Snow snows

Like divine dandruff, snow snows outside my window, sometimes in lazy, downward spirals, sometimes in frenetic horizontal streaks, sometimes in whirlpool swirls and curlicues. It is distracting me from all I meant to do today, and is a right white blight on my plans for another two-wheeled London adventure, but it’s so pretty I don’t mind. 

Also, now that I have followed them southward, I am free to wear the mitts I knit whenever I can get my hands on them (and in them). 

From Edinburgh Mitt Love

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?

Evolution Mitts

Since making that pledge to knit six sweaters from stash all I have been able to think about has been making little things. 

Like these.

They are the Evolution Mitts by Mimi Fenton, so-called because the lace pattern evolves as you progress down the glove, which made for an entertaining knit.  The yarn is Dream in Color Smooshy in the Gothic Rose colourway.

I like the contrast between the pretty leaf lace on the top side of the glove and the minimalist 2x2 rib on the bottom.

I have also finally finished my Hungry Bees socks (hooray!), but I think those poor neglected honey-makers deserve their own post so I'll just give you this sneaky peek for now.