Trigger Finger Mitten Pattern!

By Popular Demand!



If you have any questions feel free to email or comment to me.


Materials: One skein Lambs Pride Bulky, 2 balls (about 60grams total) of Belangor pure Angora (any weight angora would work for this. You can probably get away with 50grams, but it would be pushing it).
Set of 5 Size 10 dpns

Using wool CO 24 stitches, work 1in 1x1 ribbing. Join Angora and kf&b of each stitch EXCEPT KNIT FRONT OF EVERY ST WITH WOOL, AND BACK OF EVERY ST WITH ANGORA. Your stitches should now go wool, angora, wool, angora etc. W=wool, A=angora
For the rest of the mitten I hold the wool english and the angora continental.
Work another inch of ribbing. For doubleknit ribbing kW, move W in front, kA, purl W, kA, move yarn in back, kW. remember to keep the angora loose so it follows the gauge of the wool. If desired, knit a longer cuff. I like shorter-cuffed mittens



Switch to Stockinette. (doubleknit stockinette=kw, move yarn in front, kA, move yarn in back,*)
Increase one stitch at the end of each needle. For the rest of the pattern One stitch=one wool AND one angora. So to increase one stitch you need to make one of each. (28 stitches)
Every other row I slipped the angora instead of knitting it to make it go further.
Knit 2 inches, increase again (32 stitches) For smaller hands ignore this increase.
knit 1 inch. Total inch of mitten=5inches

Left thumb gusset:
On needle 2 knit 2 stitches, then knit the next 5 or 6 stitches with waste yarn (knit the wool and angora together). Slip waste yarn stitches back onto left needle and knit them again with the working yarns, holding them together as one yarn(only for these 5 stitches). On the next round separate yarns in those stitches again.

Knit 10 more rounds.
If dividing for trigger finger on the left hand, slip the last 5 stitches of needle 2, and the first 5 stitches of needle 3 onto waste yarn. Continue knitting remaining finger section until piece reaches the top of your pinky. For rounded mitten top, k2tog the first 2 stitches of needle 1, and ssk the last 2 stitches of needle 4 EVERY 3RD ROUND three times (3 decrease rows total). Use a 3-needle bind off to close the mitten.
If Left mitten is intact (no separate finger) work decreases on both sides of mitten: end of needle 1 k2tog end of needle 2 ssk. Beg of needle 3 k2tog, end of needle 4 ssk. Repeat every 3rd row 3 times as above.

Thumb: remove waste yarn and pick up 10-12 live stitches around the hole. knit to 1/4 inch below the top of the thumb, k2tog every st, then run working yarn through all remaining stitches and cinch tight.
Finger: Follow directions as for thumb.

Right Mitten:
Follow as for left except:
Thumb Gusset: on needle 3 knit 1 st, then knit the next 5 or 6 with waste yarn, slip back onto needle, knit again with working yarns.

Subi Kitty!

WE GOT A KITTEN!!!!!! eeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!

A friend of mine needed to find a home for her and we fell in love with her! We named her Subi (sue-bee) :) She's 13 weeks old, very affectionate and sweet, and she doesn't make me sneeze!
Also, she uses the litterbox fine and doesn't claw stuff.



phew! it'snice to have a day off! It's been a while, over a week.. the next 3 weeks are going to suck soo much. I'm working 9 or 10 hour shifts at UPS, plus my regular hours at the yarn shop. Oh well, I need the cash.

Polar!

My two impulse-bought-bags of Rowan Polar came in today, and far from being humbled by it, now I want every color they make :P I got them here at this evil evil store who's selling it at half retail with FREE SHIPPING!!! I got a bag in Lettuce and a Bag in Dark Truffle.. ok ok, i'll borrow other people's pictures to show you:
Lettuce, yeah it's fuzzy, i didn't take the picture. It's also greener and prettier than that...

Lettuce will be the lace leaf pullover, and the Truffle will be a raglan turtleneck of my own design.

here's the truffle, which is really more of a warm dark chocolate, plus the other two colors I really want now: Jaffa (which is a bit more orange in person) and smirk, which is a bit more pink. I think they took these pictures on a cloudy day, but hey, they're from England, I hear real sun is a rare commodity :P




haven't gotten to swatch them yet, and I may try to avoid that as my Rogue is still in it's baby-phase and I want to work more on that. The best idea I think is to find it a good hiding place

Trigger Finger Mittens!

