Kelsey Mitts

From Blog photos

Pattern: Kelsey Mitts by Silka Burgoyne, Knitscene Fall 2012 Yarn: Natural Dye Studio BFL/Exmoor Blueface (Great British Wool Club January 2012 shipment)

They’re done! My Smurf mitts are done. I’ve nicknamed them that because of the yarn. Whenever I knit on them, I got this stripe of blue on the my left index finger and the tips of my fingers were tinged blue after a few rounds. I understand that because of the way the yarn is dyed, the transference is to be expected, but it’s still slightly annoying to have tinted hands. I believe (and hope really really hard) that giving these beauties a good gentle wash will take care of the excess blue coming off on my hands when I wear them.

I mostly knit these as written, mostly. I used the smaller needles throughout for the ribbing and the larger ones only for the cabled section. I lengthened the top ribbing section by a little bit. I just kept going until the ribbing came up to the middle knuckles of my index fingers. Also, I thought it was a bit weird to do the thumb first and then the rest of the hand. Working the thumb while I kept the other sts on hold (left them on the dpns) felt like I was wrestling with a porcupine. It also made it fiddly around the join when working the rest of the hand because the thumb kept getting in the way. But, there are no gaps in the join when done this way, so… *shrug*