Knitting Successes and Failures

Posted by Breeze on Thursday, January 17, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Category: Breeze

I finished my selfish fingerless mittens, but then I gave them to my babiest sister. I’m still selfish, but they didn’t fit me very well and they did fit her. Besides, my next-to-babiest sister brought me great mittens home from Iceland this summer, and I’m enjoying them too much to need anything else anyway.

During the discussion of my selfish knitting, the world-traveling sister pointed out that I’ve never made her anything. I was shocked. Could that be true? After a bit of reflection, it appears that it was, in fact, true. I say it was true because it no longer is true. She is now the proud owner of a fetching pair of fingerless mittens knitted from some beautiful hand-painted and hand-spun Japanese wool that I’ve been holding on to for at least three years while I waited for the perfect project for a tiny bit of yarn that was too beautiful to leave on its lonely shelf.

Since then, I’ve also finished a hat called “Peg” from Debbie Bliss’s Junior Knits. I like the shape, but it’s huge. I think I’ll make it again in a much smaller size. Tulip’s “Peg” hat is a soft orange, and I had enough left over to make her a scaled down version of the fingerless mittens, which are a huge hit. I just dropped the needles down from #5s to #2 double points and went from casting on 45 stitches to casting on 35, and they are a great fit. Oh, and instead of listening to the number of rows to knit before starting the thumb, I just measured her little hand. I did the same thing on the adult version for the second pair I made. The original design starts the thumb up too close to the fingers to be comfortable to me. I write this, not to enlighten my readership, none of which knits though I think I have a single crocheter out there, but instead to remind myself for the inevitable day Tulip loses one little orange mitten.