drive-by knitting

I'd really like to get back to posting more frequently, so this is a speedy attempt.  Here are some (not very good) photos I've taken with my iPad to show off recent knitting and life here.  I have finished my version of Kapp, an Icelandic sweater pattern with Lite-Lopi in Size 4. It is too big for our boys now but will be just right come next fall, I suspect.  It was a pattern that required the knitter to already know how to do an Icelandic type sweater.  (in the round, bottom up, attach two sleeves and do a yoke, etc.)  The instructions were well-intended, but minimal.  There is a mistake in this, and it is around the collar area, and I hope you can't really see it because of the buttons (ancestral button stash buttons!) the slanty photo and the collar. :)  Whatever, it will keep someone warm!

Now I am on to the next sweater.  This will be a stripy zip-up-the-front one, I suspect, as requested by my (skinny) boy, unless he goes for buttons at the last moment.  He likes long coatlike sweaters, and this one is being knit at a size 2 width but size 4 length.  There is no pattern to this.  I am just making it up as I go.  Winging it for me is only slightly more complicated than following a well-intended pattern without many details!

Long ago, I started a pair of Selbuvotter mittens, using a pattern from Terri Shea's great book.  However, things got distracting and I found I just could not concentrate on finishing those mitts at the time.  Hah.  You know, when I was writing books and getting ready to move to Canada, but not yet the mom of twins....well, it was the twin thing that did it, I guess.  Put me right over the top. 

I bumped into that little bag of half-finished project recently, and huh.  There was some very nice fingering-sport weight handspun 2 ply that I had done years ago.  It was just waiting to be mitts.  I took one look at that pattern I was trying to follow, and my eyes crossed.  (No, my twins still do not sleep through the night.  5 or 6 wake ups last night alone.  I lost count.)

I just cut the handspun right off the half mitten I'd done and started winging it.  I made some top-down mitts in the 20 minutes before I fell asleep or during odd moments here and there.  They fit fabulously and I was ready to go when I looked at them.  They looked sort of, umm, homespun.  Not bad, but just sort of homemade in a way I wasn't quite satisfied with wearing out and about.

I washed the mitts, gently fulling them in the process.  Then I grabbed some grape kool aid packets on a grocery store errand, and the mitts took a little dip.  They now are a lovely variegated purple/lavender contrasted with rich brown.  They look good and more importantly, they feel very warm, especially with another pair underneath.  Sadly, they do not photograph well in the spare moments when I have a chance to shoot a photo.

Today I was out shovelling and I tried all sorts of angles in the sunlight.  There is very definitely lots of "winter" out here, and while the temperature is tropical (-10 C, around 20F), I still wear mitts when shovelling.

Here's a failed shot of mitts that shows some snow drifts.  Here's also a photo of me in my winter gear.  I've made 2 pairs of mittens for myself this winter and I am now on to a third...I wonder whether winter will beat me and I'll have three new pairs of mitts by the time the snow is done, or -- maybe, (hah) spring will come first.  I somehow doubt it!

PS: I've now managed to download all the currently available pdf patterns from my both of my books to Ravelry...but no one has bought a single one of the new downloadable patterns yet!  There's still time to make mitts before spring!  Join me...?