Mitten Murderer

My Rabbit mitten is dead, and I killed it.

I've been blathering on and on lately to everyone about Ravelry and how great it is (you should check it out). When I'm not busy doing that, I'm working on several knitting projects, solely for the purpose of posting them on Ravelry where I can share them with everyone. When I'm not busy blathering or knitting, I'm either (1) out buying knitting paraphernalia, (2) making my own knitting paraphernalia, or (3) thinking about knitting and buying or making my own knitting paraphernalia.

You might say I'm somewhat obsessed. I often knit instead of doing things like eating meals or sleeping. But that's not my only problem. You see, I'm also a bit of a perfectionist and that means that I spend a lot of time ripping back my work in order to correct one wrong stitch.

Which leads me to today and the Heinous Murder of my Rabbit mitten. It started when I decided my next project would be a pair of mittens. Mittens are, in my past experience, a fun, quick project that will be done in a couple of days. I was going to use the Squirrel and Oak pattern from Hello Yarn because it's so darn cute. Then I started thinking how much more fun it would be to make my own design. I was looking around for a way to make my own chart and realized that Hello Yarn helpfully provides blank charts for the same style mitten. Since it is close to Easter, I thought of doing a rabbit and designed mittens with a bunny on one and a carrot on the other. I splurged a little bit on the yarn and bought a cashmere/merino blend wool that feels like butter on your skin. Today, I knit furiously and finished one of the mittens. It was so pretty (if you ignore the poor photographs):





Too Tight! Too Short! Aaaaagggghhhhh!

Why did this happen? It could possibly be because I Didn't. Bother. To. Swatch. WHY do I keep starting projects without swatching? Why? I know that my gauge is wonky. It's been wonky for the past 30+ years. Why would it change now? Depending on the yarn, the type of pattern and the alignment of the moons, I either knit too loose or too tight. I know this about myself, and yet once I have the yarn in my hands, I get impatient and want to start knitting. Despite the fact that I am usually quite pessimistic, a little optimistic voice pipes up and says "It will be fine! Just do it!"

Which leads me to the Murder. After I finished the main part of the Rabbit mitten, I tried it on. It fit, but it was a little tight and WAY too short. I started picking up the stitches for the thumb, but the little optimistic voice had turned nasty on me and was now saying "You spent a lot of money for that yarn and now you'll never wear these malformed mittens. Rip them!" So I took a couple of pictures for posterity and frogged the entire thing. I'm going to go up one needle size and DO A SWATCH to see if I can get the correct gauge before starting them again.

I did learn some valuable lessons. First, I had a really hard time picking up the live stitches for the thumb, mostly due to the fact that I used a fuzzy piece of scrap yarn to hold them. Next time, I'm definitely using mercerized cotton. Also, I'm going to make a few small changes in my design that I think will improve it quite a bit. And I promise I'm going to swatch everything from now on. Really.