Mittens!

I just finished up the second mitten. All ends are sewn in and pictures are taken. It still needs a nice soak, but that will happen tonight and it will be too wet for photos. Tomorrow is of course a busy day, so no chance to worry about them, so you get them somewhat done.

The right thumb also of course came out better than the left. After all I have had practice doing it, right?

 

 

I'm working on my dad's Cinnamon Eton's Scarf on the drive down to Corvallis and hopefully on the drive back. While there I obviously can't work on it, so I'm going to see if I can cast on this Baby Cardi for Cole.

Earlier this afternoon I boiled up nine eggs, my new tray holds eighteen deviled eggs. Two of the eggs were not cooperative and did not want to nicely give up their shells. I had to boil up an extra two eggs. I need to go see if they are more cooperative. I'll pipe in the filling tomorrow morning before we leave. Supposed to be down at my cousin's house by 1pm, so a busy morning.

NaBloPoMo - National Blog Posting Month. I've been successful in posting every day. I will be thankful, if tomorrow doesn't cause me to miss. ;-) I'm thankful for a lot of things, too many to list here.

Have a safe and Happy Thanksgiving!

Mitten & a half

Washing the left mitten did help out a bit along with some stretching in various directions:

 

 

I did get the second mitten cast on and do the ribbing and set a goal of getting at least half way through the 59 rows of the chart. I got there plus a few extra rows:

Last night I rearranged the cushions on the couch. Normally nothing that big, but I managed to turn them in such away that Norbert can't perch on the back of the edges. He's pouting about this fact and trying to resign himself with laying on the couch blanket in the corner:

Also to show those outside of the area that not all Fall days are dreary, one with some sunshine:

Fall Day

The left mitten is all done. The tip is bound off and then there was the fun picking up the thumb stitches and doing the thumb pattern. The chart doesn't show having side stitches but the picture does. So went with the picture and then did the chart.

No pictures of the finished mitten though. I want to wash it and balance out the area around the thumb. Some stitches wanted to really loosen so hoping that a soak will even things out. We'll see tomorrow. ;-) Interesting thing to note about this pattern - the pictures don't match the chart for the back of the hand. The finished pictured mitten shows a one and a half stars and the charts have you complete two full stars. They also don't give any instructions on how to do the decreases, so all those sock toes came into play with a k2tog & ssk on either side.

Cast on for the second mitten and will work on it also tomorrow, along with laundry, dishes and the like. Need to get library books all gathered up so that I can send them off with Brandon. We're working with one main car so unless I take him to work, I'm at home. Lots of families are doing it, and so other than the the reduction in insurance, gas expenses, etc, I just have to get him used to the idea.

Don't worry about the scarf, it will get some work this week. I plan on taking it in the car on the trip down to Corvallis and back. I'm sure there will be other down time I can work on it while talking with people. I'd really like to have the second mitten done before Thanksgiving.

While I was doing the dishes this afternoon I looked out and it was kind of a normal fall day for the area. Many people are depressed by the cloud coverage, but for me its fall. So I took the camera out and took a picture of what I was looking at through the big maple in the back yard.

Spinning, Mitten, and Cupcakes

I spent a some time this afternoon spinning with some Spinner's Hill purple - corriedale, finn, rambouillet:

Trying for more of what the colors look like than the washed out flash. There's Portland Spinnerati tomorrow, so I'll finish up this bobbin and start on the second.

Portland Spinnerati's first anniversary meeting is tomorrow, so I'm bringing some Carrot Cupcakes with cream cheese frosting:

I thought the carrot cake recipe was kind of seasonal without going for the pumpkin option.

Thought I'd share the backside of the mitten, its cool how the strands do the opposite of what is on the front:

Brandon went to the Winter Bazaar that was at the Washington County Fairgrounds. They had vendors there and he saw the same one I got my spinning basket from and thought I needed one for knitting.

WIPS

I ended up frogging last night the start I had on my Selbuvotter mittens in the stylish name of NMH #12. (It's a Ravelry link, if you don't have access - why not?) A nice double star pattern on the front and a diamond pattern on the palm. Why did I frog? Sport weight and what ended up being light fingering weight and a little too much tension. So back to the stash and found another sport weight to use in the place of the variegated. The size 3 needles were also coming up with a larger mitten.

So after my father picked up his computer bright and early this morning, I re-cast on with the US 2 needles and we are a happy camper. I popped out while there was still light and just a light sprinkle:

Can't really tell that the color is a pretty wine burgundy color can you?

I of course have been working on it since that photo and working on the tension. You can see that the little zig-zag row above the ribbing is a little tight. I've been working at keeping the tension even. After the point above I turned it inside out and have been knitting it that way. I've found in the past that it helps with the tensioning.

I turned them right side out to show where the progress is at this point - the thumb opening is on waste yarn and I have half of the bottom star done:

Front

 Palm, can kind of see where the waste yarn is a few rows down from the needles.

A slightly better picture of the Cinnamon Eton's Scarf. I haven't worked on it today.