Happy New Year, Lonely Mittens

So before I recount the final irritation of the disappointing year that was 2010 (pictured above), let me recount a few victories accomplished in 2011:

• I ran a 5K in 30 degree weather on the first, and I did so after staying out until after 2am the night before.
• I also ran this morning, outside in 30 degree weather
• Walking home from my run this morning, I slid on an icy spot that I didn't notice, and despite some pretty amazing contortions to keep my balance, I did not fall and I do not feel injured.
• Today I booked a hotel in Paris for a trip later this month. I'm arriving a few days before the people I'm travelling with (we booked an apartment), and have been agonizing over where to stay because there are hundreds of options at many different price levels & no clear correspondence between price, # of stars, and user reviews.

So the final bit of insult associated with 2010 should fade quickly under the bright, shining hope that is 2011, but since it's knitting related I need to memorialize it here. Somewhere between errands on New Year's Eve, I lost one of the last complete pair of fingerless mitts that I've knit. So now I have three single fingerless mitts, shown above, that I keep in hopes that one day a lost mitten will show up. From left to right:

• Spincycle Mitts: I'm pretty sure I lost these at a Mariner's game. They were perfect for cold spring & fall games, and they got a ton of use before I lost one. I have enough yarn to make another mitt, and I bought another skein of this Spincycle yarn at the Urban Craft Uprising this year, but I'm worried that the new mitt will look too "new" with the fuzziness of the old mitt. A new pair doesn't take that long to knit though (I recently finished a pair that I gave as a Christmas gift), so I should just suck it up and knit between two and four more mitts.
• Endpaper Mitts: I don't remember getting a lot of use out of this pair, though according to this post, I did use them a lot and lost them in Arizona (they were probably in a coat I packed?) . I loved the squooshiness of the yarn, and the extra coverage of the long size, but the "seams" up the sides of the mitten and the thumb didn't turn out that well, so I have never considered knitting a new mate for this mitt.
• Stripey Mitts: This is the pair that was cruelly separated on New Year's Eve, and it's a harsh blow. They stretched out to become a little too big, and the worsted-weight yarn made them a little bulkier than they should be, but I will miss them. Hopefully, I can find my notes about the pattern (which I never got around to writing up), and make another pair. Maybe in a sport weight, or at least with sport-weight for the pull down ribbing.

If you see any of these, please let me know.

So that's my last sad story of 2010. Hopefully, 2011 will be all happy stories about knitting, such as the beret craze that is sweeping my knitting basket, and fantastic French purchases that I anticipate in the coming weeks. And probably, very probably a new pair of fingerless mitts, because I really, really need some.

With My Ragtop Down So My Hair Can Blow

In between sewing skirts, complaining about sock heels, and being woken up nightly by dogs at 1am-ish (thanks, Frieda!), I managed to finish my convertible fingerless mitts. No, really, they're done. See that photo above? Believe me when I say that I don't have the skills to combine two photos of the same mitt into one photo.

They turned out very well, I think, and I love that I can roll them up if I want more finger coverage, or down if the fingers need access to the outside. I will wear them on Friday to Ichiro Bobblehead night at Safeco Field. Spring comes but slowly here this year, and our seats will be cold.

I'm planning to write up the pattern eventually (hopefully sooner rather than later), although I'll probably knit at least one more mitt before I post it. I'm not 100% happy with some of the fudging that I had to do on the thumb to get the numbers to work out right, and my notes are a little on the sketchy side. Also, I might take out some stitches to make it a little more snug.

Linda (who has a private Blogger profile, so I couldn't contact her directly) asked in the comments on my first post about how I finished up the blue when I picked up the purple. It's a good question, and it's something that I didn't think at all about while I was knitting the first mitt, so I have no idea what I did. On the second mitt, I did think about it, but now I'm not totally sure I can describe what I did (this is another good reason to knit a third mitt). I think that I should have taken some photos!

Basically, I started the purple in it's natural order, but once I got around the whole spiral, I just kept on ribbing with the purple. Right below the ribbing, there are still two rows of blue all the way around, so there's no obvious break in the pattern. I did knit some of the blue stitches out of order, by shifting the stitches around so that eventually one blue caught up with the other one. Honestly, I don't think that it looks any different than when I just spaced out and started the ribbing.

Another thing that I can't quite figure out is how much yarn I used of each color. Each skein of Louet light worsted is 100g. I started with two full skeins, that I did not weigh, so I would assume that that was 200g, more or less. The mitts weigh 47g each (suprisingly, exactly the same amount), or 94g total. I have 46g of purple left, and 82g of blue left. 94g + 46g + 82g = 222g, and that's not counting scraps from the considerable number of ends that had to be woven in. I have no idea whether the skeins were the same starting weight, or whether one was heavier than the other, but I think that it's safe to say that if I reversed the colors, I could get another whole pair out of the leftovers. I do really like this yarn, and I like that I'm getting a little extra (I don't think that 10% over can be humidity or something), but I'll have to remember to weigh before and after next time!

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.