2 pair o'mittens

Mittens are great... 2 nights work & some sewing up and you have a present sorted. Both pairs are made with Cleckheaton Country 8 ply. The light green pair are done on 3.75mm needles and the mauve pair are on 4mm needles. All the knitting is done, but I need to finish sewing up the other green mitten and both of the mauve ones.

The beauty of this pattern is that it is simple and scalable - that is - just use varied weights of wool and the appropriate needles to get bigger or smaller sizes. For a 3-4yr old, use 8ply + 3.75mm, slightly older use 4mm etc. It's a 1940s Patons pattern called Cezanne from the Patons Knitting Book R.10 (p10-11). This book has lots of lovely gloves, mitten and hat patterns. Unfortunately my copy of the book is missing the front & back covers (which does include some of the pattern info).

Time for some pics

Here's where I'm at with the mandorla... more procrastination to follow...

On the other hand the scarf is coming along quite nicely still.

Motivation lagging in heat...

The very warm weather has meant that I'm just not inclined to pick up the enormous bulk of the mandorla jumper - which is currently in the process of being sewn up. Probably still 3 hours work left sewing in all the ends and the two buttons and figuring out exactly how I plan to fix the front opening (or whether I bother).

In the meantime the vastly more portable scarf has come on well, into the second ball now. Have also 3/4 finished a pair of mittens. I had forgotton how quick the mittens are to finish. May do a few more sets as they don't end up on top of you the way other projects seem to.

I sense that the knitting evenings may be restricted to the colder days now. Though last year the start of spring was gorgeous and then winter took hold again til nearly Xmas - I'll see how it goes.

A sleeve, then collar

A quick update:
Blue mandorla - I finished off the first sleeve last night and cast on the second. Once that's done, need to work out exactly how I'm going to manage the collar...
Stripey scarf - it's getting longer, quite like the pattern & stripe combo...
White cardi - fits the recipient who then managed to get green texta on it - washable green texta at least. It worked very well with her pink dress over white leggings combo - very cute.

Have been doing a bit of sewing - a ballet slipper bag and a frock for miss, taking up trousers so I can actually wear them, plans for a few new bits & bobs...

Busyness other than knitting

Haven't made much headway in the last couple of weeks... Cast on the first sleeve of the mandorla jumper and have done approx 10cm of it! It's a big project to lug about though, so the far more portable scarf has been growing steadily. Must finish one before starting anything else.

Have a big bunch of mending to do as well. That must get done this weekend - it's supposed to be miserable weather so hopefully there will be some opportunity for sorting it all out. May even drag out the sewing machine and make some tops & skirts out of the material I bought ages ago.

Lots of ideas swirling about in my head at the moment but the general busy-ness has swamped motivation. I'm sure the tide will turn again soon...

Sleeves to go

Work on the mottled blue jumper is progressing, though slower than usual due to other priorities (non craft related). The back and front are finished and one sleeve has been started. One thing that I didn't consider when re-designing from rib to stocking stitch was that the front "overlap" would curl. D'oh. It's salvagable without having to re-knit the whole piece, just annoying that I only thought of the consequences halfway through the second front neck section. Managed to restrain myself at Spotlight today - even with Jet, Inca and Caressa Express on sale. Must finish other projects before buying more for the stash.

The "brainless" knitting project is also coming along - about 20cm so far. This is the easily portable scarf in the multicolour self-striping wool. Would definitely use the stitch combo again on a scarf in nicer wool as it knits up prettily.

Piggle MkII

It's being given away today, so I thought I'd better take a photo (or two). Knitted in Cleckheaton 8ply country in a pinky mauve colour. Photo above with flash, below without.