As I mentioned a few days ago, I started working on a pair of felted mittens for my sister-in-law. Many of you are knitters, so you know the excitement I was feeling as I finished those last few rounds on the final thumb. Elation that I was done (particularly with the thumbs – Jeanne and Ana can tell you how much I hate mitten thumbs. I know it’s completely irrational to hate mitten thumbs more than, say, sock heels, but there it is). Satisfaction. Relief that I had so much time before Christmas to felt the mittens and see if my sister-in-law would be getting mittens or the alternate present.
Imagine my dismay when I put the mittens on the table to photograph my triumph, only to notice…
Yup. Those mittens sure aren’t a matching pair. Now, I’m fine with the spiral being different. And I’m completely ok with the thumbs being striped opposite of each other. But what I can’t quite ignore (even when I squinted at them) is that one of the mittens is definitely longer than the other. Or, depending on your perspective – one is shorter. The result is the same. I must rip the longer mitten back and start the final decreases two rounds sooner. I even used a row counter so the mittens would be identical, but…
When I looked at them a bit more, I decided that the shorter (first) mitten also was knit more tightly than the second mitten. What the…? How did that happen? It couldn’t have anything to do with having two soy mochas while I knit the first mitten, but two glasses of wine while I knit the second… could it? Although I suppose that does explain my, um, difficulty with the row counter on the longer mitten and probably also why the spiral changed.
Well, poop. So much for my great triumph.
Chaos listened intently to my troubles… But I think he was just humoring me so he could go back to his bath.
“You did what?”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk.”
“So, I guess you’ll be coming back to the chair to make a lap and fix that problem, eh?”
Oh, the fun of actually making things that “match.” I have a pair of socks just like that – luckily they were just for me, wore them yesterday in fact, one tight, one loose. Maybe you can block the short one??? (cop out, I know).
And, I gotta say, I find a weird satisfaction in turning a heel…
Love the pics of Chaos. LOL!
Lynda – I’m with you on turning a heel. Nope, can’t get away with blocking, because when they felt, it’d just be ugly. Best to deal with it before making things worse.
mama_tulip – Thanks! I obviously interrupted him at a, um, delicate point in his bath. 😉
mittens… different sizes… hmmm… maybe…
just… you know, just hear me out.
maybe… her left had is smaller than her right one… and in actual fact, you made the PERFECT size mittens.
see the logic? see it??
heh… look at chaos! he’s so cute. maybe you should make him some mittens. kitten mittens… yea…
My resolution to this problem would have been as follows:
Ignore the obvious issue with the length. Felt as planned. If a comment is made about the obvious length issue, make comment about that extra long finger on her right hand 😉 It will give her a complex and take away unwanted attention from your blunder and your gift is still complete ahead of time 😀
Or, rip back and reknit…
I know, I know..bad Ana, bad Ana
I’m not alone! It seems we both were having trouble with the counting! LOL
Love Chaos!
Some very imaginative solutions to the mitten problem! 🙂 Um… thanks??
The nice thing about kitten mittens is I wouldn’t need to knit thumbs. Of course, since he has all of his claws, I think they would be shredded in a matter of minutes.
but since kitty paws are so little, they’d take, o… lets say… two minutes to make?
a good place to get rid of all that extra unnecessary wool that’s hanging around 😀
Kitten paws are little, but Chaos paws are pretty honkin’ big. 🙂
I’ll have to include a picture of the egg roll I made for Chaos when he was a kitten… Kitty claw love is a powerful force of destruction.
What was your clue that green is my color? The Tilt cardi is Silk Garden #228 and the clogs were Kureyon #164.
The last (and probably final) time I had wine (and maybe some other alcoholic beverages) while knitting was on a heavily cabled sweater. It all looked so fine until the next morning . . . And ripping out with a hangover is not an experience I care to repeat!
Matching stuff is overrated. These are ‘rustic’ and ‘eclectic’. Maybe you could just put one of them through the dryer a few more times than the other?
Chaos is a sweetie. We had a cat once who was so barrel-shaped that he had great difficult actually reaching his belly to wash himself. I have a photo of it somewhere.
*sigh*, don’t you hate it when you get mismatching mittens??? grr. one possible solution is to make two more mittens, one to each mitten you’ve already made.
i’m with you 100% – mitten thumbs are AWFUL. mostly because you are so close to being done and the thumbs require more attention than regular mitten knitting so it feels like a formidable task. i’m not opposed to thumbless mittens, are you? ha ha ha. seriously, if you don’t need the dexterity, thumbless ones are really warm.
Thanks, for the yarn info, Chris!
Mitten dilemma resolved – thanks, everyone, for your helpful and, um, entertaining suggestions.
I’m with you on the thumb issue – when you knit a sock heel correctly it feels sort of clever and almost magical (“look what I can do!”). But when you knit a thumb on a mitten, correctly or not, it just feels sort of awkward and clumsy. You can’t get up a good rhythm, the rest of the mitten gets in the way and tangles the yarn, and all those points start looking and feeling like a bramble patch. Ugh.
Thus speaks a woman who is knitting WAY TOO MANY CHRISTMAS OVEN MITTS.
~Eileen
Eileen – Are you using the Three Kittens over mitt pattern? I had another row counting disaster when I was trying to make that for a Christmas present a few years ago. It was fine – if the recipients fingers had been amputated at the second knuckle… Whoops.