Wurst – mittens with sausages

Finally some photos! Winter really isn’t a good season if you prefer to shoot your knits by daylight. Anyway, here they are! The mittens with sausages!

Wurst mittens by Spillyjane

Pattern: Wurst (ravelry link)
Design: spillyjane
Yarn: 100 % wool, Harris Tweed Textlies Shetland 4-ply
Yarn source: Bought it from my friend Tove
Needles: 2,25 mm dpns
Started: November 2 2011
Finished: January 13 11 2012
Modifications: Added thumb wedge, made a different cuff, turned them into gloves without fingertips and made flaps for hand and thumb

Instead of making regular mittens, I made these with flaps

This is what they look like when you remove the flap.

There’s even a thumb flap.

For more comfortable wear, I added a thumb wedge. I started this project in 2011 and thought it was worth a mention.

These mittens were a gift to my husband. He wears them all the time and appreciates the flaps a lot since he’s not normally fond of mittens but prefer gloves. This way he can have both.

Finally!

Wurst mittens are finally finished! Pictures to come.

Second mitt is quicker

For some reason knitting the second mitt is a lot quicker. Probably because I already know what to do with it. I made a lot of modifications to the original pattern, and figuring these out and making notes on them obviously slowed my knitting progress on the first mitt.

Progress on second mitt

I’ve even begun the flap that will cover the fingers. Another reason why this is going fairly quickly is that I’ve spent a good portion of the post-New Year holiday knitting. Knitting and listening to old episodes of Cast On. I never get tired of Brenda, she’s so smart and witty and and funny! The production of the podcast is really fantastic. If you haven’t discovered her podcast yet – I strongly urge you to check it out! And listen to the them in the correct order – that makes it even more enjoyable. I’m so glad that she’s still doing it after over six years of podcasting. I have some favourite episodes and themes, I’ll probably get back to you on that later.

Another way to make my knitting run smoothly is to have a snoring cat on my lap. And belive me – he snores loudly!

Laban asleep – and snoring – on my lap
I really hope to finish these mittens this week so I can get back to some of my other projects. And perhaps start a new one.

We’re Half Way There

I still have a lot of UFO’s but not so many WIP’s. It used to be the other way around. I’m not claiming that this is an improvement, I know that some people love to have a whole bunch of WIP’s on the go. I used to be one of them, but I’m not anymore. I’m perfectly happy to be working on two (or three at the most) projects at the same time. The one project that has been occupying the majority of my knitting time are these mittens:

wurst mitten by spillyjane

I recently completed the first one and I’m really, really happy with how it turned out. However, I’m very sorry to say that it’s been mind numbingly boring to knit! It looks great, but the colourwork pattern is very counter-intuitive and has a lot, and I mean a lot, of long floats that need binding. And I dislike that. So very much.

This picture is only an excuse to show more of Vincent, the little sweetheart!

Just knitting this one mitt has taken me almost two months. Two months! For a bleeding mitt! Well, I really need to finish the pair, because they are for Stefan, and he does not have a pair of mittens right now without holes in them (I’ll get back to the mending issue in a later post). So I’m really trudging along with this project. I’ve done about 25% of the second mitten and I’m only working on this project right now just so that I can finish the bloody thing! Even though I’m casting long gazes on my other WIP’s and longing for picking them up… Sometimes knitting is a chore. Not often, but sometimes.