Lately I have been concerned that I am amassing too much yarn. I'm sure this is a concern shared by crocheters and knitters alike. I try not to buy yarn until I have a project in mind for it. However, I have been given a lot by friends. And if something is on clearance sale at Joann and I want it, I usually pick up a few skeins.
Starting off small though, I have one skein of
Kroy Sock yarn in Flax. Not sure how it got here or why there is only one skein, when most pairs of socks take two skeins, but I started looking around Ravelry for what I could do with what I had.
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| the finished mitt |
There was a pattern for a pair of gloves that caught my eye. The pattern is called
Phryne Purple Mitts by Vintage Crafts. Unfortunately the pattern is in French and no one else has made any.
The blog post on it does have a chart, in Japanese (but it does help), and being an intelligent person I could kind of piece out what the pattern said, but uncertainty makes for wonky items.
Luckily I attended
an excellent college, full of interesting people, who like languages! One of my acquaintances happens to be a bit of a linguist and does knit and crochet too. So, a huge
Thank You goes out to Beth, who translated the pattern for me and then proceeded to test it as well.
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| Next time I would start with a foundation single crochet. You can see the thumb opening here. |
The pattern calls for a 3.00mm hook, but after testing it, Beth recommended a larger hook. I know I have larger hands and so I went up to a 3.75mm hook for these mitts. The yarn has a bit of stretch and so does the pattern, so you might be able to go with a 3.5mm hook, but I liked them a little roomier.
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| Finished mitt and finger opening. Arm detail next. Obvious where the thumb opening is. (it's the wonky rows) |
The pattern itself is a tiny bit confusing but once you get that it is a grid it makes more sense. The arm opening has these lovely little flowery shapes with picots.
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| Arm opening detail |
The pdf pattern download from the blog does not have instructions for a thumb, but her pictures do. So once the main body of each mitt was made I just sort of made up and added a thumb around the opening left for it and then added a few shells on top to make it match the finger opening.
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| Finished mitts! |
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| Comfy! |
One final thought is that her mitts look shorter to me than mine, which makes me wonder if perhaps next time I couldn't use half double crochets to make it a little more compact and warm.
Anyway, the pattern used up just about all of the yarn perfectly, just like I hoped.
One less skein on the pile.
Time to complete: 6 hours
Difficulty: Easy +
Finished size: 10" long from hand to arm opening, a little less than 8 inches around un-stretched, but expands to fit over arm and hand nicely.
