Winter's not quite over

Perhaps you've heard that there's been a bit of snow here in the East this year. . .

And snow means shoveling. Our next-door neighbors beat us to it almost every time. To show my appreciation:

Maine wool from Bartlett yarns: Mountain Green with Dark Red Heather, and Lupine with Aqua Heather.

With more cold weather expected this week, I was just in time.

A 4-Thumb Night

With as much snow as we've had here in Southeastern Pa this past month, I've been trapped in the house surprisingly often.  This has forced me to read a great many books as well as watch some interesting Netflix shows, play with my camera and knit.  So far this week alone I've knit three pairs of mittens.  I showed a pair yesterday for Valentines Day but hadn't done the thumbs on the other two pairs.  Thumbs tend to be so fiddly that I put them off and then what happens but you've got a bunch of that kind of work to do all piling up.  Argh... the life of a snowbound knitter!

As we settled in last night to watch the first episode of the second season of House of Cards I forced myself to knit those thumbs.  I whipped out three thumbs in an hour, a thumb every 20 minutes seems reasonable but is actually sort of slow as it's just not much knit fabric.  With picking up, knitting-in-the-round on a very few stitches and then the decreases and finishing in the threads, it just takes awhile.  On top of all that I had to wait to complete thumb four as we watched a foreign film (Haute Cuisine).  I couldn't fiddly about with a thumb while reading the subtitles.  I guess I'm a good knitter just not a great knitter.

These mittens were knit using Elizabeth's Pattern, size 7 needles and Andes 100% wool yarn.  We are planning on sending these mittens to the Maine Mitten Project unless something more urgent arises.  These photos are pre-wash and blocking.  Knitting buddies, stop giving me the Edvard Munch Scream look, I know, I'll go do it now!

Red Mittens

I believe the challenge for this month was red...

The color red is hard to photograph.  I hope you can see it on your computer!

leftovers

I had yarn left over from the silly hats I made for Christmas presents. I decided to use it up by making more stripey hats to give away:

I had very little left of any of the colors when I finished -- in fact, I had to rip out the green and purple hat several times before I engineered the stripes in such a way that they'd reach all the way to the end.

The yarn was thinner than I'd like -- the hats are bound for Maine so I wanted them to be very warm -- so I held the yarn double. With a cast-on of 72 stitches the knitting went quickly. But this is what confronted me after that!

It felt like weaving in the ends took as long as the actual knitting. Whenever I try to carry the yarn up when I am making stripes, it looks bad and feels lumpy, so this is what I had to do. (Yes, there was one more hat -- the Mission Falls colors seen upper left -- but (1) it refused to give me a decent photograph and (2) it's been claimed by a member of this household.)

now, that's my kind of Valentine!

Yes, I do like red. . . why do you ask?

This month's category, in honor of my least favorite holiday: knit something red.