Train Mittens

My DIL asked me to make a new pair of mittens for my grandson, as he had grown out of those from last season. When we were visiting in November, I asked what kind of mittens he would like, and his older sister piped up: “Train Mittens!”. A search of Ravelry brought up a couple of ideas;

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/rainbow-express—real-train-mittens

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/victors-train-selbu-mittens

But we settled on these:

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/tuut-tuut-said-the-train

While the pattern was free, it was no longer posted. The author said that you would message her for a chart. It wasn’t until we were visiting after Christmas that I finally had the time to work on these mittens. Since I was planning to do them on a train trip with the kids, I needed the chart sooner, so I decided to make my own chart, using this as a guide.

I had a couple of false starts, and needed to change the needle size and the stitch count. But while riding on a long train ride, these were coming to fruition. I used these old mittens as a guide to size up from. All my knitting boos were at home.

First mitten was finished, and I left my handwritten pattern at the house! So the mitten became my pattern for the second one.

Can you spot the difference between the 2 mittens? One has the blue yarn held in front, and one the black. I always knit Fair-Isle with both yarns in my left hand, and only use my right hand if I have a third color. I had never noticed a dominance before. I am wondering if it has anything to do with being on DPN’s as opposed to circular needles. It will also be interesting to see how/if these even out in tension as he wears them.

I made the back and thumbs very simple.

And Voila, finished before we left. I opted to knit the train engine on both mittens, as opposed to a tender on one of the mittens. If I did it again, I would reverse the pattern. When I gave them to my grandson, he put them on and said CRASH as he smashed his two little hands together.

Mostly knit on Amtrak riding through the beautiful Colorado Rockies.

#trainmittens

#daleofnorway

#babyull

Holiday mittens

On our recent vacation to Denver, we took a trip on the train from Denver to Glenwood Springs.  Such a gorgeous train ride.   I do not have any videos of it, I am hoping that my sister can provide one that I can include here.  12 of us, plus Izumi took the 6 hour train ride.  We loved it, would do it again.

When we arrived in Glenwood Springs, I gave my Nieces and Nephew the mittens that I had been working on for them.  I was very happy with how they all turned out.  The butterfly mittens were my own design, and unfortunately, I did not get good photos of them.  I want to write up that pattern when I get a chance.

Included in the Christmas mittens gifting were Squirrel mittens for Izumi and Sayaka.

We had a grand time, and enjoyed lots of family time together.  So fun to have little kids at Christmas again.

The Hotel Colorado is decorated to the 9’s for the Holidays, and it always puts me in the best mood.

Christmas Eve and Christmas night we all had a private dining room to eat in and celebrate with.  The hotel even had us posted as “Frances Figg Christmas Dinner”!

More to post soon from that lovely vacation.  As always, it is great to see Izumi, she changes so much, so quickly in between the times that we get to see her.

Snow Day

Today was a snow day for our school.  While we did not get a lot of snow here, 4-5”, west of here there was a lot more.  I am taking advantage of this day off after the long holiday weekend, to just craft away.

Mittens have been on my list as of late.  Here are a few of the ones that I have finished.

The squirrel mom and baby were meant for a child, but they ended up being a small adult size.  These were made with Daletta yarn from Dale of Norway.

Next I worked on these mittens, again intending that they become a child’s mittens, but these were too small, so are heading off to Izumi.  Yarn is Baby Ull.

Having trouble getting my sizes correct, I finally asked a friend of mine who teaches 2nd grade to trace a couple of her students hands.  That was so helpful, and I finally got a right-sized pair of child’s mittens.

These mittens had been on my knit-to list for many many years.  When my son was little, his best friend Sam had mittens like this knit for him by his grandmother.  They used to love to play Stop and Go on the side-walk with these.

Vintage by Berroco was used for the mittens, I was able to get the correct colors and a machine washable yarn. Next, I needed to duplicate stitch the letters on.  None of the white yarn in my stash was the correct weight, so a couple of friends dropped some by and I was able to finish them up.  I am really happy with how they turned out.

So, I was on a roll.  The next pair is a Dale of Norway pattern, using Dale Tiur, which create a beautiful halo over the patterning.  Looks like a good child size fit.

