The last post of 2007!

I relaxed last week and didn’t push too much :)  Just kind of felt like taking it easy, so I watched a lot of movies, read a couple books and didn’t worry about the weather.  But I didn’t neglect the knitting entirely either!

Or the dyeing, as it turned out :)

The last time I had to clean the snow off the car, my fingertips froze.  Really.  It was annoying and painful and I took it as a sign from the knitting gods that I needed a new pair of mittens.  I wanted them to be dense and warm.  What makes dense warm mittens?  Bulky wool, of course :)  And I had the gorgeous Rapunzel just waiting for a project.  So I set out in search of a pattern.

I haven’t had enough experience with mittens to be terribly comfortable fooling around with decorative ideas yet, so I was looking for a plain design, worked in the round with bulky yarn.  I found more patterns that I would ever have imagined for two needle mittens.  I found a plethora of patterns for toddlers and children and lots of good plain patterns for adults in worsted weight as well as some patterns that I can only describe as high art done in stranded knitting and Fair Isle.  Gorgeous things that I would be terrified to wear even if I could manage the knitting.  There were also a fair number that gave a child sized pattern with instructions to go up a needle size for each size larger mitten you wanted to knit.  Honestly, the needle size I would need to make the child sized mittens fit my large paws would result in lace.  And lace, lovely as it is, is not well suited to mittens - the cold-weather kind anyway…

Finally I landed on Janice Farrell Pea’s Easy Peasy Mitten Pattern.  Bulky yarn?  Check!  Plain and simple? Check!  The only drawback for anyone else making this is that there’s only one size - and it makes a big mitten.  This was perfect for me as I have big hands but could be an issue for someone else.

We got more snow last night (in fact we’ve had more snow this December than we got through the entirety of the last winter season) so I was hoping to test them this morning when we went out to clean the car off before going shopping.  Unfortunately, the temps were in the high 30s so the snow was melting anyways and the car was cleaned off in about 40 seconds flat.  Mittens never even got damp :)  Given the track record here in the northeast this winter though, I don’t doubt I shall eventually have ample opportunity to see how warm they keep my fingers.

I have also been dyeing - more in the last couple of weeks than I’ve done in quite a while.

See this?

The yarn on the left is Knitpicks Peruvian Highland wool in fingering weight.  The yarn on the right is Nomis Wolle, worsted weight.  Both are natural wools and neither have been previously dyed.  The Nomis is darker than the Knitpicks and has a slightly yellow (or tan?) cast to it.  The Knitpicks is might lighter and brighter - not white, but approaching it.

I knew they were different colors going in but I wanted to use them together to approximate a bulky weight yarn and, truth be told, I also want to see what the differences would be if they were dyed together - same pot, same dye bath.

I used the same proportions and the same dyes that I had for Come Sail Away.  The Nomis worsted came close to the results I got with the earlier dye job.  Violets, blue-violets and a few pinks here and there.  The Knitpicks came out differently - blues and blue-greens mostly.  It was fascinating to see the differences in each of the yarns.

Of course they’re being used together:

This is the first panel for my blanket.  I had like this design so much in my aunt’s scarf that I decided to use it again.  I did expand it a bit; this is about 11” wide and will acquire some embroidered accents when it is finished.  I have no idea what the other panels will be yet, whether I’ll repeat this pattern or find or dream up something else.  I can tell you there’s been more dyeing going on - but save that for later :)

I’d like to thank all of you who come to read, comment and chat.  From the bottom of my heart, I wish you all a warm and happy new year!