Syllabus

I'm teaching three classes at the yarn shop this month. The first is a class to help people get started with the Dream In Color Club kit for October. Each month in the fall and winter, Dream in Color releases an exclusive yarn and pattern. The shop I work at has decided to do a class for each of the projects to help people with any tricky parts of the pattern. This one involves a provisional cast on and grafting, so that will be the focus of my class.

This is their promotional picture. I only got the yarn 9 days before I'm supposed to teach the class, so I'm frantically knitting, but I don't have any pictures.

The next classes I'm doing for the month are stranded knitting and intarsia (offered as one 2-part class.) For the stranding class I've decided to focus on mittens since they are a relatively small, low commitment project. I gave my students the choice of Winter Twilight Mitts (which I've made before), Douglass Mittens (which I will show you friday), Freja (still need to whip one up), and Cotton Reel Mitts which look like this:

Since this is destined to live at the shop as a store sample I only made one. As you can see, it's a bit oversized on the hand model. That is a combination of the fact that the hand models are freakishly tiny (not even children have hands that slender) and that the pattern seems to run a bit big. Looking at all the pictures on ravelry, these look a little roomy on most people. 

I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that Ysolda suggests a US 3 needle for fingering weight yarn. I have small hands, so if I wanted to make a pair that fit me, I would probably drop down to a US 0. If you have large hands you'll be fine as written. For an "average" hand I would probable drop down to a US 2. 

They are also meant to come down your forearm a ways which the hand model doesn't allow for.

The yarn I used is Spud and Chloe Fine which is a seriously good yarn. It's 80% wool 20% silk fingering weight. These colors are goldfish and anemone. 

As always, Ysolda has thrown in some amazing construction elements. These start with a 7-stitch i-cord that forms the bottom of the cuff. You then pick up stitches from the loose stitch in the back of the i-cord to begin knitting your mitten. This snugs up any looseness and leaves you with a great double-thick cuff.

I would absolutely make myself a pair of these (on smaller needles) if I wasn't so buried under other projects. Oh, did I mention that the new knitalong starts on Friday?