Mitten, mitten, who's got the mitten?

That would be me! I finished my Flamingo Mittens over the Easter weekend, which was both pleasing and useful - it snowed the day I went back to work. This spring has pretty much sucked weather-wise.

Completed mittens

I love flamingos. They may well be my second-favourite bird, closely following the magpie. I decided to knit this pattern the minute I saw it! SpillyJane writes an excellent pattern. It's easy-to-read and laid out well. I don't often buy individual patterns, but this was totally worth it.

I made three modifications to the pattern. First, I knit the cuffs longer. I like loooooong cuffs on my mittens so they tuck into my sleeves nicely. No draughts, thank you very much! I also changed the needles. I did the cuffs on 2.25mm needles, again for reasons of draught prevention, and then did the stranded parts on 2.75mm needles.

Thumb View

The final modification, which you can just about see here, is that I decided to knit the tips of the thumbs in solid black rather than continuing the stripe pattern. I thought it would look better if the tips of the thumbs matched the tips of the fingers.

In retrospect I should have knit both the thumbs and the fingertips longer. I always forget how freakishly long my fingers are compared to most women, even though my hands are quite slender. Still, they're long enough to be comfortable. Otherwise I wouldn't have been wearing them constantly for the last fortnight! Speaking of slender hands, were mine any bigger I'd've needed to go up a needle size or two. These are quite tight.



And just because I always like seeing the insides of stranded projects, here are some inverse flamingos.

I'm pleased with how the colourwork turned out. This was the first stranded project I've done since learning about colour dominance, and I'm very happy with the results.