After two photography attempts on two different days, I think this photo is as good as it’s going to get. The yarn is just too shiny to be captured properly, at least by my cameras. Boo to the hiss!
I don’t like this mitten very much. I mean, it’s nice enough. The yarn is lovely and fuzzy and soft and the colors are nice. I even like that the red and green are similar values, creating murky colorwork. There’s too much mohair in the yarn, so the stitches don’t meld together like I want them to.

Since I don’t think I’ll make the second one (I’ve got different yarn out for another mitten already), here’s the pattern info:

Pattern: cuff, palm, and thumb from three different mittens in Anna Zilboorg’s Magnificent Mittens, resulting in lots of page turning
Yarn: 1 8 oz. skein Louet Leba, 1640 ypp, 30% wool/ 70% mohair, separated into three skeins and immersion dyed with acid dyes
Gauge: 6.5 sts. per inch
Needle: sizes 3 and 1 Addi Turbos for magic loop
This is knit from the top down with a “sore thumb” with side seam gore, which I’ve never done before. It’s very nice, though doesn’t seem to fit any better than the peasant thumbs I usually do. It looks more like a mitten, though, doesn’t it?

The next pair will be red, black, and white. I guess I’ve had enough of murky.

Galleries:

I almost forgot to mention that I’ve said goodbye to Flickr (long, frustrating story, not the least of which is how freaking SLOW the site is) and installed Pixelpost, which completely rocks. The new galleries can be accessed by the cute little photo thumbnails on the left. The main page is here. I’ve still got a lot of info to add, but the photos are up. I’ve got sections for items made from my patterns and items made with my yarn. If you’d like something you made put in the gallery, email me with a photo, description, your name, and a site to link to, if you have one and I’ll get right on it. There are some photos that have been emailed to me that aren’t up there. I’ve got to go search emails for them and get this gallery together, finally! If you see a photo of yours there and want to add info, email me with that, too.

Thanks!!

The shop’s been updated today with lots and lots of hand-dyed Hello Yarn Sock and Fat Sock yarns, Bluefaced Leicester and superwash Merino spinning fibers, and spindle kits.

To see everything I made for this week’s update, you can check out the Flickr album or shop away!

The Facts:

Pattern: Mittens 5/16 from Anna Zilboorg’s Magnificent Mittens

Yarn: 50 grams each of 2 unknown colors of Cascade 220 and a smidge of a third for trim

Gauge: 6.5 sts. per inch

Needle: size 3 and 1 Addi Turbo for magic loop method

Size: My size! 9″ circumference

Changes: I changed the yarn and colors and shortened the mittens by an inch or so.

Started: July 17, 2006

Finished: July 22, 2006

Thoughts:

I learned a lot from these mittens. They were my first ever top down, or Eastern method, mittens and I think there are some advantages to knitting this way. The tip of the mitten is so beautiful compared to bottom up mittens, even the ones with a graft at the tip. The way the edge stripe marches up one side of the mitten and down the other looks like magic. The thumb attachment seems to result in a much tider join than knitting the thumb in after. In particular, the three needle bind off used where the top of the thumb joins the mitten creates a nice fold line. It’s comfy and very neat.

The bad- I don’t like the look of the increases at the top at all. Decreases at the top of a bottom up mitten are so much more beautiful. The good outweighs the bad, though, and I think I’ll use this method a lot.

I ended up switching the colors around for the second mitten, which seemed like a good middle ground between matching and adding a whole new color for the second mitten. Mr. HelloYarn made a big face about the switch. I guess he’s even more into matching than I am!

One of the most pleasing bits about these mittens is that the thumb is patterned exactly the same as the mitten underneath it. It’s like camouflage.

The use of a solid worsted yarn made the pattern on these stand out like crazy. It’s going to be fun to experiment with different types of yarn for other patterns in this book.

The cuffs of these was made tighter by going down a couple of needle sizes. It’s effective and doesn’t even really show. The cuff was meant to be much longer for tucking underneath a coat sleeve, but I tend to take mittens off and put them back on over and over, so shorter mittens are good for me.

These aren’t quite finished. There’s a cone of cashmere winging its way from England towards its destiny as a lining.

Up next:

I dyed up some 70% mohair 30% wool for a second pair. After knitting a few inches, though, I see that I need to knit a different pair with a larger motif. I intentionally dyed the main olive and red at a similar depth, hoping for a subtle mottled Persian carpet look, but the motif isn’t as easily read as I’d like. Back to the drawing board!

Shop stuff:

There’ll be a shop update tomorrow. I managed a bunch of hand-dyed wool and yarn, but no handspun. The last week’s been a tough one around here, to say the least. Poor old Shambles the dog tore his ACL (the second one in 4 years- he can’t win) and Mr. HelloYarn was out of town, so my full time job for the better part of last week was keeping Shambles company, trying to get him to eat and drink, etc. He’s feeling so much better and now the challenge is to get him to rest, not run and jump, and not go absolutely crazy because he’s not getting his walkies. Any Adrian sanity vibes you want to send my way are appreciated!