My boyfriend goes deer hunting every year in Wisconsin, and he asked me to make him some mittens. Not just any mittens, Custom WISCONSIN-WINTER-TRIGGER-FINGER-MITTENS!
It gets pretty damn cold in Wisconsin in November, so I made them out of tightly-knit Lambs Pride Bulky, and lined them with Angora, which is supposedly 8 times warmer than wool, and super soft too :)
Because mittens are warmer than gloves, he insisted that only the mitten on his left hand (he's left-handed) have the index finger free (so he can shoot stuff).
I told him not to get any deer blood on them.

by the way, No, that is not his deer-shooting-rifle.. it's just his new toy he's very proud of.




inside the mittens. I double-knit them


Also, I'm a little out of the loop. I JUST learned that Rowan Polar was discontinued, and that was my first venture into the wonderfull world of natural fibers and I love the stuff, and my LYS (where I work) doesn't carry Rowan... So I bought 2 whole bags of it in Lettuce green and dark truffle on ebay for less than half the retail price! Green will be the Lace Leaf Pullover, and brown will be the most luscious turtleneck ever. I'm so weak.. and poor..

Spinning!

(Because I need another hobby :P )
At the Knit Out last month I learned how to spin with a drop spindle, and came home and ordered a whole kit from This Seller's ebay store. For some reason paypal diverted my order from my normal mailing address to my old address (my moms house), but since i'm having my mail forwrded from there back here it eventually found me after all YAY :D So I got my big bag of wool and two drop spindles yesterday!


And here's my firt real attempt at spinning! haha it's all super-chunky.. I haven't quite got the hang of keeping it even yet. I wish I could brush it all out again and start over, but I think I'd need carders for that.


and here's a closer look at some of the lovely stuff I hope to be able to do justice someday!

Adding more life-stuff to the knitblog

I have another journal, on Livejournal, it's linked over there *points to sidebar* but I figure that I like reading knitblogs with a little more life in them, so I'm going to start adding more to mine, even if sometimes I might x-post from LJ.

The weather has been gorgeous here! Sunny, warm with a breeze, and all the leaves are turning now. What a nice fall! I was worried the leaves would just turn brown and fall off like they had been doing, but I guess fall just takes a little longer here.

Saturday Joe and I slept in and lounged around most of the day. I finished the 6th Harry Potter book (I think so far the 3rd and 4th are my favorites) and mostly-finished the first of Joe's hunting mittens for deer season in Wisconsin. They're black Lamb's Pride Bulky with pure angora double-knitted as a built in liner. He decided he wanted mittens out of that after we learned that Angora is 8 time warmer than wool! He doesn't like how fluffy it is, but since it's on the inside it's ok. I'm thinking of douplicate-stitching skull and crossbones on the backs hen they're done. If I have time maybe. I have two weeks to finish the second one, but since they're double-knit it's like knitting two mittens at once. takes longer.

We went and saw the movie "Jarhead" last night, with Jake Gyllenhal (sp) in it. It's by the director of American Beauty, based on the book by a marine who served in "Desert Storm". It was really good, the filming and direction was great, and so was Jake (little Donnie Darko's all grown up :P ). It's not a war action movie, especially since they didn't really get to fight, but more a drama about being there. I enjoyed it.

I work at the yarn shop today, working 6 days a week , but i don't mind being there. Tuesdays are going to be especially long: 4 hours at UPS followed by 4 at the yarn shop. I guess most people work 8 hour (at least) days, but it's different when you have to be in more than one place, and I'm not used to it anymore.

