I promised MiKnits in the Tit for Tat thread that I would make these mittens for her out of her Wollmeise - and here’s a photo of her wearing them!!! I’m really thrilled because I’ve been wanting to make these mittens since the pattern was still being test-knit! This is my first time knitting with Wollmeise, so I’m also interested to see how much I enjoy working with it.

2/22/10 - Second mitten is FINISHED! So now I need to do the afterthought thumb on both which I’ll accomplish (hopefully) by using this tutorial. I also plan to do an inner ribbing - I’ll probably put a lot more into my notes once I’m closer to being done.

2/26/10 - I am this close to being finished. I think I might actually might be able to finish the mittens tonight, which would be great - I could soak and block them and take them to my knitting group to show off before I ship them out! I had some issues with the afterthought thumb, but that’s not any problem with the technique. It makes a nice thumb and is placed in a good location. I’ve seen some mittens where it looks like the thumb is growing out of the center of the palm - very strange. No, the problem is because of the colourwork stranding. There were so many strands along the top of the thumb that I couldn’t find the stitches I needed to pick up. The bottom gave me no problems, those were very easy to find. Even when I picked out the yarn and could see the stitches, it was impossible to pick them up neatly due to the stranding. Since I’ve always been a master at picking up stitches in a way to “fake it till I make it” and close up any holes, I solved the dilemma. However, if I were to make these mittens again (which I certainly intend to, those fish are so freakin’ cute!), I would leave out the colourwork above and below the thumbhole. It’s really unnecessary and would be so much easier to handle if it were just a single colour. Of course, the strands of orange would still be running behind it, but it would definitely be more manageable.

The inner ribbing is working out fantastically. I’m really happy that Megan suggested it to me as a way to fix my problem. This pattern has been a delight and I can feel myself working up towards a mitten binge. I’ve actually got a picture floating around in my head that I think I’m going to try turning into a mitten pattern, but I’m going to wait to really test it out until I’ve made a few more mittens, just so that I know how to make up the pattern and what techniques I prefer.

The only other thing I’ve learned thus far from this project - I hate knitting with Wollmeise. I know, the gods of yarn might smite me for making that statement but holy CRAP is it difficult to work with. To start with, it’s splitty. I hate splitty. Every time I went to knit into a stitch, it felt like I was splitting the one next to it. The other issue I have is that it’s just string; brightly dyed string. It’s not nice or soft or warm or fluffy or any of the other things I’ve gotten from the other sock yarns I’ve loved and worked with. I’m very disappointed.
Look at this! I’m not the only one with these complaints about WM!!!