what happened to the mitten and Shetland fleece update.

 Hi,

First, the mitten/gloves. As I wasn't able to find a giant to wear them or make them into fingerless easily they are awaiting unravelling.

Final conclusion s are 

1 I didn't spin fine enough

2 wartime yarn was super fine

3 the cast on number of stitches seems at odds with other patterns for the same thing

Next steps...

I've ordered a pattern for the gloves from the Scottish Women's Institute for comparison and will have another go, probably knitting them as gloves even though the thought of knitting fingers sends me into a frenzy.

Shetland fleece

I've processed some ready for spinning and I'm currently knitting a pair of mitts to replace the ones I have been wearing for the last four years.

I have a four week plan to work solely on the Shetland, use my nano as much as possible  to spin fine and knit a couple more pairs of the fingerless mitts.

So this didn't work...mitten analysis

 I have a pattern for a mans Sanquhar glove which I wanted to make as mitts, I spun the yarn, found the needles and all was well until I got up near to  the fingers.

They were too big on me ( as expected) but when I tried them on Ian who has quite wide hands they still didn't fit right, far too baggy at the top of the palm.

I sat and scratched my head and decided to rip them back as far as the thumb hole. My usual mitten pattern sees me cast off 20 stitches for the thumb and pick up 4 on the next row. This pattern has me place 22 stitches on a holder and cast on 11 before continuing the next row

This means I have one extra pattern repeat in the body of the hand.

My plan now is to miss out the cast on stitches and add in just add in maybe two on the next row to keep the pattern correct. That way the stitch count for the cuff remains correct as that fits as expected.

or maybe  knit another with one less pattern repeat to see how that works, needle indicates how it would look. I'm looking to find something that works for me so I can slot in different patterns.

I know I could look at ravelry etc to find another pattern but I like the challenge in making something more 'mine'