Mitts in the making

For some time, I've been admiring the Fetching mitts from Knitty that so many folks are making. I longed to make some for my hip, urban daughter, but didn't know if they were really cool. I'm often wrong about these things.

Turns out the concept of fingerless mitts is not only cool, but uber-cool. So when Maureen was home a couple of weekends ago, she picked out some yarn that would also be acceptable. She selected a lavendar Paton's Brilliant, which was a total surprise to me - not her usual hip, urban black -- but she thought this color would look nice to complement an early-spring ensemble. This was fine with me, particularly since it would not require me to race madly to complete said mitts.

The gauge of my swatch was totally off the Fetching pattern requirements, though. I didn't want to increase my needle size, and I did want to stick with the yarn Maureen liked. So I gulped, drew a deep breath, and decided to just make up a pattern. I've made tons of mittens, after all. I can do math. How hard could it be?

So far, it's not been hard at all.

I'm doing a plaited cable right down the middle, gradual decreases to taper toward the wrist, and a few rows of ribbing on smaller-sized needles at the inside of the wrist to sort of draw it in a little. At this point, I have five to six needles going on the thing, so it's a little like handling a porcupine. Don't know how it'll all work out, but I'm having a lot of fun in the process.

Thanks to Tracy's recent post on Wool Windings about keeping good notes while knitting, I've been doing exactly that...so hopefully the left one will exactly mirror the right one.

They're not Fetching...but still fetching. And perhaps even cool.