Fingerless Mitt Mania

For nearly five months now I've been knitting Fingerless Mitts. Fast and fun, I'm finding these projects are terrific gifts and a great way to use up the small lots of yarn that invariably make their way into the stash.

My Ravelry queue was so heavy with Fingerless Mitts I created a special tab just for them. Which prompted me to create tabs for all manner of knitted categories - Hats, Baby, Cardigans, Pullovers, and on and on and on. Oh man, to know me is to know I am pretty obsessive with the Queue and Stash organization. But it all started with the Fingerless Mitt category.

Once I'd nailed the Fingerless Mitts into their own file tab, I delved deeper into researching suitable yarns, viewing other knitter's finished projects and trolling my own stash to find pattern-yarn matches. All the while making electronic notes to jog my memory once I sit down to actually knit the project. God, the hours I spend in the planning - it boggles the mind! But I guess for me the planning stage is part of the process. And though I often get frustrated that I don't knit faster, or act more spontaneously, the reality is most of my projects require me to marinate the ideas till I am sure and can commit.

These cute blue cabled mitts are the now very ubiquitous Fetching Mitts which everyone in the knitting blog-o-sphere knitted like crazy three years ago (yes, I am very late to this particular party). Quite fetching indeed. A few hours of knitting back in February resulted in a perfect birthday gift. And they hit a sweet spot for me in the Great Houndville Stash Knit Down of 2010. All the technical details are here including the modifications I made - they are longer than called for in the pattern.


Next up is this lovely pattern called Susie's Reading Mitts. Which was perfect since the recipient's name is a bit variation on that. She was so patient waiting for these - the whole Potholder Swap thing kind of jumped to the front of the line in March!

I had a few false starts with this project. In fact, it started as a different pattern but I hated the way it knitted up. That pattern got booted out of my queue and I moved this one to the top. The yarn was deceptive too! It took several changes in needle size before I found the magic combination of fabric drape with heat retention density. I cannot remember why I bought this yarn in the first place, but once I started working it up on this project, I kinda fell hard in love with the color. And used up all but a smidgen of the yarn, so woo-hoo for continued stash reduction. Linky here for more gory details.

This mitt design is lovely - simple and feminine without being fussy. And it invites you to consider small changes - additions or deletions, depending on the yarn being used. I particularly like the picot edge, something I'd never used before. It's a nice touch and worth the effort. This pattern is a winner and it will likely become a standard as I work on building that gift stash.

So the Great Houndville Stash Knit Down is becoming an enjoyable discipline/challenge. It's like a competition with myself to see if I can bring out the best in the yarn by matching it with the perfect pattern. Stay tuned for the next parade of fingerless mitts, there's more where these came from!