Look! Finished mittens!

it's about time, eh?

The Specs:

-Pattern: An Elliphantom original.
-Yarn: Araucania Azapa, about 50g (a half skein) each of Cadet Blue (811) and Tan (802).
-Needles: Size 9 dpns (size 7 for ribbing).
-Start to finish: September 21 - October 7, 2010.
-For: Me, I think :)

ten points if you can think of a good palm pun

Yarn:
The Azapa is gorgeous...a lofty single with lots of character. Perfectly soft and snuggly, and the chunkiness makes for super-fast knits. And, as I've mentioned before, their distributor has good customer service which never hurts! The only negative thing I can say is that the lightly spun nature of the yarn means it's not the most durable choice out there. After a couple froggings I could see it was beginning looking a bit worse-for-wear. But still...lovely stuff!

how much do I love you? enough to put on my winter coat when it's 80 degrees out...

The Design Process:
I don't work with bulky yarn very often...I did a search for "bulky" on my blog and seven results came up. "Chunky" only brought up three...and I'm coming up on five years blogging. So you'll excuse me if I keep repeating myself by saying: oh-my-freaking-goodness does this stuff ever knit up quickly.

The chunkiness of the yarn meant that I had many fewer stitches to work with, and fewer stitches translates into a much simpler colorwork chart. While the sprig motif practically charted itself, I had a little more difficulty coming up with a suitably non-cluttered palm pattern that still had some visual interest. I had a lot of rejects (I just counted 27...geesh!), most of them deemed Too Busy and, in retrospect, a few of them were just plain Ugly.* I'm happy with this one though...a simple pole pattern that morphs into a simple arch.

this pic makes me want to go swimming

The Pattern:
I'm working on it! Hopefully it'll be ready soon.

Final Verdict:
I'm super-pleased with how these turned out! Hopefully you're not sick of seeing Sprigs...because I may be working on one more pair. But I promise that will be the end of it.

Really.

Raveled here!

*inexplicably, one of the 27 attempts included a house. Not sure how to explain that one.