"Sweet Fern Mitts" by Clara Parkes FO

Pattern: "Sweet Fern Mitts" by Clara Parkes

Source: Knitter's Book of Wool

Yarn: Berroco Ultra Alpaca Worsted

Source: Eweknit Toronto

Colour: Winter White #6201 Lot: 2K6492

Needles: 3.75mm dpn's

Start: December 10 Finish: December 21, 2014

Modifications: Made full mittens from this fingerless mitt pattern.

"Sweet Fern Mitts" for this friend of Number One Son who is herself sweet enough to show interest in my knitting whether she sees me at it or picks it up herself from my omnipresent knitting basket. 

The yarn, "Ultra Alpaca" by Berroco makes meltingly soft, cozy yet somehow crisp cables surrounded with a gently "sweet" halo. I've used it before and I'll surely use it again!

The Sweet Fern Mitts as written are fingerless so I had to make up finger tip decreases that would work with the cable pattern and the 2x2 ribbing flanking the cable and on the palms of the mitts.

Rather than being strictly mathematical or symmetrical about it, I decreased according to what looked "right" without being tied to decreasing either side of a marker or at a pre-determined point each round.

I wonder how many commercially available patterns would benefit from such an approach but don't attempt to offer one because the verbage required by such manipulations yield something too unwieldy publish.

As for my own manipulations, it took a few runs it took to get something suitable but surprisingly that was much easier than getting the second mitten to match the first! 

I've never given this girl any kind of gift before in the four years or so she's been visiting the house so there was great surprise when she was told Christmas Eve there might be something under our tree with her name on it.

She loved them, they fit her petite hands perfectly and were with her every time she visited over the remainder of the holiday break.

I don't often knit gifts but I enjoyed every aspect of working these up and giving them away from being inspired to knit the pattern after seeing it on Needles' Blog, heading to the library for the book, dashing off to Eweknit to pick up the yarn after conferring with Number One on colour and size right through the knitting and sorting out the fingertip decreases. Now, they're in their new home and I couldn't be happier with the outcome. Not many of my knitted gift experiences have ended as well as this one!

Tomorrow, more FO's from under the Sel and Poivre Christmas tree. Thanks for dropping by today!