A knitting day, finally

Finally a knitting entry on my knitting blog! I am so slow a knitter, that I would only be able to post once a month if I kept to knitting. Hence all my other fascinating topics!

My Tiger Lily Jacket, made from a kit designed by Mary Ann Stephens, and finished a couple of months ago, turned out to be huge. I mean tremendous! It would have fit someone three times my size. I don’t know why, but once I get the correct gauge, I seldom think of actually checking to see what size the object is turning out to be. Anyhow, it was unwearable, and a great disappointment. So I decided to felt it down to size. What was to lose? And the results were quite pleasing. It still is a bit big, but is now within the realm of “possible to wear,” and is ever so warm. I had quite a lot of leftover yarn from the kit, so I decided to make some gloves to match – or I should say, to sort of match. I had gotten a Christmas present for myself of a book about Selbuvotter mittens and gloves by Terri Shea, and what better than to make some gloves to match the Tiger Lily. I started a glove, completing the hand and one finger, but could see that it was going to be too bulky, and that I would not have enough yarn, so I undid it, and knit mittens. After the first one, I was still unsure about enough yarn, so I weighed the one glove (minus a thumb) and saw that it would be close but possible. Well, I had enough for all but the final inch of the final thumb. Hence, a thumb of a slightly different color. But hey! That makes these mittens even more unique and totally mine.

Once I laid the mittens out next to the sweater to take the picture, I realized that they would be much nicer if I felted them a bit as well. So I did. Oddly, one mitten is a bit bigger than the other. Odd, since I did them together and, I thought, equally. I was thinking of doing the larger mitten a bit more, but decided that, like the oddly colored thumb, they could be even more unique. Terri Shea, author of the Selbuvotter book says that one should not obsess about mistakes because they give the gloves personality! So mine have a lot of personality.