Lucky Mittens

Much plötulopi remains in my stash even after using quite a bit in my Aito Shawl. I noticed that my current winter mittens have been wearing a bit thin in the thumbs, so I decided to make a new pair out of plötulopi. Mary Jane Mucklestone has a pattern called Heppinn Mittens, and "heppinn" means "lucky" in Icelandic - so these are my lucky mittens.

You may recall that I wrestled with stranded colorwork on a small circumference when working on Dave's Sheep Socks. For these mittens, I decided to give dpns the old college try. And it worked! It took me a bit to get the hang of working with this unique, unspun yarn on dpns, though. My instinct is to pull the yarn tightly on the second stitch of each needle, in order to prevent ladders. If you pull on this yarn, though, it breaks. BUT if you pull it very close to the needle (like with your fingers about a centimeter away from the needle), it does not break - because the staple length of the fiber is longer than that centimeter. I know this from spinning and was thrilled to see this Law of Staple Length in action on my knitting needles.

This pattern uses four colors. Only two are used on any given row, but sometimes you change from two colors on one row to two different colors on the next row. This left a TON of ends to weave in on the first mitten.

For the second mitten, I tried a technique for weaving in ends as you work them (thanks for the tutorial, Andrea of Fruity Knitting). This helped a lot, though I was unable to figure out how to weave out two colors at once and then weave in two colors at once... so I only did one at a time. This meant that I had only half as many ends to weave in with a needle. You can see the ones I knit in here - I cut them off a couple of inches away from the fabric:

The longer ends need to be woven in with a tapestry needle.

Here is a tidy mitten needing only a thumb where that festive orange yarn is:

See how it looks on the inside? So satisfying!

It was snowing today, so I took these out for a spin. Even though I blocked these in water with hair conditioner added, they are still a little rough. I wear them over a pair of thin, fleece gloves, so that is not a concern for me. The unspun wool traps a lot of heat, and these were quite warm. I'm not sure yet how well they will wear, but we will see. This is an experiment!

My only complaint is that the ribbed cuff is not tight at all. The designer calls for it to be worked on the smaller needle, the same as all the single-color knitting (for stranded rows, go up one size). I think the cuff requires an even smaller needle, though.

This was a fun little project. I am feeling more confident about my colorwork, and I think I'm ready to try a fancy tam. Maybe something like this?

Cheers to wool and snow!