Thistle mittens – red, grey, off-white

So I got on with the next pair of mittens. This time with a self made pattern. I call it thistle, because the flowers were purple when I made it up, and the stalk and the leaves were green. But I wanted to work with the three colours that can never go wrong: Gray, off-white and red. Så maybe these are actually carnation mittens?

The palm side gets kind of striped, following the colour of the pattern on the other side.

/Maia

Star mittens – finished!

Faire Isle knitting should look as nice on the inside as on the outside. You should be able to see the stars on the wrong side of the knitting, and you do, don't you?

Also the thumb differs from the original pattern.

And here they are. Finished. Fluffed on the inside (nailbrush!) and slightly damped and ironed on the outside. Now, the question is whether it is my dear sister or my dear eldest daughter that needs them the most.

I have already started planning the next pair. With my own pattern of thistles! And this pair costed me less than 75 SEK in yarn. Neat!

/Maia

Star mittens update – hands

The hands are ready. This is the palm pattern. I chose to use a checkered pattern instead of the pattern suggested in the book. And the thumbs will be the easiest possible, Just twelve stitches times two straight up.

I have used a brush to smoothen the surface a little, and I will try to do the same to the inside when I am finished. This makes the wool less itchy and makes the mittens warmer. Not that they aren't warm enough already.

/Maia

Dyed wool

Last year after easter I bought some egg dye, and now I finally got to dye some wool I had in my stash. The colours came out a bit too pink and sharp, but I will use it to knit with fair isle technique with a dark grey dominant colour.

This is how the skein looked like before...


...and this is how it looked like after I made a ball out of it. Nice, or what? Tutti frutti with blueberries!

/Maia

Star mittens in Finullgarn

I am working with a pair of mittens with an old Scanian star pattern from the book Sticka mössor vantar sockor! by Ann-Marie Nilsson. I don't follow the pattern exactly, since I just wanted to try out the nice Rauma Finullgarn that I bought in Oslo at Den Norske Husfliden last week.

Never before have I knitted anything with this fine needles, but it goes faster than I thought it would.

/Maia