Tasty Toasty!

The other day, when my hands were more or less done knitting for the day, I had a little bit of a buying event on Revelry.  I was looking for another pair of fingerless mittens for myself and I just could not get past Martina Behm's Tough and Toasty.  They aren't long enough on the cuff for what I want them to do but it looked like such an interesting design and Martina's patterns are always so much fun to knit. They look simple but there is always something clever going on that makes you shake your head in wonder at the thinking behind them.

Martina is giving a discount if you buy three or more patterns so I took a look at all of them.  I came home with 4.  Two besides Toasty were easy, but I had to think hard on the last.  There were two that more I could easily knit, use and enjoy, but I figured that there were only so many things I realistically can knit at this moment in time.  I don't like to buy patterns till I am ready to knit.  If I buy ahead for a prospective knit, I usually end up changing my mind before I get around to it and then the pattern never gets used. Four seemed like plenty. I purchased Spiral Escape, Brickless, Shrug and More besides Tough and Toasty.     

When I got up this morning (in the dark.  It is dark now at 5:30 a.m. I will rejoice that sweater weather is back. Nothing else for it but to cheer the end of that awful hot summer.) I grabbed the needles and the yarn I had at the ready and started to knit.  

It took very little time, and by the end of my first coffee, I was reasonably well along.  

I'm using some yarn from the deep stash, Mission Fall 1824 Wool in three colours.  It is a perfect yarn for wristers, easily washable as often as you need too and super soft for wearing on sensitive wrists. Not that mine are sensitive at all. I have skin that seems to tolerate almost everything. 

There were a few hiccups along the way, as I sorted out in my thick head exactly where she was going with this and what each increase or decrease did within the pattern.  The pattern is written using a circular needle while I was doing it on dpns. I kept getting her tip one and two mixed up with my one, two, three and four. If I tell you that I ought to have finished my first cup of coffee before I read the pattern, I am sure you will understand.  The pattern was clear.  Me, not so much. I had to pull back an overly large section one as well, but it is a small project.  It took very little time and once I understood the very simple things she is doing, I went along great gangbusters.

By the time I was ready for my second cup of coffee I was so close to finished, that I delayed cup two a very few minutes and finished up this first mitten.

Though this first mitten was knit exactly to pattern, the next one is going to be my proto type to add a longer cuff to it.  I am very sure that what I have in mind will work.  I will add that longer cuff to mitten one by picking up stitches and doing garter in the round.

  

If you are busy knitting sweaters and are in the long slog of it, and are looking for a quick pick me up that is a lot of fun, I highly recommend this tasty little treat.