Knitting in the Shadows: Just A Little More

December 20, 2013

Just A Little More

So there I was, three and 7/8th mitts knit and clearly about to run out of yarn. What to do?

Stash dive, of course. Luckily, the yarn I'd chosen for the original pair of gift mitts was a yarn that I have in several colors in my stash. (Why? Well, because there is a wonderful person out there who loves to send me yarn, and who has, over the past couple of years, sent me a bunch of this yarn.) On returning to the stash, I plucked out the colors that I thought would work well with my original yarn, and with the help of my knit-night buddies, selected the best of the options I owned.

Next, I carefully set aside an actual pair of mitts. Then, having learned from the original mistake, I checked twice that I really had set aside a functioning pair (yep, I put them ON), and then undid the bind off row for the finished mitt that was destined to be the mate for the one without enough yarn.

I did not photograph this process... sorry.

I used the yarn from the finished mitt to work on the unfinished one, until I'd gotten both mitts to the same place in the hand. I ALMOST decided to just bind off there, but it was a tad too short, even for a short mitt (by which I mean one with no fingers at all). So, I picked up the second yarn, and knit a contrasting stripe on both mitts.

Now, me, I hate that random stripe that comes out of no where and isn't balanced by anything else. It looks just like you ran out of yarn and slapped any old thing on the end. So, first, I duplicate stitched over the bind off round of the thumbs, so that at least the whle top of the mitt had the contrast.

Still not enough for me. Looked dopey.

So, I conceived of a new plan. I changed the cuff, so that it too used the new yarn. But, being me, I had to change things up a bit, so instead of cables, I used a faux cable lace thing.