Sweetling

I have a queue of fingerless mitts to keep me busy for a year. I love all of the different stitch pattern and looks each one offers. They are a quick and addictive kind of knit. Those who knit socks say the same thing about that passion. I don't have the desire to knit a huge project like a blanket or a sweater. Give me these fast and lovely knits like hats and fingerless mitts and I will be happy.

This pattern, "Sweet Life" was fun to knit. I love how the honeycomb pattern doesn't show itself right away and then there it is. It is the type of stitch pattern that looks complicated, but isn't. I modified the pattern a bit be making the palm area stockinette instead of ribbed. I love how they turned out.

These are #11 in my 11 fingerless mitts in 2011 challenge. I made it!

I'd Rather Have Tea

Well now I am back to knitting fingerless gloves. I truly have no one to give them to at this point. I will keep them and use them as a jump on my Christmas knitting. This pattern is called "Cafe au Lait Mitts". They have a great texture to them and are very fun to knit. The yarn, Simply Soft Shadows, has been discontinued. I love this yarn. It is so soft and has wonderful color changes. I bought all they had at Hobby Lobby when it was on clearance. I will be sad when it is all gone.

These are fingerless mitts #10 in the 11 fingerless mitts in 2011 challenge.

So Comfy Cozy

I found yet another great free pattern for fingerless mitts on Ravelry. The pattern is called "Cozy Thermal Mitts". They were oh so easy to knit and fit great. This is another one for the "I'll make these again" list.

These are fingerless mitts #9 in the 11 fingerless mitts in 2011 challenge.

Gilly and Jacky

I am having so much fun lately with my test knitting. This in another pattern I am helping to knit and check the pattern for the designer. I haven't done a slip stitch pattern in a while and was looking forward to this one. It gives me the opportunity to do colorwork without all of the pain of stranded colorwork, like I did on the mitts You Are Here. I LOVED this pattern. It was fun to see how the variegated yarn would knit up and how the colors would present. Some yarns have long stretches of color. Others not so much. This particular yarn looked great. It changed quickly and added lots of color changes to the mitts. I have some more yarn I want to try with this pattern. You will be seeing this one again.

This are fingerless mitts #8 in the 11 fingerless mitts in 2011 challenge.

Unbreak My Heart

I have started checking in the Free Pattern Testers forum on Ravelry. Since starting to write some of my own patterns, I am interested in the process of getting patterns tested. To this point, I have tested my own. I found a pattern I was interested in testing. I contacted the designer and was chosen to be a tester. I enjoyed knitting the pattern and the mitts are adorable. I am still not sure if I am brave enough to put one of my patterns up for testing, but I am loving the two test knits I have participated in and look forward to doing more. This pattern is Broken Spiral Mitts by Stephanie Benning.

These mitts are #7 in my 11 fingerless mitts in 2011.

You Are Here

The February KAL in the Fingerless Glove Fanatics on Ravelry is colorwork. I have never done knitting that requires me to use multiple colors of yarn within a row of knitting. I thought I would give it a try. There is a designer, SpillyJane, who designs mittens that make me drool. She has a fun sense of humor and that comes out in her mitten patterns. She has mittens with cupcakes, hamburgers, pints of beer, bacon...as well as some that are just lovely to behold. I was not brave enough to give the cupcake mittens a go (those are my favorite), but I did find a pair that I was willing to try. These are from her pattern, Quo Vadis. It is a bit tricky to do stranded knitting. You carry both yarns across the back of your knitting using one or the other to make a stitch. It is hard to know how much tension you need in your yarn. Too much and the mitten is tight and puckers. Too much and the mitts don't come out the same. One will be a bit larger. I seemed to err on the too little side on the first one. It is tighter than I would prefer. The second one is just right in size, but is a bit larger than the first. It may be something only I can see, but I think I did a pretty good job for my first attempt. Am I ready for the cupcake mittens? Only if someone else makes them.

This is #6 in my 11 fingerless mitts in 2011 challenge.

La Mia Bellezza

For Christmas, I knit Robyn's roommate, Alyce, a pair of fingerless mitts inspired by the more "Twilight". I am not a fan and I don't know if she is either. I just liked the way the mittens looked. I decided to knit another pair, this time making them shorter. One of the wonderful things about Ravelry is that the knitters will often take the time to put into their project pages information on how they modified a pattern. You can see what they did and then take that information to use in your project. I used two modifications on these mitts. One to change them from mittens to fingerless mitts. With the cable pattern, I wanted to see what was a good point in the pattern to stop and bind off. The other was to make them shorter. The original pattern has the mittens going 3/4 of the way to the elbow. I wanted them around 1 1/2 inch past the wrist. Both of the mods worked great. I made my own additional mod by making the palm in seed stitch. I like how the palm area turned out. If I make them again, I will play with the palm area a little, just to center it a bit more. I think they turned out great.

This is #5 in my 11 fingerless mitts in 2011.

No Wool For You

I always got a kick out of when the Soup Nazi was on Seinfeld. We occasionally work in the "No ____ for you!" into our conversations. I thought these would be cute fingerless mitts to try, but since I don't have a recipient in mind, I always knit them up in acrylic. That way I know they will not need special treatment if given to someone who forgets that kind of stuff. The pattern is called "Lofty Wool Cable Mittens" and I usually change up the name of my project when uploading it to Ravelry. I try to make a play on the name in some way. So you can kinda see where this name was coming from. Anyway...I did my usual modifications to change them from mittens to fingerless mitts. If I make them again I will probably not do the increases in the palm area as they are a bit looser than I like. The rolled hem at the wrist is a different twist on the usual ribbing and I like that bit of difference.

This will be my last pair of mitts for NaKniMitMo. I was able to crank out 4 pair.

Gracious Me...They're Finished

The Gracious Me mitts are finally finished. It seemed to take forever. I knew we would receive a new "clue" each week, but I didn't realize how it would draggg this thing out. I first blogged about them when I wrote about NaKniMitMo. I like the mitts and did a few modifications to suit me needs. I can see me making these again.

Val Be Mine

I finished my second pair of fingerless mitts. The pattern is called "Valentine Mitts" and I really like this pattern. The cables run all the way around and it is the same cable going one way on the left mitt and the mirror image on the right one.
Meanwhile, I have a sick baby at home with the flu. Looks like more knittin' in my forecast as we hunker in.

Riding the Zephyr

I came across this pattern called, "Zephyr Fingerless Mitts. I love how there is a little bit of cable and I thought it would look good in one of my stripey yarns. The word “Zephyr” has two meanings if you have been in the New Orleans area for a while. A long time ago, there used to be an amusement park called Pontchartrain Beach next to the lake. The roller coaster was this wild wooden coaster called “The Zephyr”. It was so much fun. Secondly, the "New Orleans Zephyr"s is the name of the minor league team here (probably named after the roller coaster). So these mitts became "Riding the Zephyr". I might need to keep these for myself...