Chinese Luck Dragon Scarf

So remember I mentioned that I won that scarf contest, but didn't know if I could post the picture because it's going to be in the December Interweave Knits? Well, they're not publishing the pattern (it's just a picture with a blurb, which is cool too) so I'm free to do with it as I please :) At the yarn shop I work at in Ellicott City Maryland, and we'll be selling the pattern when I write it up sometime this month, and I will also be selling the pattern from my site, but I'm still working on that so I'll post a link when it's up.
The scarf was inspired by my time last year in Japan, where I learned a lot more about different eastern dragons, and by the charity causes being sponsored by the contest: All the scarves entered were donated to orphans or people suffering from the AIDS virus, and I figured that anyone in that position could use a little extra luck, hence THE LUCK DRAGON:


This was knit in two flat pieces with different stitch patterns for his scaly back and his belly, then crocheted together. I added features with i-cord, bobbles, and a ruffled mane. I used Lamb's Pride worsted (but I will use cascade 220 in the future) and Squiggle by Crystal Palace yarns

When worn, you pull his tail through his mouth to secure it:


Me with Nicky Epstein *squee!* and Binnie Fry


Me accepting First Prize :)

knitting geeks

hehe so while on the girlfromauntie site looking up rogue stuff, I found this, and it cracked me up :)
"This also might explain the plot, so to speak, in the hood of Rogue. See the part of the hood where the cables stop interweaving as a mesh, and pairs of cables twist for a single repeat before they rejoin as a mesh again? I made a deliberate decision to add that. For some reason, while knitting the prototype, I fixed on the notion that if the hood border continued as an uninterrupted woven mesh, I wouldn’t be able to hear things properly while wearing the hood.

No, I’m not delusional, and I don’t think the sweater is soundproof, or even that the additional density of fabric induced by a high frequency of cable twists would muffle noise. I was just captured by some fanciful idea that things that were trapped in nets might be able to escape between bars, so I needed to provide some bars just in case. I think those cable pairs occur at a point above the ears, but the fact that they were included somewhere in the border was enough to address this concern.

Some people think traditional fishermen’s sweaters were designed to allow families to identify drowned bodies, and link traditional cable designs to values like wealth and love. Maybe I think that cables increase your armour class but adversely affect your ability to cast arcane spells.

That makes sense–if arcane spellcasting is affected by cables, but divine spells aren’t. Druids cast divine spells. Ancient Celts had a Druid class. Celtic descendants introduced cables into their knitting repertoire (although that was long, long after the Druids). I like to design cables derived from Celtic art. See? It all fits, and clearly I should shut off this stream of consciousness now before it’s too late."

Starting Rogue

I finally found the perfect yarn for my Rogue Cardigan! Yay! It's exactly the color I wanted, and the texture and price was perfect too :) It's Galway Highland Heather in a lovely Rust color :) I was thinking of doing it in a donegal tweed, but after I got to feel a sweater knitted in that, I changed my mind. That stuff is soo..umm..rugged? The galway is a nice basic plied wool, and I knit up a nice big swatch and blocked it, and it's only a teeny teeny tiny bit off gauge, and I was going to make the larger size than I needed anyway, so it should be just right.
Here's my swatch!



I remember a time when I actually had some readers.... :(

catching up

ok, i haven't been very good with this whole knitblog thing lately...
but I do have some news!

On Sunday October 23rd I went to the Wash D.C. Knit Out, on the mall, and had a great time :) I learned how to spin, got a bunch of free patterns, met lots of cool knitters includig Nicky Epstein, AND I entered the Scarf Style Scarf Contest and I WON! Grand Prize was a bond Knitting Machine, and a feature in the December Issue of Interweave Knits Magazine! yay! I made a Chinese Dragon scarf, but I can't show a picture yet since it will be inthe magazine. I will also be writing a pattern for it that I will be selling here, and in the yarn shop I work in, The Celtic Knot, in Ellicott City MD.
here's me learning to spin with a drop spindle!
I enjoyed this so much that I bought two spindles and some roving off ebay when I got home :) they're not here yet though!


Some more pics from the Knit Out:
My boss and coworker tagging entries for the contest,

Me and Holly knitting, waiting for the judging,

The Washington Monument, as we were leaving

Fuzzy Stuff!

