Done!

All done!

This Olympic Challenge, four pairs of hand wear, was not an easy one. There were times when I thought that I would just abandon the whole thing and go on knitting something else, but then told myself that since I made the commitment I should try to stick to it as long as possible. I was so relieved when last night I put the last stitches on the twined embroidered mittens and could call it a day.

I should have picked the yarns for all the projects before hand, it would have made the task a lot easier. And also if I had not decided to knit something totally new to me: double knitted mittens.

I could not find any information about double knitted mittens but they really were not much different than knitting single mittens. The most trouble I had was with the tension for the inside mittens as they are purled and no matter how hard I tried they did not come out as sturdy as I hoped for.

(I have M'Lou Baber's new book about double knitting, but in case you wonder, there are no patterns for knitted mittens in it, but plenty of other interesting projects. Also there is a hat pattern in Twist Collective and I found good tutorials (video) from there. Actually, excellent tutorials! - I am in a hurry, I don't have time to find the links now... sorry!)

Number three challenge were twined knitted mittens.

It is easy to see that already here I was quite tired of mittens and took the easy way out and just knitted plain mittens and embellished them with embroidery. Nothing new there, and really not so much of a design challenge.

And then finally number four pair were simple linings for the twined mittens. Plain, ordinary mittens with little lace in the cuffs. I was not that happy with myself when knitting these linings but I kept on pushing until the finish and now am glad that I did.

So four pairs of mittens finished, three false starts for the double knitted mittens, one whole day wasted there. Then I did not realize how long the mittens needed to be when being knitted with double knitting, I had to rip twice the top to have the mittens long enough to have enough room for the inside mitten. One evening lost. Two left hand mittens in twined knitting, again one evening lost there, since I had to rip a little bit, not too much, just the decreases in the top. But this added to the frustration.

The embroidery for the most part is done in chain stitches. I have many embroidery books, some old Finnish ones and some more modern. I will try to remember to post a list of books I have for your information. There is some information for quite similar cuff decorations as in the gloves (challenge I) from the last post in the book called "Koreaa virkkaamalla" (in Eng Decorative Crocheting) but I used a little bit different technique.

Now, I will need to go, this post just had to be done today, as this is the final day for the Olympics.

Wool with you,

Lene