Olympic Endeavour

Pattern: Deep in the Forest Mittens

Needle size: 2.5mm bamboo DPN's

Yarn: Sundara Sock in Beaded Turquoise and Cactus Flower

I cast on for this, my Knitting Olympic project on day 4 of the winter games in Vancouver. It took me a while to get into the swing of knitting with 2 colours, making sure that the yarn carried on the back was loose enough to keep the knitting flat but not too loose. The first mitten knit up slowly, it took from day 4 to day 15 to complete. This left me with 2 1/2 days to complete mitten 2. By now handling 2 colours was almost second nature and having met all of the different elements of the mitten already I could just crack on with the knitting, no stops for pattern interpretation required. I took the mittens to work and knit on all my breaks, even a couple of rows gained here could make all the difference. I stayed up late watching the Olympic coverage and knit, I got up early and knit before work. On Sunday I sat down in front of the fire and knit, and knit, and knit. I knit through the highlights of day 16, I knit through the Men's 50K Cross Country Ski, I knit through the Ice Hockey final. My fingers flew and by the time we reached the closing ceremony I was knitting my way up the thumb. And on through the closing ceremony I worked grafting the thumb, weaving ends sewing the seam on the cuff hem. By some miracle I had finished just as the speeches drew to a close. And so I sat in my new mittens and watched as the Olympic flame was extinguished. Somehow I had finished. Mitten 1 took 11 1/2 days to knit and somehow I had pulled off a miracle and knit mitten 2 in 2 1/2 days. Truly an Olympic endeavour!

For mitten 1 I followed the pattern for the braided cuff. This resulted in a braid pointing the opposite way to the image on the pattern. So for mitten 2 I reversed the pattern and ended up with mirror image braids, a small detail but 1 that pleases me no end.

This is the first pattern that I have knit with a cuff seam, and it was much easier than I expected. I have seen this mitten knit with a picot here rather than just a plain edge and I think I may try that if I knit something similar in the future.

All in all I'm pretty pleased with these mittens. This pattern was easy to follow, and apart from a discrepancy between the written instructions and chart over the starting point for the thumb gusset and the braid coming out reversed if knit as written, there were no problems. I think I may have got my tension sorted out quicker if I had knit a pattern like Eunny Jang's Endpaper Mitts where you aren't having to carry yarn over such large areas and where the pattern is regular and easy to memorise allowing you to keep a closer eye on the knitting with out constantly referring to the chart. Having said that I'm glad I chose the pattern I did and am very happy with end results. Now I have 4 years to pick out a project for next time.