Dashing Mitts

100_0257_00, originally uploaded by butterflyjones03.

Here are the Dashing Mitts I made back in November for hubby.
I used Patons Decor yarn - soft and washable.
Love these lots
Vanessa - Upstate NY

More crochet

I love my book Virka muddar (wrote about it in my post January 4) and can't stop making new ones from it. Here are my latest from the hook.

one more pair of Serpentine

Following the purple pair below, I made another pair of red Serpentine mitts for my sister's birthday, as her office is chilly in winter. (Again the mysterious Chinese sock/baby wool yarn.)

They were again a quick and pleasing project, and the pattern is highly recommended.
This is a good project to practise cabling without a needle.
I even worked on the cable panel on my bus/subway/streetcar commute!

However that may have been a real moment of hubris, as I made an error on the last cable row. When I tried to correct it with a crochet hook (not on a moving vehicle) I actually made the situation much worse, and ended up ripping the whole thing. If I had added a lifeline at the start of the cable panel I would not have had to do the ribbing all over .... however I think it only took two or three days of commuting to recreate the glove.

Lisa in Toronto

some holiday output

I managed to keep up with my somewhat unrealistic goals of making fingerless mitts for my colleagues at the office in a fairly short time. I started the purple pair in November, but made all the Noro ones in December (to be handed out on 18 Dec).

For the purple Serpentine pair, I used some mysterious Chinese 100% wool sock/baby-weight yarn. The pink ball-band has a nice photo of some sheep on it, and it comes in 100g balls. I think it cost about $1.20 CAD a ball in Beijing.
I really like this pattern and already used it again since then. I used the charts without any problems, but my friend who used the word instructions found errors in some of the rows.

I found the ribbed Maine Morning Mitt pattern (scroll down at that URL to download free PDF) also very clear and easy, and made three pairs from Noro Kureyon for my remaining colleagues.
The non-ribbed pair was from a free web pattern, and my problem with that one was that it required more than one ball of Noro to complete the pair.
While I am not sure my colleagues would mind if the mitts were really not matched, I tried to work with the Noro as best I could to make them somewhat similar.
I was not happy with the knots in the Noro, and am not sure I would use it again for this type of project.

One of the patterns explained the stretchy sewn bindoff, which I used on all of the above mitts.

I believe all the mitts were happily received!

Lisa in Toronto