Finished Projects: January 2016

January is our coldest month in South Dakota. I enjoy cozy evenings of knitting, crocheting, and spinning. Here are my finished projects from this month.

Nancy McGlynn's Warm Heart Mittens have been my "go to" mitten pattern for years. They are a fairly quick knit: I use size US 6 needles for the cuff and size 8 for the hand. There is a lot of opportunity in the pattern for color play. I use Brown Sheep's Lamb's Pride Superwash Bulky for the mittens, and enjoy the many available colors.

This year I also made headbands to match, variations on the two color stranded patterns. I used size 6 needles for the ribbing and size 8 for the middle section, casting on 80 stitches, and reducing to 72 for the top ribbing. I'll made more of these headbands, with or without matching mittens. They'll be a great way to use up yarn scraps.

The Prairie Fiber Arts Guild is knitting Valentine Mittens to share at our February meeting. I tweaked the pattern slightly, to have a heart centered at the fingertips. These are knit in worsted weight yarn. I used US size 3 needles for the cuff and size 5 for the hand. The pink yarn is my handspun. Last spring the Guild hosted Lizbeth Upitis for a Latvian mitten workshop. I couldn't resist of adding a bit of Latvian-inspired braid at the cuff.

For me, crocheting is like coming home or putting on your favorite pair of shoes. It's comfortably familiar. With an odd skein of Madeline Tosh sock yarn in the stash, I crocheted a ripple scarf, original pattern. The colors that originally attracted me to the yarn still hold that attraction. From the detail image, notice that the ripple pattern is three rows of single crochet, then one row of triple crochet.