Moose Loves Roses

After knitting the Snowflake Mittens last week, I was eager to find another pattern to begin in the Nordic style of mitten knitting. I found a very intriguing design, Moose Loves Roses, by a Norwegian designer, Jorid Linvik (5th from the bottom of her page).

I didn't like the garter stitch beginning of the cuff but decided to continue on and hoped it would block nicely and not stretch out so much. I had the first mitten 2/3 finished and noticed someone on Ravelry had used a Latvian braid. It looked lovely and I yearned to learn how to do it. I found this very cool website, Golden Apples, where there were not one, not two, but THREE excellent videos showing how to execute this somewhat 'fiddly' but not-too-difficult technique. And I was 'off to the races'.

So I frogged said mitt and started it again with a two-colour long-tail cast-on (red and black), a round of two colour stocking stitch and started in on the Latvian Braid. It worked!

I did another braid above the 'roses' on the cuff, then two rows of red stocking stitch and inserted another Latvian braid, this time in black and white, the colour of the remainder of the mitten.

I then knit 9 rounds of stocking stitch and then started the first two-colour round and carried on.













Between fits of activity during our Thanksgiving meal preparation, I finished the first mitten (except for the thumb).

Ta da!

The red line on the palm is where the thumb will go.

I call it 'Moose At Night' and may use the design for a Cowichan-style sweater I want to knit for Skip.






I'm also rather proud of the inside of the mitten.

I made sure I didn't carry the yarn more than 3 stitches before 'catching' it. There are hardly any ends to weave in now that I'm done the knitting - YAY!

One other tip - I'm a fairly tight knitter, especially when using two colours, so to keep my floats loose, I turn the mitten inside out to knit it. That way the floats (strands) are on the outside of the mitten.