Warm Woolly Mittens

Miraculously, I managed to finish the pair of mittens in time.
The first, original mitten was knit over 3 days. Before I actually finished it Danielle had tried it on and found it was too big for her. So, frogged, and started a new one yesterday as Danielle started on her scarf. It took me about 3 and a half hours to knit the real first mitten. Not too bad, I guess. The second one took me a lot longer. o_O It was fairly late in the evening when I started the next mitten and feelings of exhaustion had set in. We had just eaten a huge meal at Chili's and not only did it give us food coma, but we were also uncomfortably full. To make matters worse I was having this really in-depth conversation with Danielle about certain... promiscuous phases I went through during college. The intensity of the feelings and emotions I had were channeled into my mitten in the form of regular mistakes requiring regular tink-ing and ripping. Normally, I'd just leave small mistakes alone and just continue, but, I was knitting two of something that had to be the same, so, it required that I follow the instructions the exact same way I had done it before. .... Maybe this is why I can't knit socks?
Well, it got pretty late and Danielle needed to drive about an hour back home, so, we said our good byes. I had about a third of my 2nd mitten complete while Danielle had less than half of her scarf finished. Would we be able to finish by 10:30am tomorrow in time for the surprise party?
I sat down at my laptop at around 1:20 and started knitting. I stopped every few rounds to check on my e-mail and Ravelry. o_O At about 2:15 I realized I had not completed much so I went to abc.com and caught up on Grey's Anatomy and Ugly Betty. The familiar feelings of watching my stories, sitting, and knitting made things go much faster. I had already reached the main body which was simply stockinette in the round.
At about 4:20am I weaved in the last end. My stitches had turned out really uneven so I decided I'd give it a wash. I filled up the sink with water and a few squirts of Soak and left the mittens in there for a good 15 minutes. At this point I was head bobbing trying to stay awake.
After the Soak I squeezed, rolled, and laid them out to dry. Everything was as it should be.

My phone alarm was set for 9:00am. It beeped on time and in a foggy, half-awake, dream I grabbed my phone, pressed many buttons, and reset my alarm for a 10 minute snooze.
I set it wrong because I woke up again and checked the time... it was 10:00am.
I immediately jumped out of bed and grabbed the mittens. ...
They were STILL WET! In a panic, and knowing this was the stupidest idea ever, I threw them in the dryer.
I showered and got ready all the while praying that my mittens wouldn't felt. ... Luckily, they didn't, I had enough sense to put the temperature on low. The mittens did shrink a little... which was great because it looked like I had knit the mittens too long. So, aside from my being very, very late for a surprise party (I ended up getting there at around 12:30), everything turned out well.




Pattern: Warm Woolly Mittens by Theresa Gaffey
Yarn: Catalina (Alpaca & Silk), 1 skein
Needles: US 4 & 6
Size made: Adult Small




The mittens were still wet in these pictures. I had snapped a few shots before I tossed them in the dryer. ^_^

I think it's time for me to pull Beau out of hibernation. I REALLY wanted to wear him during Thanksgiving, but, that's not looking like it'll happen.
On the plus side, I've decided to attempt to knit both of the sleeves at the same time on 1 circular. Mmm, acquiring new techniques... fun. =)

For those of you who love Malabrigo... and are on Ravelry... Cast On some Malabrigo projects this week using their awesome worsted yarn and then upload them to your notebook, leave a post on the Malabrigo Junkies message board and possibly win a prize! It could even be a skein (or two) of the soon-to-be-new Malabrigo Silk Wool!

This butter is really yellow

I seem to be on some sort of blogging binge. I just can't stop updating! =) Hopefully this trend continues.

As promised, I have some pictures to share. First, here's my fairly large Malabrigo purchase from Loopy.





Like little bundles of love. On the subject of love, I LOVE the color. It's called Olive. Very fitting.
Oh, Malabrigo. I e-mailed them the other day. I started this group on Ravelry called Malabrigo Junkies. We were discussing our favorite colors (Charrua!) and someone mentioned Little Lovely. I have not had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Lovely but she seemed to be quite coveted. The possibility of her being retired came up--a member may have read it somewhere I think, so, to finalize the matter I e-mailed the people up in Malabrigo land and asked them about their color cycle and retirees. (I also oh-so-shamelessly promoted Malabrigo Junkies). I got a reply in two days from Tobias who said that they've only retired a few colors and that Little Lovely (as well as Charrua) were still on the color card. He also mentioned that he'd be happy to link our group to the malabrigoyarn.com website. Mmm.
Just for that we'll celebrate with another picture of this delicious yarn:





I'm really churning out those bookmarks. They're really quick and easy. They'll probably serve as backup Christmas gifts.
The pattern calls for a 1.25mm crochet hook, but, unfortunately the store I bought the Malabrigo lace from had a 2.5 as their smallest. I purchased it anyway. On my way home I stopped at a Hobby Lobby and picked up a 2.0mm and a 1.5mm. 1.25 Just seemed to small for Malabrigo's thick&thin-ness. It turned out that the 1.5 was too small, I couldn't even hook the yarn. The 2.0 worked but the resulting bookmark ended up tight and lost a lot of stitch definition after I ironed it. I tried the 2.5mm and it worked perfectly.





Yay, tassels.
Crochet is surprisingly easy (and fast!) once you get a good feel for how to angle the hook. My tension is still a bit all over the place, but, I think it's becoming steadier as I continue to pop out these bookmarks. I love that there's only one live stitch, it's easy to drop it and pick it back up again. In knitting, when my needle falls out, I stop breathing and move as slowly as possible as not to disturb the now live stitches who's seemingly only desire is to drop. And then painstakingly re-inserting my needle, making sure each stitch is facing the correct direction. Tedious!
While, I AM growing a certain fondness towards the hook, I will always prefer the knitted fabric to the crocheted.





My sweater finally dried. My room is no longer filled with the odd scent of wet wool. The sweater though smells sweet and natural. I actually don't smell the Soak on it at all--I may not have used enough. The directions say one cap-full for every gallon... I soaked my sweater in my bathtub... how many gallons is that? I naively guessed 2 gallons because I ended up only using 2 cap fulls. ^_^ Oops?
Mr. Seamless Hybrid wasn't dry before my photoshoot, so, I'll have to take pictures of him another day.

I'll leave you with Branching Out. This scarf has been waiting patiently underneath my desk for me to finish the sweater. He's finally getting some pattern repeats knitted and is looking good, albeit a bit oatmeal-y.





I'm giving tassels a chance.
Knit hard!