Persistent Knitter

I bought some mitten kits last month and had even started the first mitten here. The yarn the kit came with wasn’t so great. It was rough. I don’t know if washing will soften it up or not, I haven’t gotten that far yet.. However, I decided to make some mittens using one of the kit patterns with another yarn that _is_ soft and the colors are just gorgeous. I finished the first one, and here it is laying out to dry after a very gentle blocking:

The grey isn’t quite that dark since it’s wet in the picture. It’s a really pretty medium heather grey, and lets the red yarn stand out really nicely.

I wasn’t sure how these mittens should fit. They feel a bit wide for above the thumb. They fit perfectly in the cuff area though. The kit yarn ball band gauge was 26 sts/4 inches. The yarn I used 22 stitches/4 inches. (So the yarn I used was slightly thicker). I knit it up at a fairly tight gauge. The fabirc of the mitten is nice and thick, yet still pliable.

I decided to knit the thumb before finishing the mitten top. I wanted to see how the top part fit, and had to open up the slit for the thumb first. This pattern uses a thumb gore (you can see it has it’s own separate pattern on the 2nd picture) which makes the top part of the mitten wider than the bottom part. The cuff fits me perfectly; but the top is a little bit loose. Since it’s a mitten I think that’ll be Ok. When this one is dry I’ll take a picture of me wearing it. I see lots of these mittens on people’s blog; but none wearing them.

Hat & Scarf report:
Daughter opened the present. Liked the scarf, but appears to care less about the hat. Figures. :) So far she’s put the hat on once after I prodded her all day about it. No picture yet, but it was adorable when she was wearing it. It came out on the slightly big side so hopefully she’ll fall in love with it later this winter or next year.

She did get a hat and mitten set made of polyester fleece from Grandpa
that she loves. She’s requested a white scarf to match them.