knit and gifted – fiddlehead mittens!

I have to admit, I'm kind of a selfish knitter. If I put a ton of time, money, and effort into something I want to wear it when it's done. It's rare that I knit something very complicated for a gift. But my friend Becki, she's worth it. She knits herself (I taught her!), so she *gets* it. She really, really appreciates a hand knit gift. I mean, really. This winter I realized that it had been over a year since I knit her anything (this my so-called scarf!). She was overdue for a hand knit present, I tell you! So I made her these fiddlehead mittens:





I know most people may look at mittens involving colorwork AND have a separate knit liner and think it must have taken forever to knit them. Truthfully, it took me a little while from start to finish (distractions! school, life, whatever.) but the actual knitting time was surprisingly fast. A lot of this has to do with the pattern - it is incredibly well-written and really thorough without being wordy and confusing. At $5.95 for the pattern, it's a freaking steal. I can only imagine how much work went into it, and I'm really grateful for it.





Some technical info about these mittens (or just head over to their rav page):
I knit the outside out of two colors of cascade 220. The darker color, even though it looks pretty dark in these photos, is more of a medium heathery green. (It was incredibly bright out when I went out for these pictures!) The liner is misti alpaca worsted, which worked perfectly. If anyone is looking to knit these mittens and is curious about a yarn combo, the cascade and misti worked great for me. I knit them up on US 4s, magic loop style. One really helpful tip in the pattern is that the best way to get gauge for a mitten is to just start knitting on the size needle you think will be appropriate for you (say, sizing up or down a little if you're a tight/loose knitter) and measure your gauge when you're a couple inches in. I cannot tell you how much frustration I went through with gauge when I was trying to write another, not as well-written mitten pattern this winter. (That pattern will remain nameless, because the internet is a small place.) This tip saved me SO much time and frustration. Gauge on a swatch is just not the same as gauge in the round with colorwork - not at ALL, at least for me.





As for the "presentation of the mittens," I had one big issue to deal with. Becki is severely, as in deathly, allergic to cats. Now, the cats aren't allowed to come into contact with my knitting because they really want to tear it to pieces, but we all know how it is with animals. Their hair gets eve-ry-where, and the allergens from the dander tend to float around in the air and stick to everything. I really would rather not kill Becki, so here's what I did to de-allergen these mittens. First, I took them over to her house for blocking. I went over every inch of them with a lint roller (the masking tape kind) to get off all the hair and hopefully some allergens as well. I picked off more hair with my fingernails while holding my face about an inch away from the mittens. Then I washed them - GASP! - in really, really hot water, with actual laundry detergent. I was careful not to move them around a whole lot and they were fine. They went through several hot baths in the sink until I was sure all the soap was out. Now, in an ideal world I would have left some of that fancy allergen-reducing febreeze with Becki, but on the day I went looking for this product, which the internet says great things about, it was nowhere to be found. I left the mittens to block in her apartment, far far away from kitties. Of course, I'm a little resentful that it suddenly became 70 degrees in Chicago today, but I'm really hoping for another surprise cold snap so she can try these suckers out before next winter. :)