Inquiring minds want to know: When doing stranded colorwork, is it really necessary to bring the new color over the old one every time? Or am I wasting valuable knitting time dangling my half-a-mitten after every round to untwist the port and mooskit?

I’m up to something new. I know I’ve got half a dozen projects on the needles already, but I had to cast on some Estonianish mittens. In my defense, I mean them to be a Christmas present for my neighbor. She likes ravens, and so do I. I like their loquaciousness and intelligence. So I set out to design some mittens with raven cuffs. Here’s what I came up with:

The basic blueprint for these babies is Nancy Bush’s Folk Knitting in Estonia. I chose a design I thought worked with my ravens, the Cat’s Paw. I tried a few other motifs, but it was tough to find something that fit the stitch count without overwhelming the ravens. Cat’s Paw seems to balance pretty well. Then I threw in a little two-color vikkel braid to frame the ravens. I say it all nonchalantly, but if you want the truth, it cost me all of the running time and most of the plot comprehension of Spike Lee’s Inside Man to figure it out. There was ripping. And more ripping. It was slow going even when I was doing it right. But I got the hang of it in the end, once I realized that I was making errors in the slipping of stitches. This is the sort of technique I could have picked up very quickly if someone had demonstrated it for me, but learning it from a book was a challenge. Want to see the palm side? Of course you do:

If you think you spy a striped thumb gusset emerging from the side, you couldn’t be more right. I have a beef about the constrictive thumb positioning on traditional Scandinavian mittens, so I cast aside all the wisdom of the knitting ancestresses (a thing I don’t do lightly, but sometimes a girl just has to blaze her own path) and decided to put the thumb where it makes most sense to me and where it can wriggle in opposable freedom as God intended. I should have been spacing my increases every two rounds instead of every three, I suspect, but the beauty of knitting is that you really can make it up as you go along. I’ve done three sets of increases every third round; now I shall switch to every two and see how we go. The cuff will just be a little longer, and that’s rarely a bad thing in a mitten.

The yarn is Jamieson Shetland Spindrift and the needles are US #3. The Spindrift is about as fine as you’d want to go for a mitten, but it’s a power for the colorwork. I’m making the mittens a bit large so I can felt them a little to make them warmer. The colors are black, port wine, and mooskit. If you can tell me what a mooskit is, I shall mail you a chocolate bar. ETA: Carrie is smart, good at research, and fast on the draw. And she clearly likes chocolate. A woman after my own heart. Go check out her beautiful new Salina.

Off for dinner at Apizza Scholls, a restaurant with a name I do not understand. I perfectly comprehend their excellent pizza, though.

Bramble and Porridge. Mulch and Bracken. Bark and Mushroom. Fox and Mallard. Porridge and Cinnabar. (And two skeins of lichen St. Ives sock yarn I picked up at the same time because I never see this stuff for sale in the US, it’s inexpensive, and Nancy Bush likes it. ‘Nuff said.)

These are my first attempts at combining colors for mittens. After I’d taken this picture and mulled over the topic for several days, I came to the May chapter in The Knitter’s Almanac. Trust Elizabeth Zimmermann to have paved the way: “Color (and you may consider this to apply to the choice of wool for mittens) is a deeply subjective matter; in the tastes of various people it can vary infinitely. . . . Experiment with mittens, and exercise and expand your sense of color with them. Combine unusual colors, and find out if you like the result.” Another choice line: “Salmon-pink I can’t stand perhaps because it used to be the color of so much cheap underwear, but in smoked salmon it’s delicious, and it suits geraniums and zinnias.”

