Published!

At long last, my first freelance piece has been published. I'm pretty excited.

Three-finger trigger mitts, knit by Nick's grandmother, "Muddy".

It's an article about heritage knitting (specifically mittens) in Newfoundland. This has been my pet project for the last year or so. The publication is called Downhome Magazine, and it's basically a Newfoundland lifestyle periodical that is very popular, especially with people who have moved away from the province and want to stay connected. We loved getting our subscription when we lived in Ontario.

There's a short teaser (and one of my photos) on the Downhome Life website, and I know that the magazine is available across Canada at Chapters.

My first pair of Newfoundland mittens.

Done!

Surprizing even myself, I finished my dad's socks in record time. They were done on Wednesday. Man, I should knit in worsted weight more often!

Men's plain stockinette socks (no pattern), in Red Heart McIntosh, 48 st on size 3.75 mm dpns

I used a regular gusset heel with an eye-of-partridge heel flap. This type of heel is really easy (simple instructions here), and turns out just as thick and sturdy as the more common slip-stitch heel.

The yarn (30% wool, 70% acrylic) was a little underwhelming, but that's what you get for buying emergency yarn supplies late at night at Walmart! Speaking of which, all three Walmarts in the St. John's area are now open 24 hours... I wonder how long that's going to last?!

I'm making good progress on the Gatsby Girl, now well into the herringbone lace pattern, and inching closer to the shoulder shaping. It still looks small to me, but it's very stretchy, so I'm going to trust the pattern measurements and my gauge and keep chugging along.


I went to a fun knitting lecture last night at The Rooms, a beautiful new facility that houses the Provincial Museum, Art Gallery, and Archives. Shirley Scott gave a really fun talk on traditional Newfoundland knitting. So nice to see someone else interested in promoting our local knitting heritage. I spoke with Shirley briefly after her presentation, and I hope I'll get to meet her and more local knitters soon at a knit night gathering. I have finally tracked down a local knit night (this Sunday!) and I'm going to try to make it out.

Mitts and Books

Those of you who have been reading for a while might remember my plans last year to research and document the traditional Newfoundland finger mitt. Well, I've been working on it slowly. I spent a wonderful day buried in historical newspapers and magazines at the Centre for Newfoundland studies at Memorial University when I was home at Christmas. I found very little in the way of written patterns, and those that do exist are very informal. One small-town newspaper printed a pattern in the 1970's, but forgot to print the chart for the pattern part of the mitt. The next issue ran the correction, and a cute little letter from the lady who submitted the pattern, correcting the mistake, because of course you couldn't expect the men who ran newspapers to know anything about knitting!

One book that I have found very helpful is this one:


Robin Hansen has collected a bunch of mitten patterns from eastern Canada and Maine. The mittens I have been looking for are in here, but they're still not exactly the same pattern knit in the area where I grew up. The book does have a lot of great tips on techniques for stranded mittens though, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who's interested in really warm wooly mittens.

So using the references I've collected, and deconstructing several mittens knit by others, I have started putting togehter a pattern. Here's my first pair:

Traditional Newfoundland Mittens, in Briggs and Little Heritage (blue) and Briggs and Little Tuffy (white). Knit on 3.75 mm dpns. (Shown prior to blocking)

These aren't actually finger mitts, but regular mitts. I thought I'd try to learn the technique in its simplest form to start. Here's what the palm looks like:


Figuring out the thumb gore was interesting, but I finally got the increases to work and the dark stripe to stay where I wanted it. They got progressively better as I worked through them. There are a lot of things to think about, especially preventing ladders in the middle of the palm, always keeping the darker colour "ahead", and keeping the tension even. These are really tightly knit, for a very dense fabric. I started out making them for me, but the gauge was all wrong, so they turned out husband-sized. (Which is fine and makes a husband very happy.) I am going to experiment some more with finer yarn and different decrease methods at the top, and eventually write a formal pattern.

And while I'm talking about books, I spent some gift cards this week that were burning a hole in my pocket:


I want one of these.