The hibernation of this blog over the last few months can in some small part be put down to the Great Mitten Disaster of 2011. A craving to learn stranded colourwork became an obsession and life turned into a dark private struggle involving too many balls of yarn and too many right handed mittens*.
But there is light at the end of the tunnel. Finished mittens are gradually amassing and the process of knitting with multiple strands of yarn became easier and now there is nothing but joy to be found in the knitting of mittens.
The things that helped the most were practice, practice and practice, and a fabulous Fair Isle class at Loop in November which sorted out a lot of problems and really helped to refine the process – I’m now throwing one yarn and picking the other from the other hand which reduces tangles and tears.
I’m madly in love with mitten knitting and have cast on a few more pairs, but tomorrow we need to talk about hexipufs.
*more than half of them turned out right handed, you see the problem there.
