Actual Pictures for the Pictorial

Thanks to Cassie's nagging gentle suggestion, here are a few pics from the first day of the thrummed mitten summer palace knitalong.

Sara's is on the left, mine is on the right.

In the wild:

Progress shot.  I'm the loosey-goosey one who didn't read the directions closely enough to tell that I was supposed to offset my thrums each time, and then too lazy to rip it out when I realized it.  I'm also the one who decided that the mittens were going to be big anyway so why swatch?  Sara's are quite perfect, but she can barely get the the thrums through the fabric because they suggested 6 sts/in for an aran-weight yarn.  Hmm.

 

We're also interested that her thrums look different, even though we make them the same way (we sat side-by-side and did them together to check).  Hers look like bobbles or wraps, and mine look like big stitches.  I'm thinking it's tension again, but it's pretty interesting.

Sara's annotations in italics: 

(1) Yeah - so what IS going on with the thrum spots?  Mine have the left leg of the stitch sitting in front - with the right leg hidden behind, making a little bump.  Cate's have perfectly defined thrum stitches.

(2) I will say that the Fleece Artist pattern sucks is deficient in it's use of clear English.  Good thing we are working side by side or we'd have pretty wonky mittens. 

(3) These directions do have the thrums knit into the stitch below the working row, and then you knit the working row stitch, and essentially "bind off" the thrum over the working row stitch.  Not the same technique used by Stephanie and her thrum-alongers, who from my quick skim I think knit the thrum along into the working stitch, and then on the next row knit the two together.

(4) Cate and I are also using different thrum formation techniques.  The directions say to "place a 4 inch piece of roving (pulled and twisted)"...  Vague eh?  I can pull and twist roving in any number of ways.  I resorted to Stephanie's clear Thrumb FAQ directions, I fold each end over to meet in the middle and twist the center.  Cate is doing a more loose-ended twisty approach.  Both I predict will end up in squooshy felted inners once the mitts have been pulled on and off of hands a number of times.

(5) My anal/retentive attention to detail is - shall we say - slowing me down.  Not only is the gauge impossibly tight, but the thrums are a bit of a tussle to pull through a stitch.  I'm at the thumb gusset and have made a design feature decision of moving up a size of needle for the body of the glove.  I expect less tense knitting for the duration.

(6) The hijack of Cate's blog ends for the moment.  If I could remember the url to log into edit mode of my own blog, I'd be blogging now.  Suffice it to say I'd expect a few long-winded posts from me starting early next week ;)

Finally, a crappy picture of my first hand-combed worsted, the corrie moorit I got in New Hampshire.  Better photos to come.  You couldn't stop me.