Today is Boxing Day, and it is grey and windy, which means that I can stay in my pyjamas and knit and eat chocolates all day. One of the things I like best about Boxing Day is looking at photos of all of the knitting projects that were made as gifts and therefore top secret until today. I had no intentions of knitting any gifts this year – why put more pressure on myself in 2020? – but then we went for a walk and Doug had cold hands. What’s a knitter to do?

These are the West Wind Mittens, designed by Dianna Walla of Paper Tiger. The Ravelry pattern link is here. Christmas morning was cold and sunny – it was below freezing – and we went for a long walk. I think these kept him warm.

The yarn is Sheepish DK British Bluefaced Leicester, hand-dyed by Ginger Twist Studio in the colour Mister Thomson. It’s a lovely yarn, plush and soft and bouncy. I think it looks great with the cable twist pattern. The yarn blocks beautifully.

The pattern is well-written and easy to follow. It contains instructions for either mittens or fingerless mitts. Diana gives detailed notes for knitting the twisted stitches without a cable needle. I must admit that I really struggled with the first 10 rows or so of the pattern – knitting a purl into the back of the second stich was incredibly fiddly to me. I then switched to using a cable needle and the mittens just flew off the needles.

Doug and I found an abandoned and ancient orchard while we were out walking, and took some nice photos there. It was beautiful early in the morning with the sun shining on the frost.

One of the things I like about this pattern is that the thumb gusset is off-set. You can see this in the below photo; instead of being at the side of the mitt it is moved a bit towards the inside of the hand.

And here you can see the offset gusset from the inside of the hand:

I think this makes it extra comfortable, and allows good motion of the hand.

I received some cool knitting stuff this Christmas. I’ll post about it soon. Stay safe everyone.