I'm knitting my first real lace project! It's a mohair modified "arches and columns" scarf. I didn't much like the stokinette columns so I took two stitches out of every column so now it's arches and.. err.. really skinny columns flanked by eyelets? it's pretty :) BUT the mohair is this weird stuff I got on sale in Japan and is WICKED Itchy! I don't know what to do :( I only have one ball of it, and don't know what else to do with mohair, but I can't imagine wearing it over anything less than a turtleneck!
here's a pick of my measly 3inches of lace so far:

Rowan Biggy Print Woven Scarf

Two years ago I went to a yarn store in Seattle (Tricoter), one of the most beautiful yarn stores i've ever been to, and I had never seen Rowan yarns before. (This was very early in my knitting career). I bought 3 balls of some alpaca/wool blend that I made the vertical striped scarf in the FO section with, and I bought two balls of Biggy Print in Fiesta (?) and black. They only had about 32 yds each, and were quite expensive, but they were calling to me!
So this is what I did with them!
It's not knit, it's woven, on a big cardboard handloom I made, just like you used to make those woven bookmarks in gradeschool. It worked great! The scarf is about 4.5 ft long and 7 in wide. I could have made it longer if it was thinner, of course, or longer if i alternated the black and the rainbow (i had black left over).
Here it is! I'm going to put a big pink button on it to hold it closed and make it look pretty. I've work it through a winter already, that's why it's a little fuzzy.

Sock and Armwarmer!

I just finished my first sock!
It's a little mini test-sock done in Lamb's Pride sock yarn on size US#1 needles. Damn little thing took forever! Next time I make socks I'm doing it with worsted weight yarn, this teenie-tiny stuffis rediculous! looks comfy though, I'm sure I'll succumb again to it eventually :P
I had no problems at all with this little thing! Easy as pie :) turning heels is fun!
Here it is blocking on my patio.


And here's the first arm warmer to match that plaid hat (I had yarn left).
I took the shape from the "Hurry up Spring Armwarmers", but changed the pattern, obviously.

this is not blocked yet (Nor are the ends even woven in!)
The cable does lie in the center of your hand, it's just doing it in this pic, i don't know why.

pictures! whee!

My super-fun Intarsia-Plaid Beanie-Bill for my friend Day:
It's hard to see the pattern in the bright sunlight.. it's kinda subtle in places.
From this: +
(manos Brick and Lava)

to this:
(knitting on the plane home, a million little balls!)

to THIS!:



modelled by my lovely new blue glass head, Shirley, and on me (it's too big, I have a really small head).

Hiatus and Intarsia-plaid!

Sorry about long break, I've been in transit. I moved from Japan back to the states on July 10th.. well, I took a week break in Seattle then came back to my parents house in NY, now I'm packing even MORE stuff to move in with my boyfriend in Maryland and hopefully get a job at this kickass yarn store down there! I've already talked to the owner, who is looking for someone, and provided we get along well hopefully she'll hire me! How often do you find people who are completely flexible with hours AND are obsessive knitter/fiberfiend/teachers?

While I was in Seattle I went to this great yarn store called The Weaving Works. They had a nice selection of knitting yarn, weaving yarn, AND lots of spinning/dyeing supplies! I went there with two friends, one is an ex-knitter and the other is a non-knitter. They had a blast squeezing every ball of yarn in the place :) My ex-knitter friend who I promised to knit a hat for even picked out his own yarn (with some help). We decided on some GORGEOUS Manos del Uruguey (which I had actually never beheld in person). We got a hank of mottled deep red, and a hank of this varigated black-gold-red that knits up a bit like a tweed. Both are absolutely stunning, I think it's my new favorite yarn!

While still in Seattle I was brainstorming in 3D (on the needles), and Dayvd said he wanted the hat to be a beanie-bill, and a work of art, so I should go nuts.
And nuts I went!
I knit the hat flat. It's my first flat hat. It's also done in an interpretive INTARSIA-PLAID based on the Magknits plaid vest. It's a combination of intarsia and slip stitch techniques, and I knit the thing completely patternless. I had about 5 hours on the plane from Seattle to Atlanta, then another 3 hours in the airport to work on it, and have been picking at it here and there since. Yesterday I finlly got the brim done (it's not really a brim, so much as an embellishment), and wove in all my ends! Whoo hoo! And lo and behold, it fits! (my dad, couldn't try it on Day, but they both have bigger heads than me). I really like it :)

Unfortunately, my camera is being retarded and my USB port on it is broken and I don't have a card reader, so I wont have the pictures till tonight because I have to take it to the photo store and burn a picture cd.
But pictures of the amazing hat soon!

