The Opadoo

In case you were wondering, I did finish all eight tentacles.

What: Lady in pink / Christelle Nihoul

How: Circular needle 2.0 mm

From: Hélène Magnusson Love Story Einband + Drops Lace, 8 + 24 g

This project didn't go as planned.

But let's start at the beginning. When I decided to challenge myself by taking part in the Opadoo challenge of Indie Design Gift-A-long I wanted to make it as easy as possible. I chose the projects for all eight categories based on difficulty and yardage. I wanted to finish the challenge fast.

So I bumbed into this fingerless mitts design that had a very low yardage. Plus the pictures on the pattern page were super sweet so I was sold. If you check out the pattern on Ravelry you'll see that I've tried to copycat those pics here. Although, the non-light of December tried to kill the mood.

So yes. The pattern has a very low yardage but I didn't stop to think that knitting lace weight mitts might not be the fastest or easiest project possible. Perhaps I'll keep it in mind next time.

Besides working with small needles and thin yarn hurting my hands the project had other problems. The way the colors change in the design looks gorgeous but it means working stranded color works with two lace weight yarns and long floats behind lace. With my chosen yarns it turned out a bit messy. It did tidy up a bit in blocking but not completely.

The next hurdle was the thumb gusset. This was my first time trying out an Indian thumb gusset that's said to fit the hands especially well. And it really does. The problem was that for the life of me I couldn't get the gusset to look right by following the pattern. Designing myself, I've come to see that most problems people have with knitting patterns is the lack of trust in the pattern. Most issues work themselves out if you just follow the pattern exactly as it is written. I tried that here so many times but finally gave up and did my own thing.

So the project wasn't a success. I have to say the biggest problem was the yarn combo I chose. The suggested yarn is single ply merino lace but I ended up using Drops Lace and Icelandic lace yarn. Both were way too thin and loose for this pattern which would look a lot better with a more plumpy yarn. Originally, I cast on with single ply finnsheep yarn but couldn't get the gauge. That's too bad because I think with that yarn I would've liked the end result much more.

Oh well, I gifted these to my dad's wife and she seemed to really love them.

Blended Scotch

Let's take it easy this year, they said. Let's not play secret Santa but just have a KAL at our Christmas party. It's much more relaxed that way, they said. It'll be loads of fun, they said. OK, if I'm being totally honest, I was one of the people saying these things. But no matter who said it, we were all wrong.

What: Blended scotch mitts / Thea Colman

How: Circular needle 2.5 mm

From: Tukuwool Fingering, 35 g

We have had a tradition with my knitterly friends to have a Christmas party and play secret Santa. We've randomly assigned pairs in the summer but still each year we've always left the actual knitting to the last moment - and some years we've even had half done socks in the gift bags. So, it has been a bit stresful from time to time and this year we wanted to take it easy. Or so we thought.

Instead of playing secret Santa, we decided to start a Knit-A-Long at the party. We've done it before and it's been fun.. sort of.

We came across the perfect pattern. The description even said it was designed to be knitted with friends swapping leftover yarns. So, we chose this pattern and everyone promised to bring some scrap yarns with them to the party. I know, it sounds fun so far.

Straight away it turned out we all wanted to use Tukuwool and everyone brought a pile of Tukuwool leftovers. It's really no wonder as our last KAL mitts turned out so nice from Tukuwool but it kind of killed to idea of swapping yarns.

Then, we started going through the pattern and it all fell apart. A) The design had no thumb gusset in it! B) Instead of a thumb gusset, there was some stranded knitting placed at the height of the missing thumb gusset. C) And not just any stranded knitting but stranded knitting with three colors which is hard to work such that it doesn't become too tight. D) The pattern had two sizes and two charts, of which only one worked with both sizes. For the other, you needed to adjust your stitch count before starting the chart. E) This is no fault of the pattern but we tend to be lovers of symmetry and couldn't take the asymmetry of the other chart. F) The pattern was written for DK-weight yarn but the stitch counts were suited for fingering weight. So. Things didn't exactly work out as planned.

In the end, we all modified the pattern and ended up with different looking fingerless mitts. The only thing we all used from the pattern was the height of the cuff. A total mystery why we felt the need to do so.

I made my mitts with the stitch count of the smaller size. Just so I didn't have to adjust the stitch count for either chart. After the cuff, I worked the smaller chart and right after that I did a thumb gusset. I moved the larger chart above the thumb and started the fingers right after finishing the chart.

Usually this amount of modifying makes me easily leave a project for time out for about a year. However, this time I finished the mitts in few days - but ended up waiting several months to weave in the ends. Oh well.