Getting ziggy with it

As I mentioned in my previous post, it's been difficult finding much time to knit lately, what with fishing the baby off the kitchen table, chasing her out of the bathroom, rescuing the dog from whatever beauty treatment she's subjecting him to, etc., etc., etc.

It's not like I don't redirect her, I do. I paste a smile on my face and all but sing as I say (for the umpteenth time), "Oh, honey, the guinea pigs don't like it when you take their water bottle away. Let mama put it back and get you some Play-doh." Well, hey! she thinks, that sounds fun!, so she cheerfully clambers up into her chair and mauls brightly-colored dough about for a few minutes while I heave a sigh, take a seat next to her and pull out the sock I've been picking away at since Rhinebeck. If I'm lucky, I make it almost all the way across the first needle before I have to drop everything and make a dive for her, because as soon as my gimlet eye is turned she either tries to see how much of the dough she can wedge into her mouth (answer: a lot), or grinds it underfoot as she climbs lickety-split onto the table, where she beams down at me until I scoop her up and plop her firmly back onto the floor.

"Tables aren't for climbing, WB. Why don't we go work in your kitchen?" Oh! she thinks, that sounds like fun! And off she trots to the family room where she plays happily with her collection of plates and cups just long enough to fool me into thinking I can switch the laundry.



I'm not getting much laundry done, either.

So what with the constant vigilance and retrieving the baby from places where she most certainly does not belong, you can understand why knitting stranded mittens in fingering weight yarn on itty bitty needles or lots and lots of cables on (again) itty bitty needles just isn't happening right now; at least, not at a pace that will have the project finished before the end of NaKniMitMo on Sunday. There are a lot of wonderful mittens coming out of the KAL this year (you can see most of the finished projects here), and they have had me itching to finish at least two or three pair of my own. My inability to do so was beginning to irritate the heck out of me, when I suddenly realized what I should have known all along: there are a lot of beautiful mitten patterns written for heavier yarn and needles bigger than a toothpick.

Like, say, Elli Stubenrauch's Herringbone Mittens with Poms (Ravelry link):



I left off the poms because I was afraid they wouldn't hold up to the sort of abuse my mittens usually endure, but even so I am very happy with the result.


love the way the lines fall into place along the side

I'm not 100% sold on the color of Ultra Alpaca I chose; it's a dark purple, but reads as brown in all but the brightest light. The whole time I was knitting them I kept thinking how smart they would look in black and gray, and at some point I will make them again, in those colors. Probably in the Cascade 220 called for in the pattern, as the Ultra Alpaca is a bit finer, I think, and while these mittens fit me, they are a tad small.

Still and all, my new worsted-weight-or-nothing philosophy certainly paid off. So well, in fact, that last night I cast on a project I've been wanting to make since I first saw the pattern: SpillyJane's Anna's Mittens (which just happens to be the Official Mitten of National Knit Mittens Month). My life being what it is these days, of course there was a bit of Drama this morning, involving a certain toddler and a missing project bag ...


where is mama's yarn?
WB is not talking.

but it's late, so that will be a tale for another day.