Thrummed Mitts Progress Report; or, How Many Pins Did They Use to Set Your Arm?

The temperature today was 7. Degrees Fahrenheit. I could REALLY have used some thrummed fingerless mitts when taking the dogs out and scraping off my car this morning, but have only finished one, and haven't even woven in the ends on that yet, and even I was not ready to take that fashion plunge.

I started off, as Ravelry would give the impression most people do, making the thrums too large.

Here's a crappy in-progress by-lamplight shot, on the assumption that poorly lit pictures are slightly better than no pictures at all:



Not really understanding the instructions for how to place a thrum that came with the kit, I relied on the Yarn Harlot's excellent FAQ (linked in the last post). She says you should knit through the back loop of the thrum and the stitch it was placed with on the next round, so I did. Unfortunately, as I am finding with the one-row scarf (which I just realized is hers as well - what is it with the YH and those ktbl-s?), when I ktbl, the left side of the resulting stitch sits there all bloated and bulky, while the right side fades away. With enough yanking, I can kind of even them out, but it is not pretty.

To get back to the too-large thrums thing, I eased off of them a bit once I ran out of the ones I had industriously made before starting. I wasn't increasing the number of stitches nearly as drastically as the pattern called for (which happens in accordance with the thumb, which I was needing to be a little tighter because with the top open, I would only be placing thrums near the bottom, as I did not relish the idea of creating some kind of thumb-sized sockyarn flap, hoo boy is this a long digression) um, so, laying off on the thrums and keeping about the same number of stitches as the cuff should, I hope, allow for blood circulation to my fingers. Which is right up there with being swathed in roving for keeping them warm.

I hereby apologize for that paragraph. And I'm not even done yet.

So ANYWAY, the too-large thrums at the bottom of the mitt, plus the nice, gentle pastel palate, kind of gives the impression that my entire hand is in a cast.

About once a year, a freshman guy walks into his English classroom with a hand wrapped up in tape and maybe plaster, after having put his fist through some plate glass as the culmination of a fight or at least confrontation concerning either a woman or a guitar. Sometimes both. With these mitts, I will be rocking the "I got drunk and put my fist through a plate glass window at about 4am last night" look.

Not any of this is to say that I'm not completely in love with these mittens. I love them. The one that's done is so freaking warm. And soft. And pretty, if medical-looking.

To my surprise, 4 rounds past the last thrum plus a bindoff row was enough to keep the thrums from spilling out the top of the mitt, so I can stop fretting about which sockyarn to pillage for a flap on the inside. Now if I can just go back to knitting on them rather than writing about them for pages...