Also I got to go to the new Adirondack Yarns Knitting cafe here in Lake Placid! They just expanded and the new store is really cute, and was packed with people! They had some really really lovely handpainted specialty yarns along with all the old favorites. I managed to walk out with NO NEW YARN, but did pick up Stitch and Bitch Nation, Nicky Epstein's (sp) Knitting Embellishments (chotto takai$$$), and the summer Vogue Knitting with the great summer scarves in it :)

Next project I think will be matching armwarmers with the rest of the manos!
And I will have roughly 28 hours in the car (to MD, and back up, then to MD again) to knit! yay! I love how knitting makes sitting around while going places sooo much more enjoyable :)
I haven't knit in the car in a long time though, hope I don't get motionsick...

Monk Hat with Pattern!

All these hats I made for the family I'd been living with in Japan, and here's the last one! I made this hat for their Dad, the Zen Buddhist Priest, hence, it's The Monk Hat :)


Supplies: 8mm 16"(40cm) circular needle
(MC)1 50gram ball of worsted weight 100% wool
(CC)1 50 gram ball of worsted weight (or slightly thicker) fluffy boucle-style yarn (I used a wool/acrylic almost eyelash blend from Filatura di Crosa, but it may be discontinued, i don't know the name) This stuff has the texture of Lionbrand Homespun, actually, but it's part wool. You could really use any other interesting, accent yarn for this part.

gauge: 10st/10cm (or 4 in). this is an estimate, actually, i have no ruler right now. Try on your hat after making the brim to test the size.

Holding together one strand each of mc and cc, cast on 48 st. Join.
Knit in garter st (RS knit, WS purl) for 7 or 8 rows, ending on a purl row.
Switch to two strands of the worsted wool (I pull one strand from the center and one from the outside) and continue in stockinette st (plain knitting) until the hat measures 8 inches from the bottom (add a few more rounds for someone with a larger head). The hat should cover your ears when you try it on at this point. If it does not, add a few more rounds.

Decrease rows and finishing:
Row 1: k6, k2tog
Row 2: k5, k2tog
Row 3: k4, k2tog
Row 4: k3, k2tog
Row 5: k2, k2tog
Row 6: k1, k2tog
Break the yarn and thread a yarn needle; run through all the stitches and pull tight.
Pull the yarn on the needle through the center hole and weave in tightly and you're done!

I love garter st brim hats :) they give the look of a folded-over brim without actually having one, but are still warm because of how the fabric pulls together and traps air.
More variations!


The Blue/Orange hat and the Green/rainbow hat are done using one strand of Super Bulky wool.

Hats are so satisfying

I could make hats all year I think :) Wish I had space in my suitcase, my lys here still has tons of awesome super bulky sale yarn perfect for cute hats, but I dont have the money or the room. I finished off the hat yarn I had with this beauty :)

3rd Hat done!

Ok now have one hat for each child :) I hope they like them..
Here's number 3!

sorry I'm not smiling, it was right before I went to bed

I have extra yarn so I'm making one more. don't know quite what I'll do with it yet though! it will be dark pink and bright yellow.

I've given up on my neon green cotton yarn for now, it didn't want to be a halter top. At least, not right now. I think I'm going to make a really weird hoodie from some red heart I have lying around, mostly just for pattern purposes (who would actually want to wear red heart? god, i've turned into such a fiber snob :P )

I've noticed that I post a picture every post. Also, I tend to not read people's blogs so much unless they have lots of pictures. Who wants to hear about a new hat when they cant see it?

2/3

Second of three hats finished! I am loving making these :) I hope the kids like them, they're pretty wild! also I hope they fit.. i have a pretty small head, and all of kohki(the youngest child)'s hats fit me, so I'm making them to fit me, and they could stretch bigger. They don't fall off though, so they should be ok.
Blue-Orange hat modeled by me:

and again on Mr. Fishes:

New Hat!

Tday even though it was nearly 90 degrees outside (and inside) I sat and listened to some of Chuck Palahnuik's (sp) new novel "Haunted", which is really good, and knitted up the first of 3 hats for the kids I have been working with for the past 9 months! I may knit up hats for my host mom and dad too, we'll see. ALSO this is the super sale yarn I got on my birthday, so this is a $2 hat! (not indluding time, of course).


