Bring on the cold

In 2006 I made 2 pairs of mittens using the Elegant Eskimo Felted Mittens (pdf) pattern and I donated them to Dulaan but I coveted them something fierce. Yes, they were bright and maybe a tad but tacky but I just loved the furry cuffs and the whole mitten thing. I felt sure that with the right choice of materials, they could be more funky and less tacky.

Now, at long last, I have a pair of my very own and they are fabulous.

Don't you love the fluffiness of the cuffs?

The fur is Liberty by KFI and I have no idea where I got it although I suspect it was a sale at AC Moore or on Elann. That's how I got most of the novelty stuff in my stash. The brown yarn is KP Wool of the Andes in chocolate. I started these mittens in January and ran out of yarn so I had to wait for one more ball to arrive. When it did it was the wrong dye lot but, as it turns out, it matches perfectly. I dare yo to find the spot where one ended and the other began. I have no idea where it is anymore.


They even look great in the bright light.

The pattern may be called elegant Eskimo but, to me, these are Troll Mitts. I wore them the other day for the first time and I kept shaking my wrists to fluff up the cuffs. It's just like those little dolls where you would smooth out the hair and then shake them to make it wild again.

The pattern is a good one and it works very well but I think that it woould make me even happier if the wrists tapered a bit more from the thumb. I also think that the thumb is a little too shallow as written. I added a bit but I could've added even more.

I love these mittens very, very much. I'm not sure that the people behind me at the stop light the other night would appreciate them. I was so busy shaking them to fluff up the cuffs and just reveling in the funkiness that it took me a minute or 2 to notice that the light had turned green. Oooops! I think I can be forgiven though because the weather here hasn't provided too many opportunities for mitten wearing. Today it's not going to get above freezing so I'll wear my mittens with pride.

Pay it Forward

I’m not sure where to start. This weekend was productive and wonderful but there was one thing that happened that just left me speechless. Lets start there.

I wound up going to Sugarloaf with my girls on Sunday. It was a gorgeous day and, more importantly, the Brenda's Yellow Bag was finished in time so we went. There was so much to see. Many times the girls saw stuff that tickled them but Stinkerbelle fell hardest for one thing. There was a very colorful booth where a man had made wind chimes that look like hot air balloons. He makes a wood frame and stretches the fabric over it. Beneath it hangs either a traditional basket or some other figure, with the chimes below. Stink was drawn to the one you see here with the dolphins. She wanted it very much but I resisted and told her I’d think about it.

Later in the day we were passing by the booth and she asked if I had made up my mind. We looked at it for a while and I told her, as I reached for a business card, that I just couldn’t do it that day. It wasn’t unreasonably expensive but we had bought a bunch of stuff already and I felt like I needed to put the brakes on.

This is when the vendor did something that left me speechless. He reached up, unhooked it, and gave it to Stink. I sputtered something like “you don’t have to” but he insisted. I reached for my wallet and he refused. I was shocked. Stink was amazed too. He told her that he wanted to give it to her. Suddenly I was struck with the idea of paying it forward and explained it to Stink. We thanked him and, as we walked away, we discussed how we’ll pay it forward. The timing is perfect because for the next 2 weeks I’ll be knitting unto others.

I worked on the yellow bag to distraction most of last week and by Saturday night I was close enough to being finished that I just planted myself on the couch and stayed there until it was done. I knit until my fingers started to go numb and then I knit some more. Somewhere after SNL the bag finally went into the washer for the first of 3 felting cycles and at 3 am my head finally hit the pillow. Tired doesn’t even begin to cover it.

I blocked the bag a bit and delivered it, still damp, to Brenda, who makes the funky beaded earrings I wear. (You may remember that I showed you some of them as part of my answer to the funky scarf swap questionnaire. I’ve been buying them from her for years and my daughters and I both wear them.) She liked it! I am so relieved. I love making stuff for people and I’m incredibly flattered when they ask for something but I always worry that it may not be what they hoped for.

I didn’t use a pattern for the bag so, instead I’ll give you a few stats and observations on it. The bag isn’t deep, only an inch or so, but it’s roughly one foot tall and one foot wide which is just what I was aiming for. I used a bit more than 4 balls of Cascade 220 (in 5 colors) to make it and I doubled it throughout.

I’m happy with the circles which I added randomly throughout the bag. I know that I complained about the intarsia. I really do stay away from it normally but there are some projects that just need it and this was one of them. The thing that made it bearable this time was that I didn’t bother to weave in any of the ends of the yarn and, instead, I tied them off inside the bag and clipped them after it was felted. Weaving them in would have driven me round the bend.

The strap for this bag is only 6 stitches wide so I knit it in garter stitch to add thickness and, hopefully, strength. It’ll hold but I think that a more substantial strap may have been better. It just doesn’t feel like enough to me.

In the end, the most problematic aspect of this bag was fixing a value to it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to be compensated in some way for my work and I know that it has value but I’m not comfortable thinking in those terms. That’s why I’ll never have a booth at a craft fair or sell my stuff in any formal way. I can’t imagine putting myself out there like that. I was one of those kids who couldn’t handle asking for a raise when she babysat and I haven’t changed all that much. Brenda did give me some mighty cool stuff though.