Spring green mitts

I am now back in England and we had a beautiful hour or two of sun this afternoon (!) in which to take some photos of my new mitts. These are the mitts which I was knitting last week while in South Africa communing with elephants.

This is the pattern Wedgewood Mitts, designed by me. I designed them to play around with a lovely shipment of Kate Davies’ new yarn, Buachaille. The original pair, made for Leah, was in a very pretty mid-blue with white edging. Just before leaving for Johannesburg, I tossed a skein of this lovely spring green, called Yaffle, and the remaining white from the first pair of mitts, into my suitcase.

I made a few small modifications from my original pattern. Here is what I did:

Cast on an extra 4 stitches (48)
Worked an extra two rows of corrugated ribbing
Decreased 4 stitches after ribbing
Worked an extra 2 rows before starting gusset
Worked three rows less before adding white edging

Basically, this added 4 stitches just to the cuff, to make the cuff a tiny bit more roomy. I also made the cuff portion of the mitt slightly longer, while making the finger portion of the mitt slightly shorter.

I am very happy with how they worked out, and am especially charmed with the combination of this spring green and the white (Yaffle and Ptarmigan in Buachaille-speak). Obviously, I am not the only one to think so. I had finished the first mitt and cast on for the second when I noticed that Kate Davies had designed a new hat for release at the Edinburgh Yarn Festival this weekend:

I absolutely love this design, which was inspired by a collection of Hornsea pottery designed by John Clappison in the 1960s; go read Kate’s post here. Sadly, I cannot be at the festivities in Edinburgh this weekend, but I did try to alleviate my misery by ordering a kit to make this hat! Just think how pretty it will look with the mitts.