I’m Knitting As Fast As I Can

There seemed to be enough interest in the fingerless mitts I made for my MIL that I decided to write up the pattern (well, it’s a similar pattern but not identical). It should be available by next Monday.

Problem is, I can’t come up with a good name for the design. So, I’m looking to you for help.

Leave me a comment or send me an email with a suggested name by Saturday and if I choose your idea I’ll send you a free copy of the pattern.

I have an annoying habit of leaving things to the last minute. Which means that I spent this Mother’s Day knitting a pair of angora fingerless mitts for my MIL:

and working on a top I wanted to take on my trip with me:

I’m finally willing to concede that the top won’t be finished by tomorrow morning so back into the knitting bag it goes to await my return.

Now I’m off to finish packing. See you in a few.

I may have gone a little crazy with the mitten knitting.

Let me start out by saying I don’t particularly like to wear mittens. But they sure are fun and fast to knit . . . well, the first one anyway. My track record with mittens is less than stellar. In the past, I’ve never really been very interested in knitting the second mitten. In fact, I have no fewer than 5 single mittens languishing in my WIP pile.

Among them are some Turkish mittens from Magnificent Mittens:

Lopi Mittens from Folk Mittens (notice the glaring error):

And, Mittens From Halland, also from Folk Mittens.

But this December I’ve attacked mittens with a renewed vengence.

The first pair I finished were the Manly Mitts with the thumb from the Herringbone Mittens With Poms. Well, they’re not 100% finished since I haven’t blocked them yet, but the knitting part is finished:

The chart I used for the top decreases is in this post.

Emboldened by the simple fact that I actually knit two matching mittens, I immediately cast on a new pair.

These are Kelly‘s Very Cabley Mittens.

I used the recommended yarn, Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride Worsted (in the Pistachio colorway), and followed the pattern almost exactly as written. The only change I made was to mark the thumb on the 6th rnd of the pattern repeat instead of the 2nd rnd. That necessitated placing the waste yarn in a slightly different spot. I worked the thumb round as: k1, k6 sts with the waste yarn, etc. (instead of k7, k6 with the waste yarn, etc., as set out in the original pattern).

And, look, I liked the Very Cabley Mittens so much that I made another pair!

For this pair, I worked the thumb on Rnd 2 but I worked one less repeat of the cable pattern on the cuff. And, obviously, I also have to put in the second thumb. But before I did that, I knit a pair of instant gratification mittens:

These are the Bulky Mittens from Knitting Pure and Simple.
I knit both of these in less than 2 hours from a single skein of Berroco Hip Hop that’s been languishing in my stash for years. I wore them on Thursday when I went to see Debbie Stoller.

and they kept my hands toasty warm even though it was cold as hell out.

And then I couldn’t stop myself from starting a pair of Sander’s Mittens from Folk Knitting In Estonia:

I’ll have more to say about these later this week. But first I have to clean up this mess o’ mittens.