mittening

As I said recently, I've been on a roll with finishing projects. Christopher's sweater is finally done (though not photographed) and I also finished the lace t-shirt I designed for myself (though only photographed flat). Someday I'll photograph them and you can see what I'm talking about!

In any case, means that I don't have anything big on the needles-- no sweaters, just a lacy scarf and a shawl, both from Victorian Lace Today. The shawl is a long term sort of thing. I'm to the point where there are 500 or so stitches per row, and I made the mistake of calculating how many more stitches I need to completion: roughly 10,000. I know that this is actually very doable, but the number has me slightly paralyzed. This was the shawl back when a row didn't take me over an hour to knit!

The scarf is actually zooming along; I take it on the subway and am able to do about 3/4 of a pattern repeat done per day (there are 20 repeats for the whole scarf). Recently I noticed though that about two repeats down I missed a yarn over, and I'm not sure whether I really want to rip out all that lace or just keep going. I'm lazy, but it looks really bad. (the mistake is not in the photo, so don't bother looking for it!)

Anyway, this brings me to mittens.

I have cold hands. In fact, I have condition that makes my fingers go numb if they go below a certain temperature. Holding a cold drink can trigger it, even in the summer, or a brisk day. I have a very trusty pair of mittens, knit several years ago and I usually wear them all winter with a pair of store bought glove liners underneath to keep my fingers from going numb. But wouldn't it be nice to have a pair of mittens that were actually warm enough? Perhaps they would be lined with something soft?? I'm still on the lookout for the perfect mittens, and the perfect pattern. I've already cast on one pair, and am not sure whether they're The Ones yet or not. Stay tuned.

To get me in the mood, I decided to knit some more mittens for the latest Afghans for Afghans drive, which this time is for children's mittens. I wasn't feeling so inspired to start until I saw a post on Ravelry about the thrummed mittens someone was making. I cast on immediately, and was halfway through the first mitten in an hour or two. I brought it to my knitting night on Tuesday and finished it, realizing (or knowing all along) that I didn't have enough yarn to make a second mitten. Flickr won't let me flip this photo vertically, so I apologize for the weird angle.

Clearly the thrummed mitten is either just for me (though I'd prefer a more colorful background) or will just have to be finished later.

And so I cast on yet another pair of mittens, this one from the Easy Striped Mittens insert from Knit Simple. They knit up very quickly and I like how they look (though they still need to be blocked)

All of this brings me to the fact that I'm actually suddenly feeling inspired to make tons and tons of mittens. Have I have gone off the mitten deep end? Will my family all be receiving mittens in their stockings this year?