Sólarbæn by Mona C. NicLeòid

Sólarbæn

Knitting
October 2015
Worsted (9 wpi) ?
23 stitches and 23 rows = 4 inches
in stranded colourwork pattern
US 6 - 4.0 mm
160 - 180 yards (146 - 165 m)
women's medium, adjustable
English
This pattern is available for $4.50 USD buy it now

Discounts & freebies:
Are you a fellow spinner? Start a project page, link it to this pattern, add a photo of your handspun yarn, and contact me - I’ll send you the pattern as a gift :)

Sólarbæn is Icelandic and means “invocation of (or prayer to) the sun”.
This design is inspired by traditional northern European mitten patterns, but interprets them in a simple modern way for a result that is functional as well as pretty.

Yarn / gauge advice: A square gauge like this is typical for stranded colourwork. The original mittens were knitted with a handspun wool of about 10 WPI. Any worsted to light aran weight wool yarn can be used for these mittens. The yarn should be a bit thicker than what you would normally use to achieve this gauge. The stranded colourwork will pull in a bit, and the fabric is supposed to be dense and warm.
The original mittens used approx. 145 m / 160 yds total:
60 m / 66 yds each of colour 1 (undyed background colour) and colour 2 (darker contrast colour) and 25 m / 27 yds of colour 3 (lighter contrast colour).
Of course you can also work them with just one contrast colour.

Needle advice: Use the needle size that gives you the required gauge, most likely 3.5 to 4.5 mm / US #4 to 7.

Sizing: If knitted to the original gauge, the mittens will have a hand circumference of approx 18 cm / 7 inches. The main hand pattern is 19 cm / 7 ½ inches long, the cuff is 9 cm / 3 ½ inches long, both can be adjusted.
The pattern contains size modification advice.

The colourwork pattern for the whole mitten is charted.
The charts come in two version: A colour-coded one with good contrast, and a printer-friendly black and white one with dots and x’s to mark the different colours. An alternative chart for a shorter top of the hand is included, also in two versions.