Sunday, January 27, 2008

27. Bird in hand v1.5

I have started (again) the first bird in hand mitten. I have never designed a darn thing. Not even a scarf. But for some reason, I decided to fool around with a brilliant pattern. Picot hem? Sure....but I knit the turning row in the contrast color. The braid? You know - the one people say their only complaint is that for all the work involved in the braid, it is hard to see? I did that in the contrast color also.

Which brings up an unfortunate point. When you knit the braid, you are sorta knitting two rows at once - the horizontal "braid" part and then the vertical regular knitting part. Well, I'm not sure how to do this so that only the horizontal part is the contrast color. Hmmm...I wonder if there is a way to do that? It would probably look better. On my piece (no camera still), the horizontal and of course the vertical parts are both in the contrast color. And I'm not sure that I like it.

I know, I know. Should have let things well enough alone. Kate Gilbert is much better at this designing part than I am. That's why we pay her money for her patterns. Me - not so much. I've got the cuff knit through the first flower chart. Then one row plain, one braid, one plain and onto the leaf chart.

This is (I think) the fifth time I've cast on this mitten. And I'm not sure that I'm not going to rip it out also. I'll fool around with the braid coming up and then make up my mind.
But I'll tell ya something! If this gets ripped again - I'm knitting a different pattern for my mitten swap partner, that's for darn sure.

4 comments:

Margaret said...

Oh, I feel your pain! Took me a few tries to get my swap mitt going too! Hope you get things sorted on this go round!

Katie, a dyer at Yarn Love said...

What kind of a braid are you doing? If you're doing a traditional Latvian braid, where you use two contrasting colors, and purl the braid rows while twisting the yarn in front of the knitting, you won't be able to have the braid be one color and the "knitting" behind be the other. You could do a single color braid, and then the front twists and the knitting behind would be the same color.

However, if you're doing another kind of braid, I have no advice....except perhaps leave the braid off!

Hope it goes well!

Anonymous said...

I rarely make stuff with deadlines. Just sticking a deadline on a project makes me not like it. Plus trying to knit with the kids around and simply being tired out by the time they are asleep, I like my knitting simple. I'm a smart person, but I just don't want to think when it comes to my knitting. I just want to zone out and leave all the thinking to the people who write the patterns.

That being said, I picked something very simple that is two colors. Then I got to the top decreases and the wording was a bit too vague for my liking. So I stopped and started the second mitt's cuff. Then I dragged the kids to a yarn shop to buy the pattern for the same mitt by the same author, but in a different book. The other book is written much clearer. I just soo didn't want to bang my head up against the wall. And I just promised myself that I'd make another pair from the second book "someday".

My knitting is my relaxing hobby. And when I turn it into work and make it stressful on myself, I start not enjoying it.

My simple pattern is so that I do finish this project. After I signed up I had to get past making the ultimate, most complicated mittens in order to "Keep up with the Joneses of Knitters".

Anonymous said...

I think you are very brave to be attempting to knit these mittens with or without creative interpretation!! I have no desire to attempt this. Maybe in another lifetime, but I think they are just beautiful. Hope you are looking forward to your cocoa swap package. I am having fun assembling it! Your cocoa partner in crime.