Road to the State Fair ’16: Finally Done!

I’ve done it, I have finally finished these friggin’ mittens for the Minnesota State Fair (with days to spare to submit them).

Don’t get me wrong, I love the pattern I came up with, I love the yarn and I love the finished mittens. I just struggled with knitting them for some reason.

I wanted to use this beautiful dark blue/green because it is a very peacock-like color, but at a gauge of fifteen stitches per inch I had a really hard time seeing the separate stitches and kept dropping them. I spent a lot of time in my reading glasses picking up stitches that had fallen four or five rows back. I finally finished both hands and then it took me three tries to get a thumb design that I liked the look of. This meant lots of tinking back tiny, tiny stitches. I finished the first thumb, picked up the stitches for the second and realized that I had made two right mittens! At this point I almost gave up thinking there was no way I could finish on time.

But I didn’t give up. I frogged back to thumb, moved it and reknit the whole top of the mitten. So now, they are still drying from a blocking. I’ll probably also steam them and manually tighten a few loose stitches before bringing them in for judging.

I have to say, I have never been so happy to finish a pair of mittens, ever. I am working on getting this pattern together to share, so look for it later in August.