Mitten Update

Perhaps by joining Sandy's Warm Hands knit along I will now update this blog once in a while! The Estonian mittens she mentioned I was making is in a post below. Currently I have the fingertip area and thumb to do and they will be finished. Of course it would have made sense to finish them before starting this pair but come on, we're all knitters here, I think we all understand the seduction of a new knitting project.

This pair is for my sister, for Christmas. She requested colorful cuffs but the actual mitten black. The row I'm working on is a braid so I'm close to starting the black. This mitten is bits and pieces of patterns from Lizbeth Upitis' Latvian Mittens book.

I must confess something, I have always loathed metal needles. While trying to get gauge on this pair I really needed a US 1.5 (does anyone make those?). I went to my LYS and purchased a Skacel pair of size 2 thinking the metal would loosen up my stitches, which it did. But the problem, the needles were only 4" and too short. Couldn't find any Skacel in a longer length so I headed up to the craft store. I found 7" alumunaire (or something like that) and bought those. Well, I can't believe it but I love knitting mittens with these! I always wondered why The Harlot is so fond of metal needles, now I get it.

P.S. Forgive any typos, I can't get the spell check to work.