Green Diamonds and Mitts

Make that mitt - only one (anyone see a pattern here?). Seriously, now that we have some serious winter weather, my hands get cold around the house from time to time, and my right hand gets cold a lot when I'm mousing around on the computer. Carol made mitts, I've seen patterns for them, and a light bulb went off - "Aha, I need mitts!" I found Anns' Delicato pattern, which is pretty and would give me a chance to try out more lace knitting skills, a yarn that I haven't used yet, AND get warm hands. So I've done it. Here's the mouse hand mitt:

And NO, this time I did not copy the Yarn Harlot. I had purchased and downloaded my pattern, pulled the yarn out of stash, gotten the needles at the ready. It was only then that I saw Stephanie's post with her tale of knitting her alpaca Delicato mitt.

On to green diamonds. They're done. All 16 of them. Now to combine them with the blue ones and move onward to get this quilt top completed.

Tomorrow I must spin more of this:

in order to unload the spindle so I can take it with me for the weekend. I'm going again to the John C. Campbell Folk School for this fun weekend class on hand spindling.

And then a quick visit with Denise. I have Christmas treats for Sadie, Lucas and Oreo but due to a last minute change of plans, I wasn't able to see them at Christmas.

Some quick notes about the mitt. I think on the second one I'm going to use a plain K2P2 rib on the thumb, and not the fancy rib. Also at the top of the body, I'll use the fancy rib only on the top, and plain rib on the palm side. I got 8.5 stitches per inch instead of 8, but it fits perfectly, as I wanted it snug. I used Lucy Neatby's modified conventional bind off, which is comfortable enough, but if I want to spread my hand, it's slightly binding. I think I will try a different bind off on the second mitt, too.