Friday, November 26, 2010

Sew As You Go Mittens

I originally imagined the Goldilocks challenge gifts as a hat, scarf and mittens.  I had some sew-as-you-go mittens all planned for the USM and found that it was being a real pill for short-rowing.  It kept dropping the stitches near the short-row wrap.  I could short-row if a I used a ravel cord technique, but it wasn't a positive experience; in fact, I came to the conclusion that if I lured any hand knitters to try machine knitting, it would be a terrible experience to try to short-row this mitten shaping on the USM.  I will probably call the Bond help line about it, but for now, I wanted to try out the mittens, so I trooped over to the standard gauge and whipped up a pair - much, much smaller because it's a 2/12 yarn on tension 5 instead of the worsted weight yarn used on the USM.

I may yet come up with a Bond mitten, but not short-rowed. 

For the other machines, these are great!  You've never made a mitten this way...they're finished, thumb and all, when they come off the machine, except for a half seam at the place where the cuff joins the mitten and the side cuff seam.  Those two seams take only a few minutes to put in.  

This sample pair is about a child's size 6.  One of them was lying on my Dell Mini 10, and it struck me as funny to photograph these tiny mittens on the netbook, which is my tiny, really child-sized 10" computer I use for blogging.  

6 comments:

  1. When short rowing, the yarn comes over, the last needle held, to high to get down into the hook of the first needle. I have to use the single prong tool to hold down the yarn until the latch catches over it then I can knit the rest of the row just fine.

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  2. short rowing is possable on the bond you just have to use a lot of claw weights and move them up every couple of rows.

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  3. Nice, any pattern or video in the near future? I think I am getting spoiled by you. LOL

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  4. Tried lots of weight. Tried holding down the yarn with a transfer tool. Both seem like a lot of trouble for beginners, though. It does short row pretty well if you stick with opposite the carriage, though.

    I have an idea to redo the USM mitten so it'll be a nice match for the scarf and hat. Just have to survive John's Black Friday outings first!

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  5. interesting timing, Bond Buzz just came out with short row newsletter!

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  6. Can you tell me where I can get this pattern?

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