Rainbows

It's lovely to be working on something so colorful on these dark, damp, and dreary days. I bought two 2oz rainbow batts from Kim Haibeck at Yarnsanity (if you're on Facebook- here's her page) at NCFF.

Beautiful, no?

Kim prepped the batt perfectly!

I spun and Navajo plied the first batt at NCFF. I'm not very good at 3-plying but I wanted to preserve the color progression. The batt produced about 81 yds of worsted weight loveliness.

I finished spinning the other batt, and then cast on the first mitten: size 5 needles, 48 sts for the ribbing (30 rnds), then down to 42 sts for the hand.

Worsted weight mittens knit up very quickly. I love love love how this one came out. The little pink ball is the leftover yarn- so 81 yards is just enough to knit a mitten (which I knew, though by the end, I was starting to worry anyway). I got the thumb to match without an abrupt color change because I pulled off a 3 yard and 30" length and wound it into a butterfly when I put the thumb stitches on pins. Then I continued on with the hand. Luckily, there was still enough of that color to knit the hand without an abrupt change either. I can't believe that I've knit well over 100 pairs of mittens without ever figuring out how to do that... smacks self on the head with a rolled up newspaper...

I am so very tickled with how well these mittens are matching up. Some of the credit goes to always spinning the same default yarn (whether I'm 3-plying or not), but most of it goes to Kim, who truly did make identical batts. We'll see how well they match at the fingers, but when it comes down to it, I don't care. These are beauties no matter what (and the thumb will be green, which is all that matters anyway).