2 years later........I finally have!
I hand dyed the colorwork wools with Wilton Icing Dyes and spun them up in small batches to make the mitts. The body of the mitts is knit with a worsted natural gray handspun wool. My mother purchased a batt of it at a recent fiber festival in my hometown, sadly, she does not have the label telling what kind of wool it is. I can tell you it is a little bit coarse, but not scratchy, and it was a bit tricky to spin, as it was carded into a huge batt at the mill and the fibers are very short bits and pieces. I had to pull the batt in several directions to loosen up the fibers for drafting, I then rolled it loosely like a rolag and folded it gently in half so it formed a V shape. then I drafted it from the tip of the V which pulled the fibers sideways across each other, this seemed to help them twist more firmly together. I am a fairly new spinner, so if there is a specific name for how I drafted this I don't know what it is, but I would love to hear it if you do.
I measured out 2.25 ounces of this wool and spun up 90 yards of worsted weight yarn.
The yarn used for the colorwork is as follows:
Red 3o yds handspun 12 wpi
Orange 1o yds handspun 12 wpi
Teal 11 yds handspun 12 wpi
* I used this in the center colorwork of the 2nd mitt when I ran out of the red.
Salmon 15 yds handspun 12 wpi
Lime Green 27 yds handspun 12 wpi
lt pink 7 yds handspun 11 wpi
* I only used a very small portion of this yarn on the top portion of the 2nd mitt because I ran out of the Salmon color. The colors are so close that you almost can't tell the difference unless you really look closely at them together.
I really like the slight differences that resulted in the 2nd mitt due to the color changes. I knit these mitts over a few days. Each one took about 12 hours. I CO in the evening for the first mitt and knit for 6 hours. I picked it up again at 7am the next morning and knit until 1pm. The first mitt was finished. The majority of the second mitt was knit in a single day. I knit 27 rows from the CO edge in the evening and then picked it up again at 6am the next day and knit for a few hours in the morning, and then I knit again in the afternoon until the mitt was finished. I think the second mitt actually went a little faster, but since the first one was 12 hours of knitting I figured it would be safer to estimate 24 hours for the whole project.
I like these mitts so much, I think I will make them again in different colors. My mom wants a pair and I am sure my daughter would love a pair too.
The pattern for these mitts can be found on Ravelry here Interweave Knits Composed Mitts
Happy Knitting!
2 comments:
Those mitts look soooo awesome, love them!
beautiful mitts! wonderful colors too :)
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