Nothing, NOTHING is easy these days. First I screwed up the ribbing on my nephew's sweater, then I fouled up the lace pattern in the green February sweater so thoroughly that it had to be ripped back to the yoke and has been tossed into the WIP pile until I can re-gather my wits and try again.

Then there were my mother's mittens.

We shall start with the fact that I promised them to her over a year ago. Basic mittens would have been quick and easy, but she specifically asked for a stranded design, and preggo brain combined with a puppy-like desire to make my mom happy meant that I ended up dithering for months about which pattern to choose. I finally settled on the Chipman's Check wristers from Robin Hansen's Favorite Mittens. I needed to convert them into mittens because Mom lives in Iowa and Iowa is not what one would call balmy during the winter months, but when I skimmed the instructions I was pleased to see something in there about closing the tops by using the decrease instructions from another pattern. Mind you, I didn't actually READ those instructions. I just assumed that it would work and plunged merrily into the project.

Do I have to tell you what happened when I got to the decreases? There was a time not long ago when I could have puzzled it out for myself, but preggo brain tends to linger until long after the baby is born, and for the life of me I could not figure out what Hansen wanted me to do. I knit and ripped three or four times before deciding to see if anyone on Ravelry had ever done the wristers-to-mittens conversion. Sadly, they had not ... but as it turns out, I was saved by the pattern search feature. Entering "Chipman's Check" pulled up the pattern from Favorite Mittens. Entering just "Chipman's" pulled up a pattern called "Chipman's Block", from Knit Mittens!.

By Robin Hansen.

Same yarn weight, same stitch count, same pattern, except that this one used a simpler cast on and had the decreases nicely spelled out for me. I had the mittens finished in no time. They're going into the mail today, so (God and the USPS willing), Mom's hands should be warmer by the end of the week.