Hey guess what everyone? This is my last FO from 2007!!!!
Composed Mitts
Date:
August 24 - September 16, 2007
Yarn:
A portion of a skein each of:
Blue Sky Alpacas Sport Weight in:
natural dk brown 501
natural light grey 507
grape 523
blue sky 526
pale aqua 514
and Blue Sky Alpacas Melange in:
blue cheese 812
Total: 80g/176 yards/1.6 skeins
Needles:
US #5 40" Addi Turbo circulars
Pattern:
Composed Mitts by Michele Rose Orne from Interweave Knits Fall 2007, pattern available for purchase here
The story:
I don't think I even ever mentioned this project while I was knitting it. This was one of those patterns I fell in love with immediately and just had to knit and have right away. It was one of the main reasons I bought the magazine (although I also of course loved the Tyrolean Stockings and still have my eye on the Dickenson Pullover and the Luna Dress amongst many others - no wonder this was a sold out issue!)
And let me say that it did not hurt that the pattern called for Blue Sky Alpacas Sport Weight, one of my favorite yarns, or that the pattern is by Michele Rose Orne who also designed the Clementine Shawlette (I've knit few enough things that if I find myself drawn to the same designer's patterns more than once from different publications I notice).
So, off to Purl I went and I put my own color scheme together which was a lot of fun. The main colorway specified is actually more grey than the brown it appears to be in the magazine shots but you can see lots of beautiful color schemes on Ravelry and Flickr. I ended up going with an actual brown for the main dark color.
You'll notice I actually bought 7 colors and ended up not using the natural taupe as it was a little too yellow to really blend with the other colors. (Both the taupe and the grey didn't really photograph true to their actual colors.)
By the way, I don't remember seeing all the melange colors at Purl... I love heathered yarns so will definitely be looking out for those.
The knitting itself went pretty fast, although this was my first Fair Isle-like stranded colorwork project (aside from the logo on the Yankees hat) so I struggled a little bit with how to organize six different colors most effectively and how to keep the carried yarn loose enough that it wouldn't constrict the fabric. It required effort, but it was fun, especially as I picked which colors went where as I went along. This kind of project is pretty addictive too, as it's so easy to see progress. I believe I knit the first mitt over the course of a few evenings and then knit the second one over a similar timeframe a few weeks later up at the lake - it was a great early fall project.
In progress shots:
Finished shots: