A toast

Knitting relaxes me; the repetition of the process, the simple twists and knots that undo the twists and knots in my mind and shoulders, and I get to create something in the process, something that's tangible and useful and maybe even pretty, something to show at the end of the day after spending most of my day doing the toughest job for which there are no tangible results or feedback (parenting in case you hadn't guessed).

I was thrilled to finally make some Toast arm warmers for myself. The pattern is ridiculously simple yet elegant and practical. I can pull on a pair of toast beneath my shirt or over my sleeves or to take the chill off a damp, rainy spring day when working on my laptop.

Heck, my daughter can even pull them on as leg warmers when she's dancing to the Nutcracker after dinner. After moving into a smaller house, I totally dig multifunctional! I knit them in a heathered purple Cascade 220 yarn, which I like more than I anticipated. Purple was never exactly one of my colors but heathered anything is.

Here's Leslie's original post with the Toast pattern (inspired by the British company of the same name). Thanks for the great pattern Leslie!

Weave mittens for me

This mitten pattern has been in my queue for quite some time. I'm so glad I finally knit a pair. The pattern is available for free on ravelry and is quite simple with a nice thumb gusset.

I did make quite a few modifications. I knit 16 rows of double ribbing for the cuff and after the cuff, knit 2 rows of st-st before dividing for the thumb (I should have knit 4-5 rows before following the pattern again). Instead of running the thread through the remaining live stitches to bind off at the end, I decided to use Kitchener stitch because I like the rounded, finished look better than the pucker of stitches pulled tightly together.

I also picked up 3 extra stitches (instead of 1, for a total of 14 for size small) for the thumb because my experience is that if you don’t pick up enough stitches, you’ll have holes where the thumb meets the hand and wet hands every time it snows.

I also experimented on the second mitten with increasing the thumb stitches by knitting into the stitch below, rather than making one. This avoided the little holes that are characteristic of m1. I will definitely use this method of increasing in the future when knitting the thumb increases for mittens.

The yarn is Malabrigo merino worsted and I'm in love with it. It is a lightly variegated indigo with hints of purple in it and is so soft and warm and strong and knits up well on size 6 or 7 needles. Since the pattern only used a portion of my skein, I'm looking forward to knitting something special with the remaining yarn.