Chillin' in a snow bank

Pattern: Mitten from the District of Kurzeme following chart 111. Latvian Mittens by Lizbeth Upitis
Modifications: Colours. It's all about changing up the colours. And often. Took me a while to work out the final scheme & colour changes for the actual mitten part. But well worth it.
Materials:Briggs & Little Sport, Various
Start Date: October 27, 2007
Finished By: November 20, 2007

They've been finished for a while. I have no idea why I've been procrastinating the taking of the pictures and the actually declaring them done. I was humming and hawwing for too long over the block or not-to-block. A full out Euclan soak & block seemed way to big a deal so I opted for the quick & instant steamy iron version. They are so much better after blocking. I really need to get over the mental blocking block and integrate it into the normal practice.

After the blocking debacle was done with, I started procrastinated with the picture taking. Had to charge the camera battery (not that it really takes long), then the setting up with the tripod & the finicky working of the 10 sec timer & figuring out where to pose, blah, blah, blah. There was just too too too many mental steps involved so I opted to just knit instead.

Then snow happened. And everyone's doing the mittens in the snow thing and who am I to argue? I managed to actually charge the camera and before work I tossed the mitts in the snow bank outside my front door, snapped a few, tossed it all inside and made the epic trek to the Metro.

While the post-knitting part of these mittens was such a trial, the actual knitting & even the working in a bazillion ends was surprisingly not. All the colour changes kept me on my toes and I couldn't help from speeding my way through the chart to see the finished product. Though it was a bit of a stretch for me to work on them at Knit Nites™ sometimes the multi-tasking is not my strong point.

I love love LOVE the Latvian Mittens book so totally worth buying. Immediately after ordering I thought it was probably a little silly to buy a whole book to make mittens for a swap, but once it finally arrived, I was BLOWN AWAY. So many many many colour images of fabulous amazing mittens and charts for each and every one. As a visual person, I was so excited by the colour section and all it did was challenge me to come up with something just as great. And I'm really happy with how they turned out.

They are soon to be on their way to Germany with some Maple Syrup as soon as I can find a little stuffed Canadian Goose or Moose or something. Surprisingly tricky to find in these off-tourist-season time of year.