Every knitter has a process. Mine is a little messy, but approachable. I sat down on Thursday evening and knocked out what I though was going to be the matching mitt to a singularly knit mitt I worked up as a sample in October.  It was a to be a double score: Finished project off my list and warm hands. I was knitting a beautiful 100% Italian Cashmere yarn from Lana Gatto. It is a dream to work with. A light worsted weight allowing me to work quickly and feels like a cloud. Soft and light, I was so excited to have a finished set.

I set out to locate the partial skein of yarn left over from the first mitt. It had turned up a few times in my “local knitting supplies” ( the pile of things I am currently working from, all convenently stored in a basinette built by my grandfather.) Of course it was no where to be seen now that I wanted to find it. (The pile may be pretty big) No real problem though, I had an extra skein in my work kit in the same color and dye lot. Time to get knitting!

Like any other cast on of a new project, I just pulled up the pattern, Autumnal Mitts, on my phone and set to knitting.  I had a new skein of yarn ready and nothing distracting me. Did I have the first mitt next to me? No! That would have been smart! I knit the mitt up to the thumb gusset and then realized I had better find the prospective mate to my new mitt so I didn’t end up with two mitts of the same hand. It was easy enough to find in my work bag, along with all my other Lana Gatto Samples. I took notice of the thumb placement and hurried back to knitting.  It was shaping up to be a good evening, watching a Netflix series and knitting away.

And as I was binding off the top of the hand, I realized that I had knit the pattern exactly as written… failing to skip one repeat of the lace pattern as I had done with the first mitt.   Why I did not remember this fact when I made the trek to find the first mitt, I will never know. I think this is the only problem working from online patterns. I do like to make notes on paper patterns, but I just don’t print much anymore. Back when I was knitting the first mitt, I was second guessing the yarn usage even though a very trusted friend had knit multipule pairs from the same yarn, never running out of yarn from just one skein. I didn’t want to knit a third mitt and have one lingering leaving me in the same single mitt circumstance that I found myself in at the onset. Instead of being mad, I just undid the first mitt and set to reknitting it to be a matched set. Now this seems crazy, because I started with a fresh new skeinAs I was knitting I realized that having a cashemere hat with a matching motif would be fantastic. My brain was just clicking along and since I had an extra half a skein of yarn as well as another full skein in stash I might as well start planning!

As luck would have it a pattern designed materialized rather easily in my mind and now I have a fantastic set!   Keep a look out the end of next week for the pattern over on Ravelry and right here as a little Valentines Day cerci from me to you!