Squirrel Mittens 101

What I learned while knitting my squirrel mitten....

1. I love picot edges. They are dainty, girly, and pretty slick. I don't enjoy knitting them.... BUT it was worth it and I'm glad I did it. The jury is still out on the braids... they look ok. I think maybe just one would have looked better....

2. When working color work, it is best to hold your contrast color in your left hand (if you hold one yarn in each hand like I do). I actually have done this subconsciously most of the time, but the pattern recommended it because it helps the CC "pop".

3. Working decreases on size 0 needles is not fun. I bent my addi turbo needle doing the decreases which made me even more annoyed.

4. Charting color work is a bit more difficult than I thought it would be. I'm sure there is probably some slick computer program that would make it a bit easier, but as I was charting my initials for the mitten, all I had was graph paper and a pen. It took me four tries to get it the way I wanted. The third time I was on the last row of stitches and messed up ONE. Ugh. The little bit of altering I did to the chart was much easier.

5. Even though it was a challenge, it did make me want to chart something for my own designer mittens. Not sure what yet. I also really like the idea of having two mittens that don't match, but coordinate. Like, maybe one mitten has a dog and the other has a fire hydrant or a bone or something...

6. I love knitting color work. I already knew this, but figured it was worth mentioning. Watching the picture appear keeps me motivated to knit. It is often called "potato chip knitting" because you can't just knit one row. :)

7. When marking off rows on my chart, I prefer to use something see through, like a highlighter or a marker, rather than a pen or a magnet. Why? Because I like to read the stitches in relation to the ones in the previous row rather than counting. :)

I like when I learn new things about knitting or myself while working on a project. The other color work project on my needles (the Baby Christ-ma-kah sweater) is going to be a learning experience as well because it is steeked. Ahhh. But, I have a wonderful friend who has done it before and I'm sure she will help me out. :) I am working on the second sleeve and then I have the body to do, but it has been going faster since I started marking off rows on my chart with a marker as mentioned in point #7. Not sure why this makes such a huge difference, but it really does for me. I think another thing about it, is you can really easily see how much you've knit. If you wanted to be even more crazy about it, you could switch colors for every time you worked on it to see how much you got done in a day... just a thought. Alright, off to walk the pups and get ready for my day... considering it is 11:15 I guess I should get on that....