This is my Dad. He's a bit obsessed with birding.

The Specs:
-Pattern: a hybrid of Knucks, by Pamela Grossman, and Bird's Eye Mittens, by Martin Storey, from Knitting For Him.
-Yarn: Rowan Felted Tweed; less than one ball of shade 133 (blue), and a bit of 156 (natural).
-Needles: size 4 dpns, and size 3 (3mm) dpns for the ribbing.
-Start to finish: mid-June to early July.
-For: Pop. A rather belated Father's Day gift.

I inherited many good qualities from Pop, not the least of which are a) fair skin and b) my ability to completely immerse myself in a hobby.

Notes:
The idea for these gloves was hatched last Christmas when my Dad tried on my brown Knucks (which fit him nicely) and also pointed out that he liked the Bird's-Eye Mitten pattern. Since those mitts don't have individual fingers, I though it would be nice to combine the look of the Bird's-Eyes with the excellent design of the Knucks. To cap it off, the fact that both patterns use Felted Tweed was just too good a coincidence to ignore.

Combining the patterns couldn't have been simpler. I was planning on having to modify the Knucks a bit to accommodate the colorwork, but the men's size has the exact same number of stitches in the hand portion as the Bird's-Eyes. So I just knitted up a pair of Knucks that incorporated the simple colorwork. Easy peasy!

My camera is not this large.

The Pattern: This is the third time I've knitted a pair of Knucks and I stand my my original opinion of the pattern: top down fingerless gloves = brilliant.

Final Verdict: Pop likes them. I am a happy knitter.

Ready to track down something feathery

Posted by Elli at 10:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (18)

The preview for the fall issue of Vogue Knitting is up! Guess which pattern is my favorite?

photo courtesy of SoHo Publishing

Project details later. I'm going to go have a celebratory grape soda now.

Posted by Elli at 6:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (36)

In spite of my efforts to keep my wool children to a minimum, I've accumulated a bit of stash over the last couple of months. But it's all souvenir and gift yarn, which I think is perfectly acceptable, don't you? Behold:

I went all the way to England and bought...Kidsilk Haze.

When I was in York in March I visited a cute little shop called Sheepish and fell tookuus over teakettle with these three colors of KSH (629, 582, and 578). So I bought them. Yum, yum! I want to design a ridiculously garish, yet fabulous shawl.

Hello. I am British. Mostly.

Gift yarn from Philippa! It's called BFL Dazzle 4py/Sock and it's from The Natural Dye Studio. It has text all over the label saying "British Wool!" and "British Wool from British Sheep!" and then on the back in teeny tiny print it says "contains not less than 50% British Wool." Tee-hee. Regardless, it's gorgeous and soft and a lot more British than any other yarn I came across on my trip. Destined for socks, naturally.

When I grow up I want to be a pair of mittens.

I don't know if I mentioned that I left Thunky in England for a month. Well, I did. When he finally returned, he brought me some yarn (I believe Phillipa was instrumental in making this purchase possible). He informs me that he would like colorwork mittens, so mittens he will have! The yarn is Artesano 100% Alpaca 4 ply. I must say he has excellent taste.

Saturday I dropped Thunk off at the train station for another month of scholarly frolicking in archives, so I'm on my own again. Maybe there's a yarn store in Massachusetts too (hint, hint)?

Llama, llama, llama...llama

This is the yarn I bought at Yellow Wood Llama Farm (it's Farmhouse Fibers Super SIlky 100% Llama Yarn). It's feels fantastic and the blue color makes me all swoony. I have no idea what to make with it, but I bought one skein of white so that I have the option of doing colorwork. Because I'm all about the colorwork lately. Any ideas? I have approximately 800 yards of sportweight.

That's all for now. I have some FOs to show off soon. Stay tuned!

Posted by Elli at 1:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (22)