Christmas Knitting

Well, now that Christmas is over, I can share my middle-of-the-night-lighted-pictures of my Christmas knitting.  I really wish I took better and more pictures of these!  This year all of Knut’s siblings (and their spouses) got mittens.  I used this luxurious 80%merino wool/20%bamboo yarn.  It was lovely to work with!

5 sets in all, each mitten had a thick stranded design on the outside and is fully lined with another mitten in a contrasting color in the same yarn on the inside.  I used this “Northman Mitten” pattern which boasted to be big enough to fit large man hands, but after I made the first mitten to gauge, Knut tried it on to test it and it was way too small.  I had to increase the gauge significantly for the ones for Knut’s brothers.  Knut now wants a pair and wants them even bigger and wants me to add a ribbed cuff as well, and to do all that I may have to pick a thicker yarn.  You know, when I get to it.  I love how my family comes up with all of these custom requests without batting an eye.  Silje still “orders” dresses from me using illustrations from her Cinderella book as reference.  (“Mommy, can you make me this dress?  But in purple, and sleeves like this other dress and…) 

Here’s each mitten with the liners exposed.

The big mistake I made was when I was making one of the boys’ mittens, and accidentally made 2 right mittens. I had no desire to frog an entire mitten, so after fuming about it for a few weeks and moving onto another pair in the meantime, I finally broke down and bought more yarn to make 2 left mittens. (Originally I had intended each pair to be a different color.) It took some time to track down the exact color and yarn on the internet because my yarn store was out, but it all eventually worked out.

So, now after these and Solveig’s stocking is done, do you think I have fulfilled my personal goal of developing the skill of the stranded/fair aisle technique so I can finally make Knut the Norwegian sweater he’s been begging me for?  Perhaps you’ll need to tune in next Christmas…maybe. I’m still a bit nervous about that project.