Marsha's Reading Mitts

August 9: I realized that I had not yet made something for my MIL's birthday. Yikes! I think this is the perfect pattern and a good yarn to choose for her. I finished up through the thumb division on the first mitt today.

August 11: Not much knitting mojo lately. But I did finish knitting the main part of the first mitt today and sewed the top edge down. Still need to sew the bottom and add in the thumb. Then I get to do it all over again! It does look and feel really nice.

August 16: Finally finished the last bits of the first mitt and started the second one getting up to the point of dividing stitches for the thumb. Need to finish tomorrow as MIL is arriving the day after.

August 17: And done! The sewing to create the picot edging went a lot more smoothly this time (not that it was bad for the first mitt) as I feel I really got the hang of it. I usually pass up projects with picot edging because I don’t like the sewing up part, but now I think I can handle it so I can add more projects to my queue ~grin~. I’m looking forward to giving these to my MIL.

Pattern: Susie's Reading Mitts by Janelle Masters (free download on Ravelry)
Yarn: Cascade Yarns Alpaca Lana D'Oro in yellow (colorway #1105)

Malabrigo Mahogany Hat

July 29: I decided not to use a smaller needle for the ribbing. Since size 8 seems to work best for hats for me, that’s what I went with. I did only about 2 rounds tonight.

July 30: Finished the other 8 rounds of the ribbing. I overdid it this morning with doing some weeding outside (while 8 months pregnant) and as a result, I was just wiped out today and didn’t feel much like doing anything!

August 2: Right after the ribbing comes the first round with cables (1x1). I’m definitely glad that I’ve had practice cabling without a cable needle because this round would have been even more painful had I actually tried to use a cable needle. I’ll just say that I didn’t enjoy knitting that round very much and I’m glad that it’s only about 3 rounds (if my skim of the pattern is right) that contains these 1x1 cables. Why? Well, I’m a tight knitter and I didn’t look ahead to see that the cables came right in the next round so didn’t try to consciously knit the previous round a little more loosely (which is what I usually do). Second, the needles that I’m using, although some of my favorites, do not have sharp tips, which made grabbing onto the stitches really difficult. I’m most thankful, though, that I chose not to use the smaller needle for the ribbing because moving from a smaller needle to a bigger one on this round would have made it virtually impossible for me to get it finished without a bunch of dropped stitches and probably a bit of cursing. If I ever decide to knit this pattern again, I’ll make sure at the very least that I have needles with much sharper tips.

August 2 (later): I finished the remaining cable rows. Trying to knit more loosely on the previous row helped a lot but it was still not a fun section. Now it’s just 2x2 ribbing, so easy peasy.

August 6: So, the pattern said to knit 2x2 ribbing until the hat measured 7-1/4”. At 6-1/4” I tried it on and it seems like it was going to be a good fit for my head at that point, so I decided not to knit the last inch. Apparently the decrease section goes by really quickly (I should have realized that 7 rows wouldn’t take much space). So the finished hat doesn’t quite come all the way down to cover my ears, which it would have done had I just finished that last inch. Alas. I guess I should have listened to the pattern.

One place, however, not to follow the pattern is on decrease round 5. If you do the last K1 on the repeat then it will mean that you are taking the next knit stitch + purl stitch when you K2tog. Then you would purl a knit stitch, which would make the ribbing pattern off. So I just got rid of that last K1 (making the repeat K2tog, P1, K1, P1) and I think that really was what was intended because everything worked out just right after that and I ended up with the 13 stitches that the pattern says will remain. So I think Round 5 has an error.

So, listen to the pattern for the length to knit to but make the change on the decrease round 5.

Pattern: Jesse's Christmas Hat by Elspeth Kursh (free Ravelry download)
Yarn: Malabrigo Worsted in Mahogany