Strong heart

Tags

cables, fingerless gloves, free pattern, Knitting, mittens, New Zealand wool, New Zealand yarn, Stansborough, Wool

Today, dear readers, I introduce Strong Heart.

Originally conceptualised many months ago, after I’d been reading quite a few blog posts about life’s challenges, I thought it would be nice to knit something as a reminder of the nicer things in life, and as my gift to my knitting sisters, who find life a struggle on occasion.

These gloves are dedicated to my dear friend, Kb, who is going through some tremendous changes in her life right now.

It feels nice to finally have wrapped around my arms what I’ve had in my head for so long.  The cabled motif is a continuous string of hearts.  As I knitted them, I reflected on how much you could read into the hearts – a love of knitting; a love for the person you might be knitting the gloves for; a love for all things cabled – the list goes on!  In this case, the hearts represent “heart”.  The ability to take strength; to take heart, and go on, to take on the good and the bad, opportunity and disappointment, and continue to enjoy all that life has to offer.  Hence the name “Strong Heart”.

But wait, there’s more! This is the mitten version.

I’ve used the wonderful Stansborough Mythral yarn, (DK weight, 100% New Zealand Stansborough Grey wool), in the Rata colourway for the long, fingerless version.  The mittens are in Kokako Grey – the natural colour of the sheep.

The pattern is of course, free and it will be released in about a week.  (I have some major work on at the moment that will prevent me from writing the pattern up too quickly).  Thanks to my son Tim, for the great pics today.

I hope you are having a marvellous, relaxing weekend.  :-)

Mittens for a little girl

Tags

Fibre Alive, fingerless gloves, gift, Knitsch, Knitting, mittens, New Zealand yarn

A friend wanted to send her friend’s daughter some mittens.  She asked if I’d knit them for her.  We had such fun playing in my yarn collection, choosing colours!

She needed them rather quickly, so I knit these over the weekend.

I especially love the pink and green stripey ones.

Here they are, kindly modelled by the young man who declared that they were very comfortable, but the colours weren’t quite right for him. ;-D

They’re done in a combination of Knitsch 100% merino (pink – Sweetheart) and Fibre Alive Merino Mania (green – Lemonza) sock yarns.    The colours go together well, no?

The green and blue are knitted in fingering weight possum yarn (Jamie Possum and Zealana Kauri).  If I had more time, I would have reknit these.  I am not happy about the placement of the stripes and the buttons – they need to go to the other side of the hand.  I’m twitching just looking at them on the screen… eeeeeh.  My friend told me not to fuss.  I guess that’s the most important thing – she likes them!  At least they’ll be warm and cuddly and help to keep one little girls’ hands warm come winter.

It was quite fun knitting them.

Wrist warmers? Easy fingerless gloves?

Tags

designing, fingerless gloves, Knitting, Mythral, New Zealand yarn, Stansborough, Wool, wrist warmers, yarn

I knitted these to keep my wrists and hands warm while I work at my desk.  To me, they are wrist warmers.  Some might call them fingerless gloves because they have a hand section.

What would you call them?

They’re the easiest pattern in the world.  Coming to you soon!

Pleased

Tags

cables, craft, fingerless gloves, gloves, Knitting, New Zealand, New Zealand yarn, Possum, possum yarn, The Wool Co.

Ta da!

Ha!  You thought you could beat me, you cheeky pair of gloves!  But no, I battled on, and now you are DONE!!!  Bwa ha ha ha ha!!!

I’m a bit surprised they fit – they’re meant for a very petite lady who is about the size of the average 12 yr old.  So they’ll be longer on her than on me which is good, but I think because this pattern is totally ribbing (including the cables), it’s so stretchy that even I can wear them.  Although as you can see, they are very snug.

I’m not sure about writing out the pattern for this. It’s a super simple concept – just rib all the way. Only the cables are a bit tricky because there are twists and crosses which require concentration, so it’s intermediate-level.   If you’d like it, let me know!

There’s another thing to be pleased about today – it’s only 17 degrees C!  Yay!  Woolly season is coming!