I’m Knitting As Fast As I Can

Well, I chose to head south, of course.  And, I have to say, it’s been nice to breathe relatively clean air the last two days.  Look, you can actually see the sky!

For those of you who asked, during the winter Salt Lake City often experiences something called a temperature inversion.  Basically, for reasons I don’t fully understand, the air near the ground becomes cooler than the air above. (The temperature is actually higher at the ski resorts than it is in the valley.) This traps pollution near the valley floor and it doesn’t clear out until we get a storm. Because we haven’t had a storm in weeks, the Salt Lake Valley is filled with polluted air that’s just sitting over the entire city. Yuck.

I live above the valley, near the foothills, and I usually escape the worst of the gunk. But the layer of smog has been rising rapidly and it finally overtook my house. So I escaped to the land of casinos and shopping.

But even where there’s sun and air, a girl can still enjoy knitting a thrummed mitten.

My crocheted Red Scarf is done and, you know what?  I like it!  Trust me, I would never send a scarf off to OFA unless it was something I’d wear myself.

Yarn: Cascade Ecological Wool
Hook: K (6.5mm)
Pattern: Work a 155-stitch chain foundation. Working back and forth lengthwise, sc in the back loop only until it’s wide enough.
Ravelry: Link to project page.

I soaked it in some Eucalan and then blocked it out to the finished measurements of 7″ x 70″

The stitch pattern reminds me of The Corrugator scarf.

I just need to make a tag, attach a fast-food gift card, and send it on it’s way. yay!

It’s been bitterly cold here the last few days. So cold, in fact, that my daughter actually asked if I had some mittens she could wear while driving to school.

More than two years ago, I made a pair of Mitered Mittens from yarn I dyed with tumeric. In September 2007, I blogged that they just needed the ends woven in. Guess what? December 2009 and I still hadn’t woven in the ends. They’ve been sitting on a corner of my desk FOR.TWO.YEARS!

Well, the ends are woven in now.  But when I turned the mittens inside out, I discovered that tumeric is not light fast. 

Here’s a post showing what the yarn looked like after it was dyed.

And here’s a post with a photo of the in-progress mitten.

Here’s what the mittens look like now:

Aaah, the power of the sun.

I actually finished a pair of mittens! Shocking.

Pattern: Meida’s Mittens by Nancy Bush from Folk Knitting in Estonia

Yarn: Brunswick Pomfret (loooooooong discontinued, sport-weight wool). Who remembers this yarn??

Needles: Addi Turbo 12″ circular, 3.5mm

Ravelry: Link to the Ravelry project page.

Mods: I made a lot of mods to the pattern. I used a heavier weight yarn so I cast on 24 fewer stitches. The pattern calls for 5 different colors but I only had 4 so I took some poetic license with the stranded color pattern. I also worked a sore thumb instead of an afterthought thumb and I changed the shaping at the top of the hand. I worked the decreases the same as for a wedge toe on a sock. I also added a two-color braid to the cast-on edge . . . worked in the opposite direction for each mitten, of course:

I noticed only 7 people on Ravelry have knit this mitten. I don’t know why. It was quick and easy since only the cuff has colorwork, and the mittens are beautiful.

Friday I’ll give a little review of Folk Knitting in Estonia as the next book in my review series.