Mitten Mania

I blame Marcy.

Travel knitting time is coming up fast and furious, and I started thinking about mittens.

Not that it is the first time mitten knitting has occurred to me:



and:


and:


and I recently bought Teri's new book:

[Aside: This book is a treasure trove of history, information and knitting patterns. Buy it! That's my philosophy. They might go out of print someday (heh).]

I've knit a few pair of mittens in the past. Colorful handspun silk/wool blend:


And two-end handspun twined knitting mittens (yikes! early knitting, probably around 1980, don't look closely):


I've been testing, trying out yarns, trying to see which yarn and which pattern (if any) I will try:

These are handspun wools, all three ply, about the same grist (about the same as in useable together, I haven't measured).

Or commercial sock yarn which once was white:


but is now dyed:


I'm leaning toward knitting my new mittens from the top down, like in Anna Zilboorg's book. I won't have the very large gauntlets, they might be narrower.

I won't have time to spin up any new yarn for the first pair, but by the end of summer I'll have spun up some grey and wine-red for a second pair, probably Selbu-based. It's a fun fantasy to think of knitting them, or anything, and I think that's why I sometimes have 'startitis': the dream of the perfect project, whether they be mittens, a shawl, a sweater, a new silk ribbon or the most beautiful, soft knotted pile rug for the floor.

It's one more reason why I keep doing all of this: the dream of it all.