I, too, find I can love some colors in nature, but have no wish to apply them to my clothing. I bought salmon-colored zinnias at the market this morning, but you’ll find nothing that shade in my wardrobe (nor in my underwear drawer, thank you). In yarns, I have a deep affection for tweeds, perhaps because they capture more of the complexity of colors as they occur in nature. It’s the same effect I most admire in the master painters: the ability to see and capture a kaleidoscope of shades the human eye blends into one. Above my desk is a postcard of Vermeer’s Head of a Girl: her ochre robe, on closer examination, contains greens, rust reds, yellows. Some of my favorite paintings are snow scenes by the Impressionists, particularly Monet — that snow is blue, pink, terracotta, dove grey, and yet we see it as white. The heathery Jamieson’s Shetland Spindrift I’ve chosen for most of my mittens is as good an approximation of this color depth as I’ve seen in a yarn. I don’t know how they achieve it, but I think they must not bleach the natural color out of the wool before they dye it.

I have a lot to learn. I’ll be musing on color a lot this fall. Next time I hope to have some samples knitted up so I can experiment with how colors affect each other. In addition to the lot I’ve shown you above, I have some Rowan Yorkshire Tweed 4-Ply for a Fair Isle-inspired beret. After I started hearing laments from Zimmermaniacs eager to replicate Brooklyn Tweed’s gorgeous Seamless Hybrid sweater and unable to find the RYT DK, I realized that world supplies of this great-but-discontinued yarn really are starting to run short. So I hied myself to the LYS and spent at least twenty minutes cross-legged on the floor, playing with different color combinations of their odd balls. The mittens and the beret will be my self-imposed crash course in colorwork, and I’ll want your input on what works and what doesn’t.

Chez Blue Garter we like to keep a lot of irons in the fire. Since I’m leading the Zimmermania charge, I also need to stay on top of my EZ projects. Besides the Fishtrap Aran, which I intend to cast on today, I’ve also started a Baby Surprise jacket for the firstborn of one of my dearest childhood friends. Little Cam is due in just a couple of weeks, so I need to knit fast! And on Tuesday I start two courses at the local university, so I’ll have homework on top of the knitting. I intend to become extremely proficient at knitting while reading.

By the way, it’s never too late to join Zimmermania — just send me an email!

That nice Warm Hands button has been lurking in my sidebar for months now, suffusing me with guilt whenever I look at it. I joined Sandy’s knitalong months ago; I had the wool, I had the idea for the pattern, and since the mittens I made myself last year are still favorites, I had a Christmas recipient in mind for the new ones. Christmas came and went with only one mitten finished, but I finally set myself to complete its mate last Sunday. Here they are pre- and post-fulling:

These mittens definitely have that homemade je ne sais quoi. Actually, je sais exactly quoi: my gauge loosened up and mitten #2 came out half an inch larger all around; I totally guessed at the thumb gusset, wound up with too many stitches, and had to decrease haphazardly when I came to work the thumbs; it’s the first time I ever tried to full anything on purpose (we’re not counting the time in college when I oh-so-thoughtfully did Mr. Garter’s laundry for him and shrank his favorite vintage wool shirt – hand to God it was devoid of labels and I never suspected it was wool) and we don’t have a washing machine, so the activity in the bathroom sink may have been a little haphazard, too. Anyhow, I tried to correct the right mitten’s larger size with extra soap, hot water, and friction, and I was mostly successful. But I didn’t want the left mitten to get too much smaller, so it’s hardly felted at all. You can see the difference:

But they’re for my mother-in-law, and she’s going to love me anyway.

The specs:

One skein (with ample leftovers) Steadfast Fibers worsted weight wool, in a color they call “groovy green” and I call “celery”

US size 6 bamboo dpns

My own pattern, using the Carillon Stitch from my gal Barbara Walker.

I like them, really. I may make the pattern available here if I can tinker with the thumb and figure out how to offer a smaller size. Unless you have broad palms (and my mother-in-law does, fortunately), these would be more like overmitts. Much more fulling than I gave the right mitten would totally obscure the pattern, and those little bells and bell ropes are so cute. I’ll let you know when I’m satisfied with my work. Perhaps I’ll also post the pattern for my Merry Mittens, which came out so well.