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How To Decrease the Hand of a Mitten


Happy Monday! I am excited for another week of querying literary agents, knitting mittens and writing, writing, writing. What are you excited about working on this week? I mean, I know you’re knitting mittens, and I’d love to see how those are going, but what else?

Here is this week’s installment of the Simple Chunky Mittens knitting tutorial. Today we learn how to k2tog and create an even, round top to our mittens. We even check for fit and weave in an end.

We’re so close to having a finished mitten! Next week we’ll knit the thumb and that’s it!

If you like, here is the written pattern we are using.
And if you need to catch up with the videos, they begin, here.

Don’t forget to share your progress photos with #mittenselfie and #simplechunkymittens. I’ll be searching for your photos on instagram.

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It’s 5am on a Saturday, and I Have Been Awake for Ages

Good morning all. How are you this lovely, cold Saturday morning. I am sitting in bed, in the dark, because I have very successfully woken myself. The last time the baby woke up to eat, about an hour and a half ago, he woke me up out of the middle of a sleep cycle. To avoid falling asleep while I was feeding him, I started thinking about work–well, apparently nothing gets my blood boiling in the pre-dawn hours than thinking about things I can’t do anything about until Monday.(He, of course, ate and went back to sleep immediately.) Next time, I am going to try to think about something more fun, like flowers or yarn.

It’s November 15th, and for the first time ever, I am keeping up with Nanowrimo. Usually by now I have completely given up on the whole endeavor. My first weekend in November is notoriously busy, and so I always start out the month a few days behind on my word count, and then I never catch up, and by the beginning of the second week I am too daunted by the sheer volume of words I am missing, and instead of writing for writing’s sake for the rest of the month, I just give up on the whole enterprise completely and for the rest of the year the only thing I write are blog posts and grocery lists.

Considering I have a degree in creative writing, this is pretty embarrassing.

This year, I decided I was really going to finish. I didn’t have a story idea until the last minute, and I have done absolutely zero planning. I’ve always been a fly by the seat of my pants sort of writer anyway, so this whole making stuff up as I go along and having no plan is fun. Not sure how much substance my story has, but that’s not the point right now. The point is to write everyday, and that’s what I’m doing.

Only took 2 1/2 years after graduating to get my writing mojo back.

Now that I am writing everyday though, my other work is slowing down a little bit. After finally finishing Brock and Felix’s Flax sweaters last week, I had a small bout of startitis and cast on Wheaton which I think is too gorgeous for words. I am knitting the worsted weight scarf version, because while I think this pattern is stunning, I am also aware that I have a very short attention span for knitting anything that turns out to be a rectangle. But I think a blanket, or even a stole in this pattern would be the epitome of luxury.

I am also working on a pair of mittens for Brock. I am using Skinny Fit Mitts as a template because I like the cable pattern on them a lot, but the pattern was written for someone with tiny hands, so not only am I changing it up by making them flip-tops, I am also having to lengthen and widen the thumb gusset, lengthen the hand and figure my own decreases for top.

And since it is supposed to snow today, I really need to make Felix a pair of mittens. I am just going to use my chunk wool and knit him a pair of thumbless mittens. That should be quick, and I hope to do it this afternoon after I finish my word count.

What are you working on?

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I seem to have a thing for orange


New mitten. New mug.

So far, the mitten is singular, though I hope to make it mittens by the end of the weekend. The pattern is Snapdragon flip-tops by Ysolda Teague. (Yarn is Cascade220 Heathers) I have been playing around with the idea of patterning the cuff of mittens instead of the hand for awhile now. Then, of course, I looked through my patterns and realized these were very similar to the image in my brain with the bonus of a new way to do flip-tops! I do enjoy my mittens.

The mug I snagged at Target last night. There were only two orange ones left, and adopting them seemed the proper thing to do.

It’s finally winter here. So at 7am, it is dark and cold and my photograph is horribly lit. Thankfully, the brilliance of orange seems to be able to withstand the test of dim artificial light and pre-coffee photography.

Happy Saturday!