Saturday 3 January 2009

new year's knitting

i didn't knit much in 2008. i hit a wall in 2007 with the wasabi jumper, and aside from a few presents for friends (including some that didn't make it to the blog), i haven't really touched my needles in ages.


i have had at least one project in the back of my mind since xmas 2006 when we went to iceland, though. i found some lovely, warm icelandic wool in reykjavik and brought back about 10 balls to share with some knitting buddies.


my sister used her ball of blue wool to make some mittens.


photo
a's mittens, snapped on her iphone


she emailed the pattern in october and i finally started making mine on thursday night using red and green wool.


IMG_5724


the pattern recommended knitting the ribbed cuffs on size 6 needles, and moving up to size 8's for the hands. i pulled out the beautiful metal needles my mom sent for my birthday last year. i decided to start on some smaller bamboo needles (5's), then move up to the 8's from mamasita.


IMG_5730


the knitters among you may know what's coming: the bamboo 5's were really 5.0mm / size 8 - same as the smaller needles from mom - but i didn't realize my mistake until it was time to switch to bigger needles for the hands. at this point, i couldn't be bothered to rip back the ribbing and start again. so i made the mittens on 8's and 10's (5.0mm and 6.0mm).


IMG_5736
photo by s


they're lovely ... but huge! more like oven mitts, really. at this point i'm considering felting them. i think they're actually quite good candidates for felting, but i'm nervous about screwing them up. i need to do some more research before i bite the bullet and try felting for the first time.


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photo by s


if you would like to share your felting experiences or wisdom, i'd be most grateful.


next part: using the last ball of wool (grey) to make a matching scarf.


i'm glad to have one more tangible souvenir from our iceland trip. i feel bad for their current economic woes (not to mention ours!). i really loved it there and would like to go back someday.

3 comments:

aedredhead said...

they look great! i have no idea about the felting, although secretly was thinking that i could felt mine too. however, i always go back to my whole why buy super nice yarn and work really hard on a nice project only to "ruin" the look and feel by felting?

Magpie Nest said...

FELTING: NOT SO HARD, AKTUALLY.

The bag I was working on in Florence got felted when I got home. If you're worried about shrinking it too fast, you can always throw it in hot water for a few minutes, dry/stretch it, lather-rinse-repeat until it's the size you want.

That's pretty yarn, though, and you'd lose a lot of the detailing if you felted. I'd rip it out and start over.

Sara said...

love them!