I have just finished these fingerless mitts and sent them
off to their southerly recipient (with some regret, as it’s starting to get
proper Baltic here in Edinburgh). I started them on one of the grimmest bus
journeys imaginable, and these little guys kept me company through ten
toiletless hours. The basic
pattern was this one by the Purl
Bee, but I quickly tired of the 2x2 ribbing. Perhaps I should have
been alerted by the name ‘the purl bee', that this was a bee who favoured the
simple pleasures of the purl stitch above fancy fripperies; who, indeed, may not have been
capable of designing far beyond the basics of knit and purl, being a bee. On
the other hand, what if the bee could hold a tiny knitting needles in each of
its six insect-y legs – what then could it not
do? Anyway, I decided to throw in a little freaky free-styling with cables and slip-stitches. The
challenge then was to try and match said free-styling on the second glove – a
challenge which I absolutely failed at: these are some mismatched mitts. But
then, hopefully that just lends them a charming hand-made uniqueness? Yeah?
Yeah.
I made my mitts in Dream In Color Smooshy in the colourway 'Chocolate Night'. I highly
recommend this yarn (which I think I got here) - the yardage is fantastic, it comes in a number of
beautiful semi-solid colours, and is a real sturdy workhorse. The one downside
for the British knitter is that as an Australian merino dyed in America, it’s
far from virtuous in terms of yarn miles, but as an environmentally-unsound
treat, I think it’s ok. The colour is pretty similar to the colour in the Purl
Bee photos, and indeed to that I made my Evolution Mitts in all that time ago
(which seem to have gone missing. I suspect my mother - the hand model in these photos. I swear that woman is
building some sort of a woolly fort with ill-gotten knits of mine). I really was sad to see
these hand-warmers go; I’m writing this in a charmingly petite French café in
Stockbridge, and imagining that these might be just the sort of mitts that
Amélie Poulain might have worn to ward off the Parisian chill. Perhaps I shall
make another pair for myself, and magic loop ‘em both at once to ensure
identicality. Hmm.
What’s on your needles, readers? If there are any readers?
