One Very Nice Mitten

First, thank you for all the nice comments on Jodie's immense shawl! MMario is indeed, as John-Francis pointed out, a dude who knits, and we should support them whenever possible. And I do, believe me--I read plenty o' men's blogs from the "famous" ones like Brooklyn Tweed and Franklin Habit (who I even met once) to people I consider personal friends like Colin Andersson and Ray Whiting. I guess I should write a post about my favorite knitting dudes and their products and projects some time!

But wait, I was gonna blog about this:

The first of my Orange Ethnic Mittens is done. It took longer than I expected, because I keep doing other things, like tarot bags and cooking for the family (I am sure you will be jealous of the delicious organic liver and onions, baked sweet potatoes and steamed cauliflower we had last night--weird combo but good). But I digress, again...

The pattern is lots of fun to make, and I have a feeling these mittens will be like Cookie A socks for me--once you make one, you want to make the rest of the patterns in the book! I keep thinking of different color combinations and trying to decide which of the patterns I like the best. Then I thought of making matching socks. I should have enough yarn left over to make socks. But, before that, perhaps I should finish the other mitten, huh? Stop with the incessant blogging and go knit!

But wait, I did want to give a hint for anyone who wants to knit patterns from Mostly Mittens, by Charlene Schurch. On her charts, decreases are shown by the pattern rows getting smaller. I had a bit of trouble remembering where to decrease, so I drew symbols for SSK and K2tog on the edge stitches, where the decreases go, to remind me what to do. The other hint I have is to not forget to go back to the general guidelines for each section of the mitten when you start doing something different--there are useful guidelines in there! But don't worry, other than mis-counting every so often, I didn't find this pattern difficult at all. I encourage you to give these a try--they make great gifts if you live in Texas (I plan to wear mine at high school football games--I have needed some for the last 5 years--my gloves get chilly).

If you are so inclined, please think of me today, as I have a first interview for a REAL job, and those are very, very rare for technical writers/instructional designers in Austin. Having work to do will cut me back to my more normal blogging schedule again, but I promise to not do a big drought like I went through early in the year.

PS: I added the tarot bag to Ravelry, so if you make one, please link to this!