knitting

Mitts Week 5: Confetti Mittens

This week, I wanted to do something a little different. I wanted to make full mittens. But I wanted them to be a little less boring than plain old mittens.

I wanted to create texting mittens, but actually useful texting mittens. Most of the time you see ones where you can uncover your fingers, but the thumbs are completely covered.

I don’t know about you, but I tend to use my phone with just my thumbs. Takes me back to those days when we texted one handed under our desks without looking because we had all memorized the keys. You know, back when our phones had actual keyboards.

Anyway, I thought I’d solve that problem by making full mittens with open thumbtips. Just the very tips, so it still keeps your thumbs warm. I have to say, I really like the way it worked out. I think these may be the mittens of the future. 😛

These are currently available on my Etsy Shop, along with all the previous mitts and other things.

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Mitts Week 4: Peacock

For week 4 of the mitts project, I found some bright Red Heart yarn I had left over from some other project I don’t exactly remember. I thought it would go good with some small cables on each side of the back of the hand. The kind of get lost in the colors, but it makes it look rather nice.

I managed to knit most of these while babysitting and watching a classic movie marathon on Netflix. Which was good, because I started them at the end of the week instead of the beginning.

As always, you can find these and others on my Etsy Shop.

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Mitts Week 3: Sunny Hearts

Well, I kept my promise to myself to make a pair of mitts each week leading up to Christmas from Halloween (mostly). I just got lazy on writing about them. As I tend to do. So now I am going to catch myself up. This is my third week’s design:

I’ve called it the “Heart in Hand” mitt because there is a heart on each side of each hand. I wanted something simple but also decorative, so I just made up a heart pattern of purl stitches as I worked the hand.

As always, these are now available on my Etsy Shop.

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Mitts Week 2: Color Shift Fingerless Mitts

With a sick kiddo Tuesday and Wednesday, plus a school holiday on Friday, I’ve kind of been off-schedule all week. So this is a couple days late, but I did finish them on Friday.

This week’s mitts are knit in Chroma by Knit Picks in the discontinued “Buttermint” colorway. I cast on 50 stitches (in a different yarn) and knit for 6.5 inches. I grafted the ends together, except for the thumb hole which was ten stitches on each side that I bound off with a stretchy bind off.

These were so easy, and I had another bit of Chroma laying around, so I made a second pair as well. These are in the “Groovy” colorway.

Like I mentioned last week, I am putting these up on my Etsy store. I also post in-progress pictures all week long on Instagram and Twitter.

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Winter Mitts

Since Inktober is over, I’ve decided to start another project. Not a daily one, this time, but a weekly one. I’ve done so little knitting this year that I’ve decided to make a pair of mitts a week now through Christmas.

Working on something new today. #knitting

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I decided to start with this yarn I had leftover from a Christmas present I made a few years ago that I had wanted to make myself mitts from since I finished said present. I didn’t use a pattern, but I based the design on the pattern I used for those original mitts.

It starts with a garter knit band around the hand, and then had an arm part that I couldn’t remember, so I just knit in ribbing, with a bit of a thumb gusset, until it fit the way I wanted.

These I’m keeping for myself, but the upcoming ones are going to be headed for my Etsy shop. Just a way to get myself making more things. Especially things that are simple and can be taken along when I go places, since my current cross stitch project is a bit of a pain to drag along.

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You’re A Wizard, Harry

Friday was favorite character day at the elementary school. Predictably, most of the people who dressed up were from the Harry Potter universe. You know, since it’s an elementary school and they weren’t allowed to dress as movie characters.

It started with a scarf, which actually came together rather quickly. I used red worsted weight yarn and yellow bulky weight yarn and was able to create a five foot long scarf with about 4 hours of work off and on Monday and Tuesday.

Then it was time to make the robe. I dyed some muslin black (that one took a couple different tries) and drafted the pattern on Wednesday so I would be able to sew it up on Thursday.

I then went and picked up some sunglasses to remove the lenses from. I wish I had remembered to take a before picture, because they started out bright, sparkly pink. But after a bit of sanding and paint they were much better.

Once everything else was together, I thought it could use one last touch, so I took some extra material from the robe, sketched out the Gryiffindor house crest with a white pencil, and embroidered it.

On the other side, I put a pocket. Not really a stylistic choice, but because part of the robe got eaten slightly by the serger.

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Getting Things Done

Is it just me, or does everything seem to pile up at once? You can just be going along with one or two things to do, and then when you plan to do something, twenty other things need to be done at once. That would be how my week is going.

Like I said before, I’m working to really get my Etsy store “open”. Technically, it is open now, but I’m “grand opening” on Sunday. And there is another project I am working on to go with that. So there’s two projects I was planning and working on at a steady pace.

Then, we found out favorite book character day is on Friday. That added another four projects to the list. But it gave me incentive to see if I could knit a five-foot scarf in under a week. (Spoiler alert: I finished in two days. Maybe a whole four hours of work into it?)

I’ve also committed to helping my mom re-open her Etsy Store this week before a major event at her work. And after a major event in her life, but that is her story to tell (and she should, hint hint). So I’ve put off some things for that until I finish this costume, but I’m getting to those, too.

While it can be stressful to have so many things going on at once, I think it helps. It gives that extra push to get things done that sometimes is lacking when you only have one or two things to do.

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