It’s starting to get nippy outside. I wake up cold in the morning, and socks are more of a necessity, rather than an option, at this point.

I am very pleased with this turn in the weather. This last summer was very hot, and much more humid, than we’re used to here in the valley. I was tired of feeling like I was covered in sweat the moment after I hopped out of the shower. But now that the temperature is beginning to drop, I am reminded that my extremities tend to be much chillier than the rest of me.

For some reason, I have never knit myself a pair of actual mittens¹. I have knit myself armwarmers², fingerless gloves³, convertable-mittens⁴, and even mittens that were not for me⁵.

But Christmas is coming, and I have dedicated myself to knitting two pairs of mittens for two friends, which means I have spent far, far too much time on Ravelry, looking at mitten patterns. There are so many options when it comes to covering hands, and I still haven’t settled on a pattern for the second pair. Although, I keep contemplating mittens for me too.

I seem to be drawn to color-work mittens. After knitting exactly one color-work mitten in the round and loving how it turned out, I seem to not be able to see anything else. Case in point, only one mitten in the mitten montage above is a non-color work mitten. I feel like I need to be knitting a pair of mittens right now, never mind that I’m still working on a sweater and have the sleeves calling/mocking me, and I ‘d like to wear that sweater soon, too.

If all goes as planned, I am going to need mittens this Christmas, for a trip I’m taking with my immediate family⁶, and so I dream about mittens. Poor E, he’s been subject to a lot of “what do you think about this pattern? How about this one? Do you think these would look okay?” He’s been a good sport, but he doesn’t particularly care about mittens.

This is about how I felt about socks when I first learned to knit them a few years ago. I did nothing by browse sock patterns, hoping to find the elusive “one” that would speak to me. Of course, I just knitted a bunch of socks. Oddly, I know that I have issues knitting the second sock because of it’s sameness, but I don’t think this will apply to me when knitting mittens. Perhaps this is because mittens are slightly different, even when identical. After all, your thumb is on different sides of your hands.

The only thing keeping me from knitting a bunch of mittens is my holiday knitting list, and my lack of available yarn stash⁷. Otherwise, I’d be doing more than just dreaming of mittens.

1. Well, there was that one time… I was still learning how to knit/read a pattern, and somehow the mittens I had knit in yellow acrylic yarn ended up two wildly different sizes, even though I had used the same needles for both of them. [back]
2. Actually, I’ve knit this pattern twice, in cotton and in wool. I love them both. [back]
3. Still really, really sad that Honey stole one and buried it where I can’t find it. The one’s I knit were so deliciously soft and warm. [back]
4. I suppose these count as mittens, but since I had to knit finger holes, I don’t really think it counts; especially as I inexplicably lost one on a class camping trip [back]
5. Now that I think about it, it makes sense that the ones I knit turned out pretty big, since I only knit them in one color and so the color-stranding that would have made them smaller didn’t happen. [back]
6. It’s not set in stone yet, and I don’t want to jinx it. Suffice to say I should be filling out paperwork for my new passport. [back]
7. And I have rummaged through it. I have a lot of lace-weight, which is unsuitable for mittens, and a dearth of DK/worsted weight, which is of course just perfect. [back]

Tagged: on Tuesday, October 6, 2009 · No Comments »