Home sick with a cold and needing to rest, I went to my bedroom watched some terrible daytime TV and decided to knit some mittens for felting. I didn’t use a pattern and just went through my bulky wool stash. I made these large and then washed these in my washing machine on hot with some jeans. I had read a suggestion on Ravelry about not weaving ends when changing colors but using square knots. I tried this and won’t do it again. I don’t recommend it. Weaving may take some time but it’s worth it. The wrists came out a little larger than I’d wish so I’m considering whether to dip just those in hot water or go with drawstrings. I wore them yesterday on our annual T-day zoo walk it was in the low 40s. These mittens were perfect! My hands were nice and toasty!

I went with drawstrings of noro transitions; the lighter colors in the mittens. The noro transitions yarn makes it look like there’s more colors and yarns when in fact there’s four stripes of noro and the rest is just three purple & three black/brown lana grande. For the drawstrings I wove three strands of different colors from the transitions and braided and knotted the ends. I like how these turned out. They match all my noro transitions stuff: circle vest and hat.

I may need a pair for myself. I think it’d be cool to hybridize these with a pair of pedicure socks.

Since I was using a size 3 needle I only cast on 56 stitches, otherwise I followed the pattern exactly.

For the bind off for the heel I used the knit two together bind off from this knitty article: http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEsummer06/FEATsum06TT.html

And for the bind off for the whole project I used Elizabeth Zimmermann’s flexible sewn bind off - which I love! It’s explained in the above article as well.

I picked up more stitches than the pattern calls for at the beginnings of each finger and decreased down to the right size after a row or two. There were less gaps to none to cover that way.

I would do the color stripes a little lower on the hand and do the color stripes on the thumb as well if I do these again.

I love ‘em! I sure hope Henry likes them! This is free pattern on Knitty.com under "Cigar."

My notes are in the pattern first draft.

This is my first colorwork and my first pattern. This is a work in progress:)

Very simple colorwork and I love it!

I used just long tail cast-on, knits, purls, k2tog, ssk, i-cord, and single crochet.

A flexible bind off I used decrease bind off http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEsummer06/FEATsum06TT.html

Basic stranded colorwork I used what I’d learned watching Elizabeth Zimmermann’s knitting workshop DVD

I’d like to do another pair with just the 1x1 color stranding stripes.