Knitting Projects January 2011

The flu hit our house about 3AM New Year's Day and has had both my girls in it's grasp for the past few days.  Thankfully, I seemed to have escaped with a few aches and cramps, the others were far worse.  While I was spending time with the sick, and after the initial yuckiness had passed, I needed a project.

I love wool!  There's nothing like it to keep you warm on the most blustery of days with less than dry conditions...like snowball fights!  We have a variety of wool sweaters, wool pants, hats, mittens, gloves, scaves and blankets to keep us snug in the coldest winter weather.
Months ago, I purchased several skeins of a very soft wool in shades of deep blue/purple and olive green.  It is hand spun and very lovely.  A pattern with little attention to detail was just the ticket so I started a pair of fingerless gloves. 
The process is simple...using #6 DP needles, cast on 36 stitches dividing evenly over 3 needles.  Join the ends and continue to knit in a k2, p2 ribbed pattern for 6".  Then cast off 6 stitches and continue the round.  When you reach the cast off point, cast on 6 stitches again and continue as before for about 1 1/2 inches. Cast off.

And when those were finished, I needed something else to do so I decided to turn this simple pattern into mittens.  They look a little skinny before you put them on but they fit nicely.

 

My oldest daughter, who can't sit still for long without a project in hand, decided to make a few gifts for friends while she was recouperating.  The first was a hat.

 And the next was a pair of mittens along the same lines as the ones I made.  She, like me, can't be bothered with patterns when there's creating to be done.  Problem there is that neither of us have directions for the second mitten!

 

Those projects are next on the list so if we write the directions down, I'll add them here.

If you're local and you'd like to learn how to make these or just knitting in general, I'm open to hosting a knitting class in my home.  Drop me a line if you're interested and we'll discuss a small fee for materials and the lesson as well as a good time to get together.  

This post is linked to Simple Lives Thursday.