A Tale of a Mitten or 2, or, 3

Once upon a time there was this lovely young lady  knitter who decided to make her niece a lovely pair of mittens to go with the lovely hat. Now, said person had never made a pair of mittens before. It can't really be that hard right?

The pattern picked the aforementioned knitter began knitting in earnest. Following the pattern to the letter. She continued to knit and knit and knit and knit. In the back of her lovely mind she kept thinking this mitten was looking kind of big, but never having done the pattern before chose to continue. Now mind you this is not even in the round, it will be seamed later. Finally, after what seemed like days the glove was done, all ends woven in and seamed up. Then, reality set in. This mitten was big enough for said knitters hand with a little bit of room. The said knitter also wondered after looking at the picture on the pattern why her mitten didn't look the same. Well, other than the obvious gargantuan size, she also messed up the right side and the wrong side so now there is this nice ridge that shouldn't be there. Now mind you not once but twice.

Attempt 1 - really doesn't look that large in the picture but try and picture this on a 3 year old.  My thoughts exactly!



After sometime had passed, about one day (it is Christmas season), the poor, poor knitter decided to tackle another mitten with a different pattern. I mean she still has a whole skein of yarn left, plus a little more at that. The knitter is happily knitting away with her new pattern on size 4 dpns (tell you about those later). She is merrily knitting round and round following the pattern. She also has never knit onto scrap yarn but she merrily goes with flow and actually realizes she can do this. Now, by this time she is almost done with the one mitten and will only have to back and do the thumb. No worries she's got this, except one minor little detail. The stinking DPN's she is using are shorter than what she usually uses and they are killing her. Well not really but poor knitter's hand is being rubbed raw  sore. She can handle this though the is almost done and by golly she was a Marine at one point of time. Finally, after another day or so she is done with mitten 1. It is awesome. She figured out how to get the waste yarn out, pick up stitches, and go the distance.

The next day she starts the "matching" mitten. No problems. All is right in the world she will zip through this mitten and will be done with another project and able to move on up to other things. Since said knitter was on a roll she finished the mitten in a day (pretty quick for her too) but 9pm that day she only had to do to more rounds on thumb and weave in ends. She's got this. Bam...she is done. She proudly holds up for hubby to see and marvel at the wonders of the mittens that she created.

Now, the said knitter is enjoying her success immensely. Then reaching across the 12 inches she has to reach to get the other mitten and put them together to wash the travesty sets in. They DO NOT MATCH.  What they heck?

Then the reality sets in. She didn't read the directions properly from mitten one to mitten two. Go Figure! Even though when poor knitter is starting second mitten she has a momentary thought of "I don't remember doing a ribbing on the first one" but it just must be me.  Oh why, why did she not reach those short few inches and check the first mitten. She didn't even have to get up for goodness sakes.

So, now the poor, poor knitter has 3 mittens and none of them match. Guess what said knitter will be doing with the stinking DPNS from hell the basket. You got it! She will now spend the next day or two making not one but TWO more mittens. One with ribbing, the proper ones, and one without commonly referred to the oven mitt.

Will said knitter be making anymore mittens after this any time soon? Not if she can help it.

Come back on Friday to check out my On The Needles post and just maybe there will be 2 sets of mittens.

Michelle

PS. Hubby asked what I was going to do with the first lonely mitten attempt. My lovely response..."why, hang it on the Christmas Tree since there is not such thing as an ugly mitten".