The brim is garter stitch with a double strand of this SUPER soft thick-thin wool, and the body is the brand-less ball of chunky grass green I found that is kindof scratchy, but fine for the middle of the hat. Knitted on 8mm 40cm circular needle. It's my first plastic needle and I really like it a lot! It's Clover brand.

Birthday Loot!

So yesterday was my birthday (I'm 23! whee!) and I was in downtown Fujisawa and stopped in at my local LYS to look for discounted wool to make hats for the 3 brats I've been taking care of for the past 9 months, as a thank-you gift for all they've done for me. In the center of the store was the usual sale-bin, with nothing really good in it, but as I turned around to leave I noticed baskets and baskets of discontinued sale yarn along the fall wall! whee! Most of it was only single balls of any color or brand, but since I want to make bright crazy kids' hats that was just perfect :) Especially since a whole bunch of it was chunky thick-thin yarn in wicked bright colors, all for $1 or $2 a ball! (this is yarn that would normally sell for between $5-10 a ball). Each ball is small in yardage, but I think I got enought to make 3 kid hats.
PLUS I found a few random balls of mohair including a lovely varigated lavender-pink-green one (that I will pair with some pink wool for a skinnyscarf I think), and a ball of black mohair-blend, AND a ball of NEON GREEN mohair! I couldn't resist it, but what exactly does one do with one ball of bright green mohair?
AND I also found two more balls of Muschio in the colors I needed, so now I have enough to make my mom a hat :)
14 balls of yarn for about $20! score!


ALSO I just created a fantabulous links/reference page with free patterns I like, more knitting blog links, and tut/trick links. please check it out!
RedThreadReferences
The link is also in the sidebar under Links.

To read the full account of my Birthday Adventures go to my Livejournal page:
Alizarinorchid

Back on the Horse

So since I've gotten utterly tired of my washi bag and my green-top-that-doesn't-want-to-be-made, I started a small felt purse, of my own design. It's in a houndstooth check that is very pretty and very fun :)

the red is actually more of a berry, and the black is charcoal gray.

Only problem is that fair-isle takes a lot of yarn, and I don't have much, so we'll see if I make it! I can't get any more, it was discontinued colors of Filatura di Crosa Primo 100% merino, it's nice stuff ;) I bought it with a hat in mind so I didn't think I'd need very much.

future projects

The new Knitty is up.. I must say I'm not impressed.I guess I was hoping for some fun summer stuff, and most guys stuff tends to look the same to me. The belt was cool though. and the cigar gloves are clever. And I've met the woman who did Kumo.

Anthropologie, however, has been much more inspiring! There fall catalog is out now and it includes some gorgeous and inspirational stuff like these:
Short Sleeve one-button cardigan
An Openwork Cardigan that looks like fun but I wouldn't wear it
And this Frilly Thing looks fun but a lot of work.
THIS however, I am definitely going to try to figure out a knitted version of though.

As for WIPs I've hit a wall. I ripped out what I had for my tank top for the 3rd time or so because my gauge was off. That's my biggest problem right now: Sizing! It's a royal pain. I really want to do this though so I'm going to cast on again (with fewer stitches) after my yarn has a bit of time to unkink from my last attempt. I must say though that this cotton-rayon stuff is holding up well to all the abuse! In the meantime I think I'm going to start a small felted purse.

And this is just perfect :) I will have to do it.
Maye if I get bored I'll save and re-upload these pics so I can post them here :P

Frustration and Compulsion

I haven't posted in a little bit because I've been too frustrated with my Noro washi and linen purse. I have about 10 rows left and no more linen :( This means that I have to rip back about that many rows so I can have enough to attach the handle, and then my bag won't be as deep as I would have liked it :(
Here's where I am:


BUT I went to my LYS yesterday, party because I felt I needed 4.5mm needles and partly because I was in the building to take Sheana to violin, and because I am such a compulsive yarn-buyer, especially when yarn is on sale, I had to walk out with this: Filatura di Crosa Rossana, 40% viscose, 28% polyamid, 23% mohair, 9% wool.
I think it will also be accent yarn for another purse.