FO: Mitts for Mom!

Dear Mom,

Back in March when you came to visit during the kids' spring break, you started looking for a new knitting project. Your hands are often cold (like mine!), and you had been working on a pair of mitts for yourself but they were turning out too loose. Frustrated, you went on the hunt for a different pattern. We poked around a bit on Ravelry together, and then I remembered that I had just gotten my email newsletter from the PurlBee with a free pattern for cabled mitts, the Traveling Cables Mitts, to be exact. You had a brief look and decided you liked them (you don't obsess over pattern searches like I do, apparently), so down to the basement we went to print off the pattern and pick out some yarn.

Mom, you and I have a healthy respect for each other's stashes. Between your epic stash of quilting fabric and my epic yarn stash, we can pretty much come up with supplies for any project we want! That said, these mitts call for fingering weight yarn, something I don't have terribly much of in my stash...relative to worsted and aran weight, anyway. So it didn't take long for you to choose this herby, earthy green color.

After picking out the yarn, you commented that knitting projects take you forever, and you wondered (perhaps with a bit of a sigh) just when you would get these mitts done. Also, you're not a huge fan of knitting with DPNs, though you know how. Were you dropping hints? Or merely making an observation? Anyway, before I knew it, I had offered to knit them for you. 

This is the sort of project I can whip up in a week! No problem. Or so I thought.

It took more like a month and change to finish this pair of mitts. Granted, I've been busy (April was crazy, and May has been just as bad so far), so there hasn't been as much knitting time as I'd like, but I also managed to screw these up six ways from Sunday and then some. I got the left mitt done in a relatively short time, then knit the right mitt and they weren't the same length. They just weren't. I counted the cables and the rows of ribbing and it was like some weird knitting Twilight Zone where I did the exact same number of things for both mitts, but one was simply longer than the other and there was no explaining why.

So I reknit the right mitt and then discovered I should have reknit the left.

So I reknit the left mitt and managed to mess up the cables every third round and kept tinking back.

Long story short: what should have been a quick, easy project turned into a month-long ordeal and me grousing about mistakes more than usual. I blame the stress of my life at the moment. Normally I don't mess up this often.

As you can see, I did get the mitts done, and they are quite lovely. I was a little bit sad to package them up and send them away, but there is no one more deserving of a hand knitted gift than you, mom. After all, you taught me these skills in the first place. You also have proper respect for The Stash! That means a lot.

Happy Mothers' Day, mom! I hope you like these (even though I know it's probably hot in Kentucky already and it's not like you'll need them...maybe I should have saved them for your birthday in the fall?)

love,

Suzy Q