittens are inconvenient for driving and dog-walking. Plus, drinking beer at baseball games is completely impractical with mittens on!

I started a new pair of fingerless mitts on Friday, and thanks to a very, very, very long Democratic District Caucus meeting on Saturday (Go Hillary!) *, I finished the first mitt. It's a semi-convertible item, and just like Safeco Field I can wear it with the top extended :

or retracted:

I think that this will solve the problem of the too-cold fingers while preserving access to fingers. For instance, while walking the dogs I prefer more coverage, and while scooping poop I prefer less coverage.

I basically made up the pattern as I went along, and I hope that I took enough notes to make the second mitt. It did involve some ripping out, and a little "creative darning in" at the end to neaten up the thumb connector.

I can hardly take credit for the "design"--I'm sure that I've seen that roll down top somewhere before, but a quick Ravelry search didn't turn up anything with that feature. Please let me know if you can tell me what I "borrowed" that from. I researched the thumb gusset methodology on Knitting in Color's blog, and while the gusset is quite deep on this mitt, it works well for me because my thumbs are long.

Also, as with the Wee Tiny Sock Swap sock, I was heavily influenced by Grumperina's recent series on helix stripes, and even though I knew I'd knit a new pair of fingerless gloves, I would otherwise have just picked one of the many really nice fingerless patterns that are overflowing my Ravelry queue. I used three strands of yarn (Gems Light Worsted) to make the stripes, one purple and two blue. I wanted that thick / thin look, but my first attempt to start the stripes in the rib looked like garbage so I settled for solid ribbing.

If the second mitt comes out as well as the first one, I'll write up my notes into an actual pattern, unless there's a very similar pattern out there that I've somehow absorbed and only minorly changed. If that is the case, please let me know, so that I can give credit where credit is due!



* Note: just because I'm mentioning politics in this context doesn't mean that I intend to discuss politics here, or that I want anyone to try to convince me to support a different candidate, any more than I'm trying to convince any of you to support my candidate. That's just not how I roll. Peace out.