Some more kitty mitts.

I love this fucking pattern book. It’s called “Kitten’s Lost Mittens”. I have a kitten (well, she just turned a year old on July 5th, but she’ll always be a baby kitty to me) named Mittens.  There are three patterns, one for a pair of fingerless mitts with a small thumb opening, one for a pair with an actual thumb, and then a full mitten. They’re made horizontally on a 3/8″ knitting loom, but the patterns can be adjusted for any size.

I have a Cottage Knitting Loom (link to the one I have) in 3/8″, and the set of Bufanda looms, (link to the store) which you can switch to 3/8″ spacing by putting in the extra pegs. Without the extra’s, they’re the same gauge and peg count as the Knifty Knitters, and with the pegs in, you get double as many, so up to 82 pegs at 3/8″.

The cottage loom makes a smaller stitch due to the cotter pins, and I have a tendency to knit tight on it. My first mitts fit me fine, but I have small hands. It’s a great loom, though. The first pair were purple, out of Loops n’ Threads bubbly, which was a bit of a pain because of changing thickness and texture, but they look cool. I made a matching hat with a cable, too, and finished that skein.

The pic to the right with the kitty (that’s Mittens The Kittens, her official title) guarding is a pair of Big Kitty Mitts. They have the full thumb. I’m learning a new bind off, called the Kitchener Bind Off, which is grafting the edges to leave no seam. I screwed it up on that pair, and ended up tearing it out and seaming it the good ol’ fashioned way, which is decent looking with these mitts because of the ribbing.  The pic to the left, is done with teal sparkle yarn, which is fun and very soft, those are Little Kitty Mitts because of the smaller thumb.

The last picture is my first Big Kitty Mitt on my hand. They look so nice, I love the patterns.

So those are my mitts! I also made a pair in some blue variegated yarn that I was supposed to finish my first circle sweater with, but end up using it for everything else.

They’re big kitty mitts, and I did the grafting differently, but still following the instructions, and it came out not bad. I think its a helluva lot faster to just seam it with a tapestry needle, but I’m still new with the grafting. So, lot of mitts. You can see the seam in the one set of red-orange mitts, that was the attempted grafting. Oh well, nobody will notice other than me. I’m making these things for everyone! I’m thinking of some different patterns in different colours to knit onto them. Maybe a snowflake. I’ve never played with colour much! I’m no good at reading graphs, though. I’ll show you when they’re done. Go buy the booklet (linked in the picture) and have fun with the mitts!

30 pegs of 118 on the Cottage Loom. Thumb finished, yarn is Loops n’ Threads Bubbly

A quick shot of the mitts on my loom for you to see, as well. The Bufanda looms are much nicer for these, though. CinDwood also changed the knitting tools/picks, and I was using my new one. I slipped and sliced my finger open with it! I love CinDwood everything but the new picks are a tad sharp, and I’m clumsy! Each pair took a good part of a day. So pretty quick, especially since I’ll be halfway done, and go online and surf for a while, or get a phone call and put my knitting down!

Getting ready for autumn and winter

Some more Invisible Loom projects. Two pairs of Little Kitty Mitts, and one Hot Buttered Rum Hat. I used my Bufanda 44 peg (it has either 22 or 44, you can add pegs, so with 44 pegs it’s 3/8″ spacing, I used 30 pegs) for both sets of mitts. I made the yellow set for my roommate, and the teal glitter set for myself, maybe a gift for someone, was just using up yarn.  I love these mitts, they go by so fast, so easy to make, and they look so nice. These are made horizontally and the side is seamed together after casting off.

The hat, as we call it in Canada, the toque, is cabled. It’s made horizontally on the loom in short rows, not in a circle.  You make 4-5 (I used 5) wedges and then cast it off and seam together.  I used 28 pegs of my 51 peg CinDwood loom, with 1/2″ spacing. The pattern calls for 5/8″ spacing (so say, your generic Knifty Knitter or Loops n’ Threads loom) so I made an extra wedge and made the large version of the pattern. It fits me fine, but if I were making it for anyone bigger than me, I’d add more to the top and bottom, make it higher, and add another wedge. I just found it impossible to cable on the 5/8″ spaced looms.

There is a new “Kitchener bind-off” method that I’m going to attempt tomorrow on a hat. The yarn I used for this hat is called “Bubbly” and the yarn goes from thin to thick and back and forth. Kinda annoying, but it looks cute. It does make the cables look a little messy, though. Here’s some pics.

Little Kitty Mitts for my roommate, made with boring old cheap acrylic yellow yarn. They stretch nicely and fit her hands.

These are softer than the yellow mitts, the yarn is also sparkly, but it doesn’t catch it in pics.

Finished hat. It had to be done in wedges or else the cable going horizontally across it would be impossible, or had to be knit separately and sewn on. If I made this in the round, I’d have vertical cables.

It’s over 100 F out today, and I’m modelling a hat! The yarn is cute, it turned out nice. The cable is made using 4 pegs over a total of 6.

A better shot of the cables. For the first cable row, you cable the first 4 of the 6 pegs “designated” for cabling. Then on the next cable row you cable pegs 3-6. I used peg markers as a guide.

A side shot of the hat. You can see how the cable looks a bit messy, but it’s still neat. I love cables. The seam is’t shown in any pictures, but it is hard to see, which means I did a better job this time than last. I suck with seams.