been busy, too

These mittens and hats will be on their way to San Francisco today. You'll recognize the green and lavender Blue Sky super bulky as leftovers from the baby blanket project from earlier this year. The hats went really fast on #15 needles using the "Really Warm Hat" pattern from www.knittingschooldropout.com. The Blue Sky mittens are "Outsider Mittens" from www.spudandchloe.com. They worked up fast, of course, except that knitting the super bulky yarn down to a tighter gauge made my hands hurt.

The other four pairs of mittens are all from Ann Budd's Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns with the thumb attachment tweaked to eliminate the hole and the need for darning it together where the thumb meets the hand. I think darning is for worn items--it rankles me to need to do it on newly created things. The yarn is bulky Icelandic Lopi for the mittens on the ends and SERRV yarn from Nepal plus sock yarn for interest for the others. These mittens actually took no more time than the super bulky ones even though there are more stitches simply because the yarn moved more easily on the needles.

The mittens were great on-the-go and sit-and-wait projects for me. I was so pleased to turn down time into productive time this way. Now to pick up that baby blanket again . . .

--Becky