Guess what Santa brought me for Christmas this year? A yarn swift!!! I’m so excited, and I can’t wait to use it with the ball winder I got two Christmases ago; it will definitely come in handy cause I have a bunch of yarn in hanks that need to be wound and the “over the knee” method is getting old. Yay for parents who shop from wishlists!
Merry Christmas everyone!
No, I haven’t been bitten by any vampires lately. Just the Bella’s Mitten bug.
It would be an understatement to say that I am in love with this pattern; it’s beyond that–I’m absolutely SMITTEN with these mittens. I had forgotten that I wanted to make a pair of these when I first saw someone had written up a pattern for the mittens Bella Swan (actor Kristen Stewart) wears in the movie “Twilight.” After going to a special double-feature of “Twilight” and “New Moon” the night the second one opened, I came out of the theater as a woman on a mission to get herself a pair of these dang cute mittens. I mean, how could I survive this absolutely frigid Arizona winter coldspell we’ve been having without a pair of these (that would be a high of 57 and a low of 35…frigid, I tell you, frigid).
Alas, since I’ve started furiously knitting this pattern, I have yet to make a pair for myself. But I’m okay with that because the pairs I am making are going to worthy recipients. The first pair were a birthday gift, which I converted to fingerless gloves, since my friend works in an office and has been able to get much use out of them while still being able to perform her job. The second pair, which remained full mittens, are in the possession of my sister. I’ll have to wrangle them back from her in order to get a picture. And I have to make three more pairs before I make a pair for myself. Actually, make that two for myself because I’m doing a version of mittens and a version of fingerless.
I don’t know what it is about the horseshoe cable, but I’m just smitten over it, probably because it just makes me feel so clever. Most of the time working stitches out of order can be problematic, but in the case of cables, beautiful, and in the case of horseshoe cable, which has two mirrored cables back-to-back, brilliant.
Ah, I love when knitting makes me feel clever.
Today, December 10th, is my sister Heather’s 22nd birthday. And today, my family celebrates alone because our precious Heather is in heaven. I don’t know what to do today without her here, so I thought I would just post something about her.
I’m wearing a scarf right now that Heather knit for me several Christmases ago. I remember opening a shirt box to find a grey hoodie shirt and a pink striped scarf inside. I was surprised to see this particular scarf in my box, because I had seen her knitting it, and she had told me she was making it for my other sister. All along she had intended it for me, and I had no idea. It always reminds me of the Cheshire Cat from “Alice in Wonderland,” one of my favorite books ever.
After that Christmas, I have worn the shirt and scarf together always. It was a simple gift, but one I have always cherished, even more so now that she is gone. I’m a fairly simple person who is easily pleased with small gifts and attentions, so having Heather knit me a scarf is more memorable than some of the other gifts she spent more money on. Being a knitter myself, I know the time and attention that goes into making even the smallest items, and I always loved it when Heather would give me her scarves that she had knit.
Heather was an erratic knitter–not that she wasn’t good at knitting, quite the opposite. No, it was when she knit that was erratic. She would get a wild hair and buy a bunch of yarn and knit like mad for a time. And then she would just stop. But whenever she did knit, she had such a way of making the most complicated patterns. I learned to knit a couple years after her, and when I realized how intricate it was to make things she thought of as “simple” blew me away. I wished she would have spent more time knitting more, but perhaps that is what makes the few items I have from her even more special.
(picture taken last year during Disneyland vacay for Heather’s b-day. Heather on the left, me on the right)
I love you, my sweet sister Heather. Happy Birthday.
I’m really in love with mittens right now, and I am going to be making a bunch over the next month. The first finished pair to show is my lovely Selbuvotter Annemor #11 (aka traditional Norwegian fair isle mittens), which I finally finished. Remember this post last October about the Selbuvotter “gloves” I had started. If you noticed, I just said I finished a pair of “mittens” not “gloves.” Well, that’s because when I got to the part to start the fingers, I got scared and put the project away, and unfortunately it didn’t resurface until a week ago. After careful deliberation, I decided it would be better if I just made them as mittens and be done with them. So that’s what I did.
On the first mitten, I had already done the cuff
and had moved onto the back of hand pattern.
The tricky thing, and also the beautiful thing, about these mittens is that they are patterned on every inch and every side of knitting. Luckily I can knit with both hands, so it made fair isle stranding very easy (quick explanation: you carry 1 color in one hand and 1 color in the other and only knit with that specific hand when that color is needed–using both hands goes waaaay fast and helps prevent tangles).
Since the pattern was written for gloves, I had to decide how to turn them into mittens and still maintain a pretty pattern on the back of the hand. I looked at other patterns in the book that were mittens and counted the number of rows. I figured out I was able to do a second repeat of the flower/clover pattern and do the mitten decreases.
The thumb was a bit tricky just because they are smaller and it was harder to maneuver the two colors, but luckily my thumbs are short, so I didn’t even complete the whole chart in the pattern. I started the second mitten right away because I knew I would loose momentum if I left it too long, and I was able to finish it in three days. I wore them to work this morning, which was an overcast, rainy, chilly 40 degrees, and they were perfect.
So I got my box of yarn from WEBS yesterday. It was stuffed full of yarny goodness, and I enjoyed stroking and sniffing (wool smells GOOD) each skein as I pulled it from its wedged spot in the box. Classic Elite “Renaissance” yarn was on a super good blowout, so I bought enough yarn to make my mom, my sister, and myself a pair of Bella’s Mittens, essential accessories for all true Twilight fans who also happen to knit.
Anyway, my whole point for ordering the yarn was to get 2 skeins of Malabrigo in Vaa that they finally got in stock so I could finish my Ene shawl. I was scared to pull the skeins out, afraid that they would be too green. However, they match better than I thought they would, so it will work. One skein is really really close, and the other, not as much, so I think when I double-strand them it will mask the mismatch. I hope. And if the color difference is noticeable, then it will just make this shawl even that much more charming. Right?
Optimisim can be such a drag sometimes.
Kountingsheep 