Mossy Cottage Knits

Funny Bunny

Over the last two years I have had the extreme pleasure of watching my personal knitting universe grow from one that consisted in its entirety of one ball of yarn, two straight knitting needles, and a knowledge of stockinette and garter stitches, to one that contains at least an awareness of double-pointed needles, circular needles, lace, cables, fair isle, intarsia, a multitude of knitting stitches, spinning, dyeing, pattern design, and exotic yarns ranging from eyelash to Australian possum to quiviut. Now, however, I can die a happy woman because my knitting universe includes These.

Upon first glimpse of the first photo, I laughed so hard I snorted Cherry Coke through my nose—and there’s nothing more painful than forcing a highly carbonated beverage through your sinuses. Once I had wiped the Coke off my keyboard, my next reaction was, “Must…Have…One!” But, sigh, there are two obstacles to this. First, I am forbidden by The Mysterious K to own any small rodent-like or rabbit-like pets. In the early stages of our relationship, I owned a couple of different hamsters at different times and grieved as mightily at their passing as I did when my precious cats died. And TMK can tell you some interesting stories about driving many miles late at night with an hysterical Ryan and a sick hamster in search of the only veterinary clinic open at night that handled rodents. A few trips of this type and a few days of comforting an inconsolable me, and TMK, who is usually more generous in spirit, finally said “no more!”

Then there’s this alarmingly long page listing all the things you would need to know in order to care for one of these alien creatures, including how to “read” their droppings (!); prevent them from ingesting any of their own wool or, if they have ingested wool, feed them enzymes with a syringe; protect them from predators, electrocution from chewing on wires, heat, drafts, wetness, diarrhea and, lovely of lovelies, maggots; and prevent anything from sticking in their fur or, in the alternative, pick chimpanzee-like at every inch of their fur to remove whatever has stuck in there. I now know an Angora rabbit is not for me, and that I will have to be satisfied with using one of the photos as the "desktop" picture on my PC, but shall we just let TMK go on thinking she wears the pants in the family, at least where small pets are concerned?

Knitting Knews
Some friends of ours recently asked me to knit mittens for their 4-month-old so off I went to the Internet to find a pattern and found what I thought would be the perfect one here. I dutifully knit up a mitten using the designer’s specs, size 3 dpns, double-stranded DK yarn, and 16 stitches. The end result:

As you can see, this mitten is Too Small and barely fits on my index finger, let alone the hand and wrist of a very healthy, very chubby baby. Either the pattern designer is an extremely loose knitter or I need to start taking major doses of Prozac. So I frogged, doubled the number of stitches to 32, and knit it again. This version was Too Big. So I split the difference and knit the next pair using 24 stitches. Here the more successful 24-stitch pair next to the original 16-stitch mitten.

To compound things further, TMK got all excited about the mittens and wanted to take them to our friends Immediately…which would have been all well and fine except I had completed only one successful mitten by the time she got all fired up. So then nothing would do but we had to see exactly how quickly I could churn out the second one of these puppies. I think the final tally was 1 hour and 10 minutes, give or take a few minutes for the weaving in of ends. I cast-on at 11:45am and I think we were on our friends’ doorstep, finished mittens in hand, at 1:30pm.

I’d like to be able to say that the Goldilocks Mittens story had a happy ending but, upon delivery, the 24-stitch pair still proved to be a tiny bit small so now I’m doing a different version using 24 stitches and size 4 needles. Hopefully these will prove to be Just Right. For anyone who wants it, here is my version of the pattern (which I have my fingers crossed qualifies as being "new" and "original" given that it is about 90% different from the first pattern).

Goldilocks Mittens

Materials:
Size 4 dpns
Baby Ull yarn, double-stranded (I used one strand of yellow and one of blue for the "tweedy" look of the mittens in the photos. For the mittens I'm knitting now, I'm using double-stranded yellow and double-stranded blue and am knitting them in stripes. The striped version looks much better. I'll post a photo as soon as I have one.)
Thin ribbon
Tapestry needle

Abbreviations:
K=knit
Kfkb=knit in the front and the back of the stitch to increase your stitch count
by 1
K2tog=knit two stitches together to decrease your stitch count by 1
P=purl
Yo=yarnover

Pattern:
Cast on 24 stitches.
Redistribute stitches so you have 8 on each needle.
Row 1: Join and k1, p1 around.
Row 2-9: K1, p1 around.
Row 10: K around.
Row 11: To make eyelets, *k2tog, yo, repeat from * around.
Row 12: *K3, kfkb of the yo, repeat from * around. You will now have 30 stitches.
Row 13-28. Knit 16 rounds or to desired length.
Row 29: K2tog all the way around. You will now have 15 stitches.
Row 30: K around.
Row 31: K2tog all the way around to last stitch, k1. You will now have 8 stitches.
Row 32: K around.
Row 33: K2tog all the way around. You will now have 4 stitches.
Cut the yarn leaving a tail for snugging up and weaving in.
Use the tapestry needle to run the yarn tail through the stitches, removing the needles as you go.
Pull on the yarn tail to snug up the tip of the mitten.
Weave in the yarn tail and the cast-on tail.
Using the tapestry needle, run a ribbon through the eyelets, snug it up and tie a bow. (I used yarn but I think a ribbon would look infinitely better.)

Posted by Ryan at January 7, 2004 12:38 PM