Knitting the Knitter's Almanac - May

At this point, it is clear that I will not be finishing the projects in the Knitter's Almanac in a single year, but I'm happy to say that I have at least made it though half of the year, and will continue this project into 2013 to its completion.  I clearly do not knit as much as Elizabeth Zimmermann, but since I do have other things to occupy my time (some more worthy than others) I'm not too upset with only making it halfway.

May's project is mittens.  It seems a little odd to be knitting mittens in the spring, but Ms. Zimmermann notes that this way you are not rushed to finish them as you might be at the end of the year.  Since I was not knitting mine for anyone in particular, I wasn't rushed, even though I started them in November.  It was somewhat unclear how many mittens I should knit to consider this chapter complete.  The text discusses various techniques and talks about knitting three mittens for children, since they are so easy to lose, but there are only two patterns at the end of the chapter, so in the end I knit these patterns, incorporating the techniques discussed into both.

Norwegian Mittens

Close up of cuff

Close up of color work snowflakes

The first pair of mittens I knit were the Norwegian Mittens.  The back has a snow flake pattern in two colors, and the palm has a simple checked pattern.  I decided to use my hand spun, hand dyed yarn for these.  The mittens have a very long cuff, meant to go over the coat sleeve, and they look huge when off your hands, but they fit quite nicely once on.  I knit these pretty much as written, though I modified the color work slightly.  The thumb of these comes off the palm, and it uses what Ms. Zimmermann calls the "Thumb Trick", basically scrap wool is knit in to the area where you wish the thumb to be, then the rest of the mitten is knit, and when finished, the scrap yarn is removed, stitches are picked up and the thumb is knit.  It creates a seamless join for the thumb.  I've used this technique before for sleeves as well.  Since I was working with a limited supply of irreplaceable yarn, I had to be careful how much of each color I used on the first mitten to be sure I would have enough for the second.  I ended up using most of the green and undyed yarn, but with plenty of the red left over.

The second pair of mittens I knit were the Mitered Mittens.  The idea behind the Mitered Mittens was to increase and decrease evenly around to create a zig-zag or chevron pattern in the knitting.  It looks good knit in a single color, but when additional colors are added, the shaping really shows up.  I decided to continue using the red dyed homespun, and used undyed yarn, first my own hand spun, and then yarn I had left over from January's project, as the contrasting color.  For these mittens, I decided to use two of EZ's suggested techniques for mittens. 

Idiot Cord Border

The first was what she calls the "Idiot Cord Border".  Stockinette stitching, the most common form of knitted work, has a tendency to curl in on itself both vertically and horizontally.  To counteract this, an edge must be worked in a different type of stitch.  In the first pair of mittens, I used a ribbed stitch, as suggested in the pattern.  Many of the previous knit projects have used garter stitch as the edging.  The Idiot Cord Border is another technique that can be used to counteract the curling.  Idiot Cord, or I-cord, is basically a thin knit tube.  The border technique is to make the cord with as many rows as you would cast on stitches, then pick up a stitch per row and start knitting. 

Mitered Mittens

The second technique I incorporated into these mittens was to put the thumb out from the side rather than the palm.  EZ suggests doing this so that the mittens can all be knit the same way, instead of mirrored, as I needed to do for the Norwegian Mittens.  As she points out, once you wear the mittens, they mold to your hand and become right handed and left handed mittens, even if you don't knit them that way.  This is why she can knit them in sets of three as noted above.  Personally, I'm not in love with the aesthetic result of joining the thumb from the side on the mitered mitten, since the thumb comes out of one of points in the shaping pattern, but I'm not sure it would have looked better elsewhere either, and I did want to incorporate as many of the suggested techniques in the two pairs of mittens as possible. 

Mittens were pretty quick and easy projects, and great for using up yarn on hand instead of buying (and running out of) more.  In fact, my only complaint with mittens was that I had to knit two of them. Having to do the same project twice in a row is somewhat tedious to someone like me who is constantly looking for something new and different to do. Fortunately, the small size makes it somewhat easier to bear, though I may have to learn how to knit two at once, a technique employed by many sock knitters, if I decide to knit more mittens. 

As a final note, this is the first Almanac chapter for which I did not run out of yarn, so hopefully I'm starting a new trend in yarn usage.