"Purple with zig zags, Mom"

New Year Mittens

What knitter can turn down a request for new mittens? Not this one.  It was an especially compelling request when paired with the annual "I don't want to count this" inventory sale at my local yarn shop.  So off I went to find some appropriate purple yarn for the small fry.

What I ended up bringing home was one skein each of Nature Spun Sport Weight yarn in Purple Splendor, Alpine Violet and Plum Line.  They are respectively lavender-ish, magenta-ish and dark purple.  This was my first experience with Nature Spun and I'm a big, big fan.  The colors choices were  very good, and the swatch and mittens knit up really nicely, and blocked beautifully. (And $4.40 per skein - score!)

Last sunlight of the day

I did knit these on really small needles – US 1 and 2.  But my swatch with the recommended US 5s was more loose than I wanted it to be.  The goal was a finished pair of mittens that was super dense to keep the small fry's little hands as warm as possible.  

I made the pattern up as I went along, and learned a new technique for making a knitted cord in the fabric, which turned out just as well as I was hoping that it would.  The thumbs are a little less shapely than I would have liked, but carrying three colors of stranded yarn around a circumference of only 25 stitches is a little of a challenge.

I-corded together

At the end of the day, they turned out really well.  The girl loves them. And I took a little extra time to knit an i-cord to each cuff, so that they will not get separated from her, or her coat or each other.  And I'm hoping that the thickness of three color stranding and smaller needle size do a much better job of keeping her warm than her old store bought mittens did.  More technical details are on ravelry here.