The Northman Mitten

I'm not fully finished with the Dead Fish Hat test run, and I couldn't wait to start on something new, especially something with stranded knitting. While I definitely like having some mindless garter stitching (knit...knit...knit...), sometimes I need something a bit more involved. I dunno - whaddaya think? Is this more involved than doing the exact same stitch over and over?

This is the Northman Mitten by David Schulz.  I didn't even realize I had one of this guy's patterns in my queue, just itching to knit it, when I came across some of his other stuff on Ravelry.  If you can get through this link to Ravelry, check out his amazing handpainted yarn!!  This, along with seeing the really cool work of others has me really itching to try spinning my own yarn (oy, why?  another hobby!?).  Anyhow, after seeing and favoriting his yarns, and even sending him a complement on how cool his stuff is, it was days later when I decided to go for it and try this Northman Mitten pattern, and I happened to notice the avatar was familiar (hey, it's a border collie!).  Weird coincidence.

So I'm posting this blog entry on Thursday, and have a feeling that, by the end of the weekend, time permitting, I will have made some decent progress on the first mitten.  It's one of those patterns where I can tell I'm going to want to keep going just to see the picture forming.  And I suspect the majority of this pattern is going to go muuuuch faster than the cast on/braid, which you see in the picture above.  Man, that was sloooow work.

Now I just hope the final product fits me!  I'm not normally a full-blown, cover-the-fingers mitten wearer, but for the coldest of winter days, I think these'll be hard to keep off my hands.  And there's an interesting extra part to the pattern that some folks consider optional - after finishing knitting the "shell" of the mitten in a worsted weight yarn, as I'm doing now, you then knit a liner in a finer weight yarn, and it gets attached around the rim and then inverted inside the outer part of the yarn.  Can you imagine how freaking warm that's going to be!?  The shell of the mitten is already knit stranded, so that's basically double thick and toasty.  I just hope that I have this gauged right so there's enough open space inside the yarn to try fitting in a liner.