Mitered Mittens

Well welcome back for another year of knitting fun! The holiday period always seems like a huge hurricane of so many wonderful things, not the least of which is a whole lot of knitting. Over the last couple of weeks I've been thinking a lot about The Tweed and where I want to go this year with knitting. I have some new plans and interesting twists to introduce this year, so I hope you'll stick around. And if I don't say it enough - THANK YOU - for visiting, reading, commenting, e-mailing, and general good-vibe sending. This website has been a wonderfully unexpected project in my life and I am excited to see where it will go this year.

Now - January. The month in which we get to blab all about our secretive holiday projects. They've been knit, given, well received and hopefully well worn. Now the only thing left to do is dish out the good stuff - so that's what I plan on doing this month.

I thought I'd start the holiday knitting spew with a really fun EZ project that took me a mere couple of days and was very enjoyable. These were knit for a dear friend who is weathering the winter in rural Minnesota - she needs all the woolies she can get!

Pattern: Mitered Mittens by Elizabeth Zimmermann [on ravelry]
Source: Knitter's Almanac (May Pattern)
Materials: Noro Silk Garden in #226; 2 skeins
Needles: US8/5.0mm Addi Turbo Circulars

Start Date: 5 December 2007
Finish Date: 8 December 2007

Modifications: I was making these for tiny little lady hands so I nipped them down a bit from what the pattern suggests. Rather than casting on 48 stitches at the base, I did 44 and decreased down to 40 after about a 2.5" cuff. It's a great pattern because you can virtually knit it at any gauge as long as your stitch counts are divisible by 4. Very easy to custom fit. I chose garter stitch for the cuff, rather than ribbing, because I like it better. Thumb placement is also simple - just check out the receiver's hands and see where their thumb is located. Since it's done as an afterthought, you don't have to worry about thumb placement while knitting the body of the mitten. Another reason this project is super quick.


The Yarn: I had seen a couple of versions of these knit up in self striping yarns and thought they looked great. As for the striping, I just let the Noro do it's thing - I like their asymmetry. The thumbs are put on as an afterthought as mentioned above, so I just did my best in matching color with my remaining yarn so there wouldn't be a dramatic color shift between mitten and thumb.

I have reports that they fit perfectly - which is a relief, since I was going on memory about handsize. Whew.


A Bit o' Business: If you've had problems e-mailing me over the last month or two - please accept my sincere apologies. My mail forwarding was malfunctioning, unbeknownst to me and bouncing a huge amount of e-mails back to you. It's all fixed now, so don't fret at firing e-mails on over to me at jared [at] brooklyntweed [dot] net, or just click the "e-mail me" link in the sidebar.

Also, for all of you who have been searching high and low for a Cobblestone Pattern, there's no need to look any further than your computer screen. The lovely folks at Interweave are now offering it for online purchase (details behind the link). Thanks for all of your e-mail requests after the issue sold out - it was killing me that I couldn't get the pattern to you then, but now it looks like the problem is solved. Happy Knitting!

More small wooly projects should be popping up over here in the next couple of weeks. A happy new year to all!