neptunesmoon: Told ya

I started knitting late Friday. Temperature was in the 40s all weekend as I knit along. Finished the pair late Sunday, and the temperature continued to rise.

Although the weather was fair promising that the mittens were going to be a good fit, I had a few concerns. Namely:
1) I was not going off any sort of pattern. I measured my hand in a couple of places and increased/decreased as seemed reasonable. But still. My pattern looked like this:

2) I don't know the guage of shrinkage for this wool. I know it felts well from previous projects, but I've never actually written down *how much*. So I made up fudge factors (figuring ~30% shrinkage in length, ~20% in width) and added extra stitches/rows. But still, as I knit the things seemed huge. (At this point Brant's interest was piqued, and he offered to help me out if they were too big for me)

3) Different colors felt differently. I didn't have enough of the tan, so it was a choice between making only one mitten or adding in some scraps. So stash diving we went.

4) As if #3 wasn't enough, I've never felted stranded colors before. Stranding bulks up a section, so it could have gone either way. I didn't make any allowances or changes, just hoped for the best.

5) There is always a fudge factor for the cruel hand of knitting fate. And sitting down on a Friday evening with a scrap envelope, some yarn, and a desire for mittens by Monday is just begging to be struck down.

And yet despite all of this going into things,

I love them. The stranded sections melded into the nice transition between colors (as I was hoping), the brown/black striping on the thumb pleases me, and the black is mellowed out and much less contrasty than pre-felting.
And if that wasn't enough - the perfect mittens finished in just one weekend - yesterday the weather took a turn making them essential again.