Even though I have been very busy in the garden and outside, I managed to get this pattern finished and tested. These fingerless mittens have an interesting design. The leaning stitches create a fluffy texture that gives more texture and a warmer mitt. Even with the increased warmth, they are still fantastic for an air conditioned office, or for cold spring and fall evenings. It’s also a texture that will keep you interested, but is a simple enough pattern that you can start to see what is coming next and can be somewhat easy to remember. Unfortunately, these mittens would not be a candidate for TAAT (two at a time) knitting. There are many sections where the stitches have to be shifted, which makes for an awkward knit if you knit TAAT. Thankfully fingerless mittens can be a faster knit, so hopefully won’t cause too many issues for getting around to the second one. 😀
I have had the pattern fully tested and tech edited. The pattern works best with a solid yarn, but my testers were able to get a good looking mitt even in variegated yarn. The texture will slightly disappear, but it still make the same fluffy mitten.
Now that we are getting into the full swing of warmer weather, even though technically summer doesn’t start for another week or so, it feels like it’s summer here. That also means a lot more daily chores, and a bit less knitting time. But, that’s okay. It’s why I do a lot of design work over the winter.
Our garden is in full swing now. Everything is growing really well. The spaghetti squash is almost growing too well. We usually struggle to get things to grow, but with the new plot and all new dirt, things are going wild. haha! Yesterday we had a spaghetti squash plant fall over and unfortunately it broke. So we had to do a hack job on that one. But, we have at least 4 more plants, maybe 6. Two plants were falling behind and getting buried, but now one of them has suddenly gotten a lot more room. Another plant is also falling over, and breaking. Hopefully we’ll get a good amount of squash still. That means a change of plans for next year, though.
Everything else is plumping up really well. I’ve gotten a couple zucchini’s, some blueberries, turnips and beets. Plus we’ve been eating greens for weeks now. My goal is to grow enough to last us the whole winter. I’m not sure we’ll get there this year, but hopefully next summer will be more bountiful. This year was a bit of an experiment on learning how things grow and which plants grow best. I discovered that the turnips grown down here for the summer are way too bitter. I’m going to replant them for the fall because if they can be in the ground for the first fall frost they will be much sweeter. We are already planning the fall planting. With any luck we’ll get two full growing periods.
I do have a couple designs in the works though. I have fingerless mittens, called Rhombus Rhuckus, which are in testing right now. That will run until almost the end of July, unless testers finish earlier.
And I just noticed that we need to redo this photo. You can see the bathroom back there. lol That’s fine. We’ll redo these before I release the pattern. No one needs to see the toilet. haha!
I also have a bulky weight cowl that is in tech editing right now. That should be ready to go in the next few weeks, depending on how I handle testing.
Hopefully come the fall I’ll have some more designs coming out. I have a few things in progress, but also have some major math that needs to be done on some sweaters. Those will take a lot of work.
Now that testing has been completed, I have launched the pattern Bon Voyage Socks. These socks have the usual sizes of 7.5, 8.5 and 9.5″ foot circumference, made with a fingering weight yarn and are a toe up pattern. I have designed them to have a swirl design that goes in the opposite direction for the right and left socks. It gives it a feel of a whirl wind or dust devil swirling up both legs. While I have labelled them as left and right, you can obviously choose which way you would prefer your swirls to go (towards each other or away from each other).
The nice thing about these socks is that they would be a good beginner sock pattern. They have a pattern, but it’s created with knits and purls which means you don’t have to worry about learning new stitches for the body of the sock. I do recommend marking off when a round is complete in the pattern though, because you can lose your place on these ones quite easily. I didn’t find these socks to be good for knitting while watching tv, but once I got better at marking my rows it went much smoother.
The idea for these socks came from the yarn from Mariposa Dye Works that I used. It was called Let it Go Already, and of course made me think of winter storms. 😀 I highly recommend checking them out on Etsy. They have some great yarn.
I hope you love these ones. I had a lot of fun making them.
The last couple months have been super busy. First, I decided to sign up and participate in Sock Madness this year for the first time. This is a competition to knit socks as fast as you can, and try to beat others in your group for a spot in the next round. In addition to fast, you also have to be accurate. The socks have requirements that have to be met to ensure that every one is making the same thing. We’re about to go into Round 3, and I have a spot in that round already. Right now I have a few days left of down time before the next round starts, so I am getting as much done as I can.
First of all, the garden is in. We still have some mulch to buy and put in place, but the plants and seeds are all in place. That means we are in maintenance mode there for a couple months. We should see some seedlings popping up in about a week. Fingers crossed the weather stays nice. 😀
The shrubs on the sides will all be mulched when we are done, along with between the planters. The shrubs are both screens as well as pollinators. We wanted to make it look nicer than just having metal planters, and we needed the pollinator garden. That is supposed to help with vegetable yield. I know right now that the bees and butterflies have been very busy!!
On top of that, we have the qualifier round, plus two rounds of Sock Madness socks that are complete (ignore the red thread in the second photo. I needed that for the moderators to be able to count):
And yes, those last socks have pockets. 😀
I also made an extra pair of socks in there. These are Vanilla is the New Black by Anneh Fletcher:
I finished my Sea Glass Tee by Wool and Pine, that I started last summer:
And I also finished Joe’s Edinburgh Sweater, by Kate Bostwick:
I’ve been just as busy as those little bees! I am also hoping to finish the edits on a blanket that has finished tested and get that released in a couple weeks. It needs a good look over by me to make sure I have everything up to par before it goes for it’s last edits. 😀
I hope you enjoyed seeing all the work that is going on around here. It has been a lot of fun being able to just knit without a reason. Sometimes that is just the rest we need to get those creative juices going again. And now that the garden is going I’ll be able to sit outside and enjoy that soon.
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