Mother Nature's Trick or Treat

SNOW!



I woke up to 20 inches of snow this morning. Actually, I woke up to my neighbour's snow-plowing man plowing the snow from his driveway across the street and into my driveway. I ran out into the knee-deep snow in my nightgown and yelled to him, but he either didn't see me - hard to believe he didn't see a crazy arm-waving woman with bright red hair in a pink nightgown at the bottom of the driveway yelling at him - or chose to ignore me. Jerk.

But, well... snow. So it's very fitting that I finally made a pair of gloves for myself to replace the pair that was stolen in New York City.



These beautiful soft and warm mitts are from Churchmouse Yarns and Teas on Bainbridge Island. The kit comes with pattern, yarn, buttons, and project bag and it is such a lovely kit! The pattern knits up quickly - it took me about 7 hours to knit the pair - and the result is comfortable and stylish. The yarn is one ball (109 yards) of Rowan Baby Alpaca DK and it is sooooo soft and lofty you might think it's angora!



The buttons are abalone shell, thin and delicate. The pattern calls for 10 buttons, but one of mine was cracked, so I put 4 on each cuff instead. I know I could have asked Churchmouse to replace the button, and they are wonderful so I'm sure they would have. But when I got to the stage of placing the buttons, I liked them better with four - five would have touched my wrist - so I was happy with how it turned out.

I do have a couple of modifications to recommend for this pattern:

The glove on the right was knitted according to the pattern directions, and the one on the left has the modifications.

1. I reduced the needle size to a 5 for the second mitt because the first really was a size Large even though the pattern says its a medium woman's hand.



2. I changed the increase stitch for the thumb gusset on the second mitten to Kf&b because the method given resulted in a not-very-neat edge with holes (this might have been because of the larger needle size recommended).

3. I ended the hand with two purl rows and purl bind-off on the second mitt, because the finishing recommended in the pattern resulted in... well, as you can see it's an unexpected rolled edge that is not only uncomfortable, but cold. I'll be taking out this original bind-off and re-finishing it with purl rows.

All in all I love these mitts and now that's it's Winter, however early and surprising, I've been wearing them every day.