Mitten gifts.. Gift mittens... Gifttens??
If you read the title at least four times, "gift" and "mittens" will no longer sound like words in your brain! Maybe that's just me, though...
I was hesitating to post this one because I wanted to make sure that the recipient of these gifttens actually got them. But snail mail might take a while, and I'm so excited about how they turned out I can't wait any longer!
My housemate this summer, Rebecca, is so amazing I could talk for hours about how talented and thoughtful and intelligent she is. She quickly became a very close friend of mine, and is actually one of the main sources of inspiration for starting this blog, so it seemed appropriate to craft something for her.
Mittens have been at the top of my list of things to make for a while, and I wanted my project for her to be something special, so I figured this would be a good time to give it a try. Knitting was an option, but I decided I'm just not quite there yet with my knitting skills, so I went for crocheting instead.
I've now gotten into the habit of taking crafting materials pretty much any time I go for a hike. While it was storming during my trip to Rainbow Lake, I sat cozied up in my sleeping bag in the tent and started working on the mittens.
The pattern I found is simple, elegant, and versatile with thorough and very easy to follow instructions. I plan on making more of these mittens (and using more patterns from the designer) especially since I know it won't be difficult to play around with sizing, color, fit, etc.
The only difficulty I ran into was my own fault. I was determined to use a beautiful red yarn (Caron Simply Soft in "Burgundy") that I had, but it turned out there wasn't quite enough to finish both mittens because I had already used a lot of it to crochet a scarf.
Living in Stehekin, I can't just run to the craft store, and I was too impatient to have more yarn shipped to me, but I did have more of the Caron Simply Soft yarn in "Soft Pink". I decided to use the yarn I had, but it took some time to figure out exactly how to work the colors and not completely start over. Thankfully, Brian helped me come up with a way to keep the colors a bit more balanced without having to undo a bunch of work. I'm quite tickled with the slightly mismatched result.
To help keep the wrist area snug during use, I threaded double strands of yarn through a row of stitches and used beads to make a toggle thingy that is still easy to take on and off. The wooden beads had been in my collection for a while, but I was happy to incorporate a little more sentiment with the other beads I used.
This summer, both Rebecca and I became good friends with yet another awesomely talented and creative woman. Claire makes gorgeous jewelry and actually hand-crafts a lot of her beads, including the pink and white beads used for these mittens. Before leaving, she graciously gave me a generous amount of her beads, so I'm really looking forward to finding other ways to work them into my projects. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!
For now, I hope these gifttens make it to Rebecca safely and keep her paws nice and warm this winter -- whenever she's not knitting, of course.
I was hesitating to post this one because I wanted to make sure that the recipient of these gifttens actually got them. But snail mail might take a while, and I'm so excited about how they turned out I can't wait any longer!
My housemate this summer, Rebecca, is so amazing I could talk for hours about how talented and thoughtful and intelligent she is. She quickly became a very close friend of mine, and is actually one of the main sources of inspiration for starting this blog, so it seemed appropriate to craft something for her.
Mittens have been at the top of my list of things to make for a while, and I wanted my project for her to be something special, so I figured this would be a good time to give it a try. Knitting was an option, but I decided I'm just not quite there yet with my knitting skills, so I went for crocheting instead.
I've now gotten into the habit of taking crafting materials pretty much any time I go for a hike. While it was storming during my trip to Rainbow Lake, I sat cozied up in my sleeping bag in the tent and started working on the mittens.The pattern I found is simple, elegant, and versatile with thorough and very easy to follow instructions. I plan on making more of these mittens (and using more patterns from the designer) especially since I know it won't be difficult to play around with sizing, color, fit, etc.
The only difficulty I ran into was my own fault. I was determined to use a beautiful red yarn (Caron Simply Soft in "Burgundy") that I had, but it turned out there wasn't quite enough to finish both mittens because I had already used a lot of it to crochet a scarf.
Living in Stehekin, I can't just run to the craft store, and I was too impatient to have more yarn shipped to me, but I did have more of the Caron Simply Soft yarn in "Soft Pink". I decided to use the yarn I had, but it took some time to figure out exactly how to work the colors and not completely start over. Thankfully, Brian helped me come up with a way to keep the colors a bit more balanced without having to undo a bunch of work. I'm quite tickled with the slightly mismatched result.
To help keep the wrist area snug during use, I threaded double strands of yarn through a row of stitches and used beads to make a toggle thingy that is still easy to take on and off. The wooden beads had been in my collection for a while, but I was happy to incorporate a little more sentiment with the other beads I used.This summer, both Rebecca and I became good friends with yet another awesomely talented and creative woman. Claire makes gorgeous jewelry and actually hand-crafts a lot of her beads, including the pink and white beads used for these mittens. Before leaving, she graciously gave me a generous amount of her beads, so I'm really looking forward to finding other ways to work them into my projects. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!
For now, I hope these gifttens make it to Rebecca safely and keep her paws nice and warm this winter -- whenever she's not knitting, of course.
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