Feeling that I had this sizing thing down,  I found these child mittens on a Ravelry search, and free to boot.  I fell in love with the cuteness of this pattern, and the fact that the mittens did not really match.  After casting on with Baby Ull, I quickly realized that they were going to be adult sized – 64 sts in a round, I should have known better.  In fact they fit my adult hand sized (which is large), so I opted to make them for myself.  I combined the bottom of both mittens first one on each side, and then added the top of the single snowman mitten and snowflakes repeated both sides.  I chose to put the thumb at the same side, so the result is that there is no right or left hand mitten, and each would have a slightly different appearance when worn.

These are big, I wish that I had done a simpler rib, I opted for a 1×1 twisted rib, but on every color change row, I knit the purl stitches to not have the overlap of color showing, which had the effect of not pulling in very much at the cuff.  And, I added a few more rows before the pattern which I should have probably left out.  The thumb could have been a couple of stitches wider and perhaps a bit longer.  In spit of all this, I do believe that they will keep me warm.  Now they desperately need a washing to ease the stitches, and the embroidery so that the snowmen will look like something.

And they do fit my big mitts.

Tiny Hands

Tiny Hands get cold too.  This pattern for thumbless mittens was made a few years ago for baby Ria.  I knew that a certain Colorado Baby-to-be would need these also.

Pattern: Nordic Baby Mitts
Pattern Source: Free from Knituition
Yarn: Dale of Norway Baby Ull, teal blue and mint green
Needles: US 2
Date Started: 11/?/17
Date Finished: 11/20/17
Finished Dimensions: baby 6-9 months

Next, I decided to try my hand at designing a pair of mittens, ones that the parents would love.  Had to be dog themed of course.  I had a lot of fun with this, and would love to publish the finished pattern.  For years, I have been on the search for a good knitting pattern template that I could use.  If there are any suggestions out there, it would be much appreciated.

The first mitten took a bit of trial and error, both in getting checkerboard pattern that worked and minimized dealing with long floats.  I am really happy with how they turned out, these are a bit bigger than the first, and I also opted for inserting a string to tie them on with.

After looking at the photos, I feel that they both would do with a nick soaking and drying flat to even out the stitches.  So excited to gift these.

Selbuvotter

The second of my 3 book reviews, it will be a fairly short written piece.  This is a very comprehensive book on the art of Selbuvotter mittens, over 300 pages of history, charts, graphs and photographs. The only unfortunate part is that it is written in Norwegian, with no English translation, so the history component is lost on me.  However, the charts for knitting speak a Universal Language, and I will just let some of the photos speak for themselves.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The book is a bit hard to come by, I purchased mine at Schoolhouse Press.   This link has some great examples of pages from the book also.

I love the fact that the traditional mittens are all in B&W.  The book shows inspiration from snowflakes to horns to flowers and how they were interpreted.  It would be nice if the book were printed in English one day, I think that the audience would increase greatly.  The beauty of knitting though is, a chart is universal.

Again, printed in Norway, with a ribbon bookmark attached.  Definitely a great library resource.

Lloyd

I finished my poodle mittens about a week ago.  This pattern had been gifted to me on my Birthday a couple of years ago.  I used Dale Tiur.  They are big, but so are my hands!

 

And for the inside of the thumbs, in honor of the coolest poodle ever…

 

To be used next winter, that I will always remember this smiling mug!  I miss him so.

Girl’s Weekend

I have not posted a lot recently, as I have been knitting the same pattern over and over again.  For last weekend’s 3rd annual girls away retreat, I made a pair of fingerless mitts for everyone in attendance (Free pattern here).  As the list grew and grew, I had to knit faster.  Luckily there were not any last minute additions.

It was so much fun to give these out.  I laid them on my bed and invited everyone in to choose a pair.

A glove toast!

The weekend was at a beautiful house on the shores of Lake Michigan.  My first step into my home State in over a year (the longest time away ever).

A weekend of great friends

Amazing food

And a few drinks…

So much laughter. Until next year…

Variations on a Theme

Lately I have been making fingerless mitts almost exclusively. These are all a variation on my pattern for Koigu Twisted Mitts.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Last week I sent out a pair to my son Ethan and his Girlfriend.  They are both in school, without a car, and out walking or biking a lot.  I thought that these would come in handy.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I have made this pattern so many times, that it is intuitive.  And, it is fun to change it up a bit.  Uses a lot of my leftover sock weight yarn, all you need is about 50 grams total.  Recently I have been making some that are smaller, as I realized that not everyone had big mitts like me.  A very easy take-along pattern to use.  In conjunction, when I have ribbing top and bottom, I use the tubular cast-on and tubular bind-off.  Both of these have been covered here and here.

