Getting ready for autumn: Owl mittens

I have to admit I have been bitten by the knitting bug and having finished my lace cowl, I immediately started on the next project.

Source

I love owls and when I saw an owl mitten pattern in the Mollie Makes magazine from last year, I just knew I had to knit them. So, I bought the double pointed needles (at this point I hadn't heard of the magic loop method – and shame on me, but I still haven’t looked up what it means), got 2 skins of wool, switched on you tube – because I had no idea how to knit with double-pointed needles and off I went.

Owl mittens :)

Wool used: Grey Wendy Merino Chunky. I know it is exactly the same colour as in the magazine. I wanted to buy brown wool, so that I can wear the mittens with my beige coat, but when I was in the shop that brown wool and beige coat would look too unicolour. I then had my hands on the pink wool (again), but my boyfriend convinced me to go for the grey one because I can wear them with more clothes.

Needles: double pointed needles, 5 mm
 

Pattern: Mollie Makes Owl Mittens, issue 21 "Seasons Greeting". When you know what you are doing - easy peasy. When you use double pointed needles for the first time ever – slight nightmare. There were so many needles and I had to use a cable needle as well to hold stitches in front or back, puh.

Knitting: I had to start 4 times until I finally got a proper cast on and a few first rounds of knitting that looked alright. That involved loads of swearing, but after watching you tube again and again, it finally worked. One football match and several rows latter, my bf was looking at me: Oh, so you actually did it (surprise in its words) – yep, I am not giving up easily.

I was trying to shape a heart - failed :P

I also found out, that you shouldn't knit when ill with a cold as your concentration might not be the best. I don’t know how often I had to rip apart my knitting – at least I am not scarred anymore. But nonetheless I managed to knit ¾ of the left mitten that night and stopped only when my cast-ons for the thumb slid from my needles. Next day, I finished it off only to find out, that I had forgotten to reverse the pattern instructions which were for the right mitten, buh. My bf laughing: Haha, you are having two right mittens now. So I just left it, until I felt better and ripped 90% of the mitten apart and started anew. If you would like to try the pattern yourself, Mollie Makes (have a look in their comments) has given some instructions on their blog about how the make the left handed mitten.

Bf: Do you really want to pose with flowers??? Me: Sure! Autumn Mood!

I haven't blocked the mittens, because I think they look really nice without :) Also, I didn't add a button for the eyes, because (1) I don't have any in the right size and (2) they look cute without!

How is your knitting going? Have you finished anything and are ready to wear it? Our temperatures are up to 20 C at the moment, so I still have to wait...

May I proudly present my knitted lace scarf!

Yeah, I did it! I knitted my first lace scarf! And let me tell you there were a few firsts here.

 

1. Knitted a lace pattern.

2. Knitted in the round.

3. Learnt to do provisional cast ons.

4. Learnt to knit yo, ssl and k2to :)

5. Knitted a picot cast off.

6. My first attempt at blocking.

And as you can imagine, it was not a smooth journey. 

• I struggled with the tension.
• Found out that you can knit in the wrong direction when knitting in the round (ups) – I just knitted back because I had no idea how to correct the wrong stitches
• Learned that your needle cables shouldn’t be longer than the piece you are knitting – my needles were a total of 80cm instead of 40cm – definitively too long
• Loads of waiting time because I had to order crochet needles (for the cast on) and more knitting needles

But despite all these little struggles, I loved to knit the scarf. It is just nice and cosy to spend the evening on the couch with your knitting in hand. Especially now that the days are getting darker and colder (and the warmest room in our house is the living room), I prefer to snuggle on the couch. But, on the weekend I will try to heat up my sewing room our shared office, to get loads of sewing done.

But now, let me properly introduce my first knitted make!

Pattern: Lace cowl from the Mollie Makes issue 14

Wool: Debbie Bliss baby cashmerino I bought from my local wool shop.

After blocking.

Construction: Not too difficult. After my third repetition of the lace pattern, I got the hang of it and I went ahead quite fast. I was able to knit 122 stitches and 16 rows during a football match :) I didn’t fully follow the intrcutions when knitting the cowl because the intructions called for 3.5, 4 and 4.5 cm needles and I had at first only the 4 cm one. So I knitted half of the scarf (3 repetitions of the lace pattern) with this one and the other half (another 3 repetitions) with the 4.5 cm needle instead of knitting 2 repetitions with each needle.

Before blocking and with yellow provisional cast on.

Blocking: As I have never blocked something before I had a look on the web to find out what to do. In the end I followed a tutorial by Pam from Gingerbread Snowflakes. For this method, you tightly roll bath towels to a tube and then place your cowl onto them. The tutorial calls for steaming your cowl, but as I have not the best iron I handwashed my cowl before placing it on the towel rowl.

When washing and pressing the cowl it reminded me very much of my childhood, because my sister and I used to wash our doll cloth that my grandma had knitted for us. After soaking them in water we would roll them up in big towels and stamp onto them to press out any water. Then everything would be hanged on a little washing line that was spanned between two chairs :) For the cowl I used the same method, but placed it on the towels instead of the washing line, smile.

What I like about the cowl: It's pink - what's not to like? And super soft and cosy. And I made it! And I think I will be able to wear it soon as the temperatures are dropping in the UK.