My Snawheid mittens

Back in March I posted about the Snawheid hat I knitted using Kate Davies' pattern. Here I've taken it one step further!



The hat turned out so well I was inspired to make mittens to go with it, and I started one almost straight away. 



That was finished by Easter, but then I knitted another mitten (different yarn, different pattern) before I got round to ordering more of the Jamieson & Smith yarn for the second Snawheid mitten - so there has been a slight delay in getting the pair of these ready to wear. But now here they are, after a week's holiday on Tiree (Scottish Western Isles) I've had time to finish that second one off (and the weather is still just about chilly enough to wear them!).




The colourwork makes these very cosy and snug, and after a gentle wash the yarn has come up feeling lovely and soft and full. As I mentioned in my previous post, I mashed up Kate's snowflake motif with the Lusekofte-sque mittens pattern from Ravelry and am really happy with the result!  I put rows of three and four snowflakes on the back of the mittens and left the palms plain.  From the Lusekofte-sque pattern, apart from the shape, I borrowed the border pattern.
The mitten pattern has a double thickness cuff at the top and bottom which I love, and I think it might translate onto socks quite nicely...

I did make these slightly bigger than the Lusekofte-sque pattern, adding an extra ten stitches to the width (I think!) and ten rows to the length, as well as an additional two stitches to the thumb and two extra rows (but I do seem to have fairly big hands).

The weather hasn't been too chilly lately so I'm hoping not to need these till winter starts. In the meantime, the garden's looking lovely....

Snawheid mash-up!

A while ago I downloaded Kate Davies' Snawheid knitting pattern, ordered some Jamieson & Smith jumper weight yarn, and knitted this lovely hat:





My head seems to be bigger than average (!), so I added in a couple of extra snowflakes to the straight rounds and did a bit more decreasing before I started on the mega-flake on the crown.
It was a great pattern, easy to follow, and the snowflake motif is truly lovely.  So lovely in fact that I was inspired to use it again, combined with another pattern, to knit some fingerless mittens.

I based the mittens on Mary Rourke's Lusekofte-sque mitts pattern, available as a free download from Ravelry, mashing up her border motif with the snawheid motif to make my design.  I also (after reading a tip from someone else on Ravelry) moved the end of the round onto the palm (which I'm leaving plain), thus hiding the pattern discontinuity on a less obvious piece of the mitten.

This was my first attempt at working out how to fit a pattern motif onto a piece of knitting and it took a few attempts to get everything sorted.  The double cuff and double edge look like they're going to make these really cosy!
Watch out for some photos of my new mittens soon!