Thursday, October 9, 2008

World's Warmest Mittens, part 3

Work continues on the thrummed alpaca mittens, albeit slowly, since my wonderful Madman has shared his cold with me...
I managed to get a few more rows worked last night, between the hacking, sneezing, and nose-blowing...The pattern would show better if my spinning wasn't quite so lumpy. I'm still having a consistency problem, especially when I'm not spinning laceweight.
Peeling back the needles to give you a view of the inside:

I'm thrumming with the alpaca fleece, too, which is harder than using wool, since alpaca just doesn't have the "grab" that wool does. But I promised WGS alpaca mittens, and alpaca mittens she shall have.
And I finally puzzled out a way (the hard way, I'm sure. Story of my life.) to chart what I'm doing. This is a chunk of Elliphantom's chart, hand-drawn at great effort by yours truly. (Feel free to comment on my Mad Charting Skilz)

The main part is just plain two-color knitting. The orange dots represent where the thrums go. I wrap the stitch normally with the white yarn, but before I pull it through, I add the thrum, then pull both through together, completing the knit stitch. On the next row, I knit the white yarn and the thrum as if they were one strand, and give the thrum a little tug from the back side to make sure it seats itself.
These mittens end up being very warm - two-color knitting is warm in and of itself, just from the extra layers of the carried yarn. Adding in the soft cozy thrums makes them even warmer.

Now I'm going to go lay down on the couch for awhile. And cough. And maybe sneeze. And maybe knit some more.

And I decided that I just didn't have the heart to frog the glove. So now I have 1/2 of two pairs. Unfinished, of course...

*sigh*

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