Yesterday, I had the gang over for a stitch day. Four of us, Heather, Jen1, Poppy and I are in the group going to Iceland and Norway. Some of us spent the day stitching and some others, knitting. We celebrate Barb’s birthday. It was so fun.
Later on, Jen1 texted us about a mitten pattern she found online called, ‘Trondheim Mittens’. Trondheim is one of the ports we’re going to be visiting on our Norwegian coastal cruise. The designer, Sofia Cappele, was inspired to create this design based on some of the iconic buildings.
I rummaged through my stash for yarns that would work for this project. I had enough black sock yarn for the contrast colour. I didn’t have enough white sock yarn but found 120g/380yd of natural handspun that would work. I spun it back in 2015, with twined knitting in mind, with a z-twist. Since it had been sitting on a shelf for almost 10 years, I figured I’d used it for this project.
I didn’t have any gold or rust remnants of sock yarn. I really only needed 10g of each. I did find a skein of golden yellow Yvieknits hand-sock yarn so wound off enough for this project. In a bin of my handspun, I found some rust-coloured merino/mohair yarn that would also work.
I checked what needle size I had used on many of my previous Nordic mittens and decided on 2.5mm.
I had So. Many. False. Starts. First I miscounted the number of cast on stitches, knit a Latvian braid and started the cuff chart only to realize I did not have enough stitches. Rrrrrippp!
Next, I cast on the right number of stitches and completed the Latvian braid. I was two rounds in before I realized I was knitting the palm and back of mitten pattern instead of the cuff pattern with the buildings. Rrrrrripppp!
To do the windows in the buildings I needed to use a third strand of yarn. Holy moley was that ever challenging. At this point Poppy, Jen1, and I were texting back and forth and Jen1 suggested using duplicate stitch. Rrrrripppp! Back a couple of rounds.
I then continued on omitting the windows. And finished the colourwork on the cuff. My duplicate stitches weren’t perfect (my handspun is not all that consistent) but I got the windows stitched.
Whew! I was glad to be done with that pesky old cuff. The graphs for the palm, back and gusset were all on different pages. There was a lot of flipping back and forth. I finally used sticky notes to keep track of what row I was on.
I stayed up knitting WAY too late. I didn’t want to stop but finally packed it in and went to bed.
This afternoon I continued on and now have about half of the first mitten finished.
I plan to watch AFC Championship game this evening. I know Skip would have enjoyed watching the Bills this season. He was an avid fan most of the time. Some of the less stellar years - not so much. When the Bills were at their worst he started cheering for the Seahawks, in part because bought a windbreaker on sale with the Seattle logo and also because it was Mina Kimes’ favourite team. We even attended Buffalo Bills training camp a couple of years.
Back in 2018, we were in Buffalo where we had flown to on the way home from a cruise. Before crossing back into Canada we popped into Wegmans. The whole town was vibrating as the Bills had made it into the playoffs for the first time in almost 20 years.
There were red and blue balloons everywhere.
The cashiers all had Bills jerseys or colours on and the lights alternated red and blue.
It was so fun just being there. Sadly the Bills lost that game but it was sure fun while it lasted.
Last season when they were in the playoffs we mused at how fun it would be to just hop in the car and drive to Buffalo just to hang out at a sports bar. Sadly, Skip wasn’t well enough for us to do that.
Tonight, when the Bills play, I know he will be watching. He’ll certainly be with me while I watch.
- I watched George Clooney and Julia Roberts in ‘Ticket to Paradise’ on Netflix. Far-fetched premise. Predictable and silly. I don’t recommend it.
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