Thursday, December 27, 2007

The Mitten Saga continues...

I am beginning to regret having the idea of knitting the dgds sweater sets. My stranding skills are rusty and the effects of the stroke are probably not helping – but I’m determined to get it right. Luckily, I decided to start with the mittens – I would be in a real funk if these problems had to be corrected in a sweater.

I made the first one at home and coped with the usual problem with Dale patterns. I copied the graph for the correct size and started with my trusty dpns. Thought four mittens would provide empirical testing grounds for dpns vs. magic loop and switching hands with the colors. It came out OK but I should have been wary that it was just slightly smaller than the ones I made for myself. Lisa had said the girls had grown – but found out when we got here it wasn’t THAT much. No problem – decided to just make a new one in the smaller size – just needed to mark off my graph. Knitted up a new cuff but the number of stitches in the graph is less than what the directions state – do over. I chugged along but noticed it felt kind of stiff. Tried the finished body on Teresa but she immediately ripped it off –“too scratchy”! sigh. Undaunted I did the second one with magic loop. My gauge was different by a half stitch, so the second one is slightly larger. Noticed I’m getting inconsistent stitches where I loop the needle – presume this is like ladders in dpns that I will eventually learn to control.

Just had a new try on and should have anticipated it would yield conflicting results. Teresa definitely likes the magic loop one but she didn’t complain about them being scratchy. Sophia liked them both, “pretty”, but picked the dpn one for comfort – sigh!

Think I need a cup of coffee before deciding what to do next.

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