1 post tagged “mittens”
So, I saw the Twilight movie, and I know there are a lot of people out there that loved it, but I thought it was really bad. Bad to the point that I was sort of embarrassed for the people involved in it. The upside to the movie is that because it was set in the winter in a cold, snowy little town, the characters wore lots of really nice knitwear. One of the most admired pieces of knitwear in the movie was a pair of long, cabled mittens worn by the lead female character, Bella.
Within a couple of weeks of the movie opening, a talented and industrious knitter had created a pattern to replicate the mittens. I've been needing some mittens or gloves and these are really fabulous mittens, so I decided to make a pair.
These are knitted with Cascade 220 Heathers (held double to try to get the gauge of a bulky yarn) on size 8 needles. That's right, double held yarn on a size 8 needle. Needless to say, the cabling was pretty tight on this and the decreases at the tips about killed me. Especially on the second glove when I screwed it up, twice, and had to tink and redo it. Even with the yarn held double, it only takes two skeins of the 220, which is a pretty economical knit.
The pattern was extremely well written. It literally takes you row by row through the mittens. The only problem that I had was on the thumb decreases. I couldn't figure out what the pattern was trying to tell me to do, so on the left mitten I ended up with a weird pointy thumb. I did my own thing on the right mitten and it came out nicely.
The only other modification that I made was to add another cable repeat in the hand of the mittens. The pattern calls for a bulky weight (or maybe even super bulky) on size 8 needles, so with my double stranded yarn, I was still a little small on gauge. Between the smaller gauge and my fairly long fingers, I needed the extra cable repeat to make the mittens long enough. This was my first experience knitting with the yarn double stranded and it wasn't too bad. I would have liked to have used the weight of yarn called for in the pattern, but I couldn't find one in a color that I liked. I liked the color of this yarn because it goes well with my favorite (ok only) handknit scarf.
It goes will with my casual brown coat.
And it goes well with my dressier black coat.
The smaller gauge of the yarn held double did mean that the mittens were pretty snug before blocking, but blocking them loosened them up a bit and they fit really nicely now. I love these. They almost make me excited about returning to school in a couple of weeks just because that means I have a reason to leave the house and wear them on a regular basis.
