Designed and knitted for the S2 August 2011 Double Take Challenge in the Project Yarnway ravelry group - it’s a great group, lots of fun!

The challenge was to work with more than one colour. I love combining colours, but I don’t like handling more than one thread at a time (“don’t like” is putting it mildly!). So I’m always on the lookout for other ways of mixing shades. In this project I used two methods:

First, by layering – the cuff has a lacy top layer in “cardinal” colour, with a grey layer underneath. The grey layer has a much narrower lace pattern, which peeks out below the cardinal lace.

The second method of combining the two shades is the stitch pattern of the main body. Each yarn is used on its own for two rounds. The stitch pattern does all the work by itself: It makes the colours pool into dots creating the impression of a much more complicated pattern. It also results in a thick and cushiony fabric, is very elastic, and creates a nice, bumpy texture. As you can see, I fell in love with this stitch pattern!

I’m a DPN girl, and I knitted the first mitt with my beloved KnitPro (KnitPicks) dpns. But for the second mitt I tried my new 9” HiyaHiya circular needle. At the start I thought what a waste buying this, I’ll never get used to it. Somewhere in the middle of the mitt I started to think, well, I might get used to it, but I’ll never really like it. By the end of the mitt, I was rather enjoying the experience! I don’t think I would want to knit any fiddly stitch patterns with it though, like cables or crossed stitches. For this pattern it helped to do the purl stitches in the “continental combined” techniques, which needs less movement of the needle than the technique I usually use (which would probably be called “continental”, not sure - not the Norwegian method - until recently I didn’t even know there were so many ways of doing purl stitches!)