Now I can show you!

Now I am able to brag blog about these gifts that I sent out to Ria.

The first was a Baby Surprise Jacket that I knit using some of my early handspun.  Mrs. Peterson was visiting and gave me the idea last summer, and I do think that it came out well.  Jill skyped with me when they were opening the presents, and it fits Ria perfectly.  She, however, was only interested in trying to eat the buttons.

Pattern: Baby Surprise jacket
Pattern Source: The Opinionated Knitter (book)
Yarn: Handspun from early spinning days
Needles: US 6
Date Started: 8/8/13
Date Finished: 8/19/13
Finished Dimensions: 58″ wide x 32″ deep

The second sweater was a Dale of Norway, my go-to for baby gifts, they are just so beautiful.  This is a bright pink and tangerine, with bright accents.  Will look beautiful with her gorgeous dark coloring.

Pattern: #14206 Dale of Norway Pattern
Pattern Source: Booklet #142
Yarn: Dale of Norway Baby Ull
Needles: US 1 & 2
Date Started: 8/8/13
Date Finished: 8/19/13
Finished Dimensions: 12-24 months

And lastly, this was an SOS from my sister Diane who was out the past couple of weeks taking care of Ria, a walk on a cool day necessitated some mittens for her hands.  Apparently, hard to come by in California.  I was hoping that these would fit, since I had no little models here to try them on, and they were the perfect size (she is 6 months old).  These were so fun to make, it is a free pattern from Knituition.  I changed the pattern on the back of the mitts to match the edge on the front, and to avoid long float carries every other row.  These will definitely be on my “to knit for new babies” list.

Pattern: Nordic Baby Mitts
Pattern Source: Free from Knituition
Yarn: Dale of Norway Baby Ull, blue and mint green
Needles: US 2
Date Started: 8/8/13
Date Finished: 8/19/13
Finished Dimensions: baby 6-9 months

My extra special knitted wrapping paper held the 2 sweaters, I save this only for special hand knit goods.  It was a birthday gift from a friend a couple of years ago, I wish that I could find more…

Michigan Interlude

Last week I was in Michigan with my mother, and had the added benefit of seeing my niece and nephew, and getting to take care  of them for a bit.  While there, my mother was complaining of cold hands.  Personal experience with Dan and Sofia told me exactly what to do—make fingerless mitts! Not possessing a GPS or smart phone, I still rely on printing out old-fashioned maps.  Grand Rapids is not a city that I am familiar with, but it is not that big. Googling yarn stores turned up  A Grand Skein, and I drove there during a break to purchase yarn for those fingerless mitts.  I loved this yarn store, and the owner could not have been more helpful and nice.  So, I purchased yarn to make 2 pair of mitts, and noticed something on the way out.  The mitts were very simple, and the yarn was so soft, Mendocino by Crystal Palace, not a yarn that I had tried before, but I really loved it. What does not show up well on the photos is the color range of the yarn, a rainbow effect, plyed with a pink color, they were very pretty.

My mother loved them, and within a short period of time, her hands felt warmer.

What kept coming back to me was the thing I saw while at the yarn shop.  A big skein winder, with amazing ball-bearing gears, it spun so smoothly.  You know where this is going… I went back the next day and mulled it over for a bit and decided to purchase it.  The skein winder is made in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and I could not locate it online, I did find this demo video, and this one however.  Over the years I have learned when I find something I really like, especially if it is unique and not readily available, just purchase it.  This would have been too hard to ship, so I splurged and brought it home with me.  The winder came with either a table mount or a stand with the option of a table mount, I went full hog for the entire set.  If I want to become a custom yarn dyer, I might need the dyers 5′ winder!!  The workmanship on this is wonderful, and has been improved from the video to include pegs to wind a 1 1/2, 2, 2 1/2 and 3 yard skein.  The walnut detailing is just a plus!

And I purchased this yarn also for fingerless mitts, Ella Rae Lace Merino worsted, but did not get them knit up prior to leaving…