Mitten Garland Advent Calendar – Mitten #11

Not that I don’t like them all or anything, but I think Mitten #11, might be one of my favorites in the set so far. I got my inspiration for the design from the beautiful Dale of Norway sweaters.

Advent Calendar Mitten 11 Chart. As requested, I have used a darker grey on the chart this time, I hope everyone finds it easier to read.

A few notes on knitting this mittens…

• I find that when I have a section of straight knitting and a section of stranded colorwork in the same project, the stranded area is tighter. That means in a mitten like this the center colorwork section will pull in at the sides, ruining the look for me. For this mitten I really concentrated on knitting the non-colorwork sections tighter. It looks a lot better and I was able to block out most of the little difference there was. So, I want you to think about how you knit when doing this one and concentrate on an even gauge through the whole thing. You might even consider using different size needles for the two areas.
• I didn’t want to strand the red all through the grey and white cuff to make the “11” and I wasn’t happy with the last one I did in duplicate stitch, so I tried doing a modified intarsia instead. I left the red hanging after I finished its stitches on each row and then gently pulled it back where I needed it on the next row as I got to it.
  
  It was not perfect, the “11” puckered and the stitches were a little uneven. I was able to even out the stitches with a little work and a good blocking got out the puffiness. I will try this method again, but I don’t think I would use it for a much bigger area.
• Finally, there has been a lot of talk about block with hot water versus cold in the forum on Ravelry. I decided to take a chance ad block this mitten with hot water. My red Palette yarn did not bleed and my mitten did not shrink, but I didn’t notice any difference in how it blocked compared to using cool water. This was my own non-scientific test, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

And here is my whole set so far.

Until next Monday, happy knitting!

Dowload the written pattern for all these mittens, Mitten Advent Calendar Pattern