May There Be Music!

Well, as planned... I finished the music mittens and I'm quite pleased with how they look!

Pattern: Everything above the Latvian Braid: For the Love of Music by AvaAdore
               Everything Latvian Braid and below: ME
Yarn: Filatura Di Crosa Zarina 1404 (black) and Koigu Premium Merino (KPM) 00 00 (natural)
Needles: Cuff is US 2 (2.75 mm) and Hand is US 2.5 (3.00 mm)
Notes: Pretty straight forward pattern.  I decided to modify the cuff to make the mittens more personal for the recipient.  So... if you ever wanted "Baa Baa black sheep have you any wool" charted out- here it is.

I'm hoping Miss Patti likes them.  They look quite lovely and I'm so pleased with how they turned out.

   

I'm actually pretty pleased in general with the knitting right now.  Meeting mini goals and switching in between projects is working out quite well.  It keeps my brain engaged and prevents me from the "BLAH" I sometimes I feel when I'm working on one project religiously.  I usually set a row I can knit to on the mittens and then I switch and complete one ball on the blanket before going back to a new row goal on the mittens.

Here we are, nearly done ball 4 and I'm feeling quite good with where I'm at on this blanket.  This part knits up fast.  I'm at 21" and I think I'm going to go to about 32" before I stop. (or maybe 34"... I haven't decided.)  The harder part is coming.  Once this part is off the needles, I need to weave in the ends and lightly block it.  THEN I need to pick up and knit a border on each side.  The border is going to be challenging and is going to be a lot more knitting.  (Instead of doing a morse code stitch row every 6 rows, I'll be doing them every row and in every stitch... a lot more work!)

And so... because I know that the borders are going to get tedious, I've decided to add another mitten project to the mix to help me get past the tedium and keep it interesting.

This project is ready to go once I finish the current ball of yarn.  (It's a mystery for now.... but I love the colors!)  I wanted to gift mittens to teachers next year for kindergarten (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and it's best to get a jump on that now.  (I will reserve my "HOLYCRAPMYKIDISGOINGTOKINDERGARTEN" freak out until summer is ending.)

I'm recognizing that I'm likely not going to have the blanket done when the baby it's intended for shows up, but I'm hoping to stick pretty closely to an "end of June" timeline.

Oooo... unrelated to knitting, but if you could send me some "NO FROST" mojo.... I got my flowers in for the spring and they look so pretty!  (Having a little boy means having flowers in pots and not beds to give them a fighting chace!)