Selbu Mittens

01 Jan 2010 2 Comments

by Cathy in crafts Tags: colorwork, FO, knitting, mittens

I did a lot of knitting last year. I designed and knit two pairs of kilt hose. I made a lot of hats and socks, a shawl, and a sweater. I even sewed two dresses. I’m happiest with and proudest of these mittens. I started them on December 23 and finished them on the 30th.

• Pattern: NHM #7 from Selbuvotter: Biography of a Knitting Tradition by Terri Shea/ravelry link
• Yarn: MC: Shelridge Farm Soft Touch Ultra Solid in White CC: Blue Moon Fiber Arts STR Lightweight in “Corbie”
• Needles: 2mm/US0 for the ribbing, 2.75mm/US2 for the body

Other than the baby fruit caps, this is my first time doing colorwork. I spent most of the time knitting the first mitten (the right) playing around with yarn holding techniques.  I tried using a knitting thimble, both strands in the left, one strand in each hand, and I’m most comfortable with the MC in my right hand and the CC in my left. The more I knit this way the easier I held the needles and I eased up on the choke-hold tension.  The left mitten just flew after I figured this out.

I borrowed the book from the library, so I only photocopied the pattern itself, so maybe I made a few mistakes. For the right mitten I only used the MC for the backwards loop cast-on for the thumb and that left the CC dangling (don’t worry– I picked it up when I knit the thumb), so on the second mitten I used both yarns for the thumb cast on, and that was an improvement: It gave me more area for picking up the thumb stitches.  The pattern made sense. It was logical and it flowed. It was easy to read, both the pattern and my knitting. I could tell where I was and what I needed to do next. I love working from charts. If I was to knit this again I would add more plain rows at the cuff–I like a longer cuff. Or maybe do more of the black and white checks, like 3 or 4 rows instead of two.

I really wanted to knit these from stash, so I used two superwash wool sock yarns. It worked out well, and the color work really pops, but the yarns are subtly different. They’re both three-ply fingering weight yarns with 18 wpi. It might be due to the dye, or the fact that it’s Merino rather than just “wool” but the BMFA is sproingier. Don’t ask me to get technical, there’s a difference and I can feel it.  And it’s not a true black. I know that’s the point of the raven series. I do like it, and it is very striking,but I think it would be more striking in a true solid black.  Another reason to knit from stash is that it’s so hard to find solid wool fingering or DK yarns for colorwork. I know there’s Knitpicks Telemark, but nothing that I can really get locally and/or affordably.  I’d have preferred to use Jamieson’s Shetland or one of the Dale of Norway yarns but I can’t really find them at my LYSes.  But I don’t want to turn this into a rant about my hatred of superwash merino and my lust for Shetland wool.  This is a post about these awesome colorwork mittens.

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