Jobo Designs

dreaming of strawberries and sunshine? it may be summer where you are... but it's still snowstormy here!  You know what they say about little old Prince Edward Island... if you don't like the weather, its okay!  wait a minute... it's likely to change...

So even though spring has supposedly sprung, the 2 feet of snow in my yard has me still mad about mittens.

The latest pair - a Bright Strawberry Pink Thrum Mittens... with soft white merino thrums reminiscent of strawberry seeds.  

The yarn:
Belfast Mini Mills 3-ply Merino (100g skein)

this yarn is soft and lofty... perfect for something like mittens where you want to trap warm air next to the skin.  In this case, the thrums were also merino wool from the same mill, and equally as soft and lofty.  Some people like little thrums (i.e. my mom's mittens usually have a little but less thrum) but me?  Im all about the poof... maybe I go a little overboard, but seriously... if you are going to bother embedding such soft cotton-candy fluff inside... I think you need to put LOTS.  Hey, Go Big or Go Home.

This is the second skein of this yarn that I have used... the first being a heathered blue yarn I used to make some warm cozy wool socks for the Husbeast.  I like the overall texture and consistancy of this yarn, and find it pleasing to work with.  I sometimes find wool itchy on my fingers but not this stuff by a long shot.  There were some sections of the skein that were a tiny but thicker or thinner, but no knots in the whole thing.  I always like that when you have a continuous skein, with no big knits or sections you need to cut out.  I am a hater of weaving in ends.  I know I'm a big girl, and I should get over it, but I still do go to great lengths to NOT not not weave in ends.  I am a baby sometimes.

I think I'd like to try this yarn on something larger sometime... like a sweater perhaps?  It seems to make a nice smooth solid cloth in stockinette, and I think would make a nice warm fall jacket/sweater.  The ladies at the mill have great taste in colours too... I'll have to look next time I pop in.  They had some delicious Olive Green... one of my favorite clothing colors.

Rating 4/5 balls of yarn

The Pattern:

My motto these days has been "easy does it".  With a busy home life, travelling an hour each way to get to work, and trying to sell our house... I don't have a lot of extra brain cells to spare!  I have been making mittens since I was a kid myself, so I normally just improvise things, but I was careful this time to make some notes as I went so I could share things with you folks out in blog land.

I started by taking some measurements of my own hands, I usually make a med/large sized mitten if making for myself to wear.  Since I had planned on using a standard thrum pattern, I wanted to add some extra Girly interest - what better way than by adding a cabled cuff.  Normally I would make cuffs for anything in a standard K2P2 ribbing (I dislike working K1P1, and avoid it where I can) so I decided to cable every 5th row.

Also, to break the monotony, I decided to add my thrums alternating back and forth zigzag, rather than the standard grid pattern often seen.  I added my Thrums every 4 stitches, so all sections of the mittens had to be in multiples of 4 stitches to make things work out evenly. 

Pattern is in the works... will be up here and on ravelry soon, just needs test knitting now... which is kind of scary.  I'm still such a newbie when it comes to writing out patterns!  you should see my notes... more pictures than words.  Most projects I make, I try and make notes about what I have done so that all relevant parts match, i.e. sleeves, and things that are made in twos.  To combat the problem, I often make both mittens or both socks at the same time on two sets of needles, so I dont "forget" how I did something.

I'll keep ya posted!