Poinsettia Hot Mitt

Recipe for a Poinsettia Hot Mitt - Serves one.

Knit one gigantic mitten, pattern here.



Add one poinsettia with berries (I know it looks like a starfish with an anotomical anomaly, but it's a pre-felted poinsettia. Really. And I'm sorry I put that image into your head at this most joyous of seasons.)



Add hot water.
Add detergent.
Add jeans.

And like the song says, shake it like a polaroid picture.

I used Lamb's Pride worsted on all of it, on size 9 needles. For the poinsettia, here's what you do:

CO 3 sts.
Knit one row.
Purl one row.
k1, m1, k2
Purl
Continue like this, increasing after the first stitch on the knit rows, until it's as wide as you want it (8 - 11 sts). Knit for a while plain, until it's as long as you want (1.5 - 3").

Then reverse the whole process to decrease:
On the knit rows, k1, k2tog, k to end.
Purl the purl rows even.
Stop when you have three sts on the needle, break the yarn and draw through the three live sts to bind off.
Weave in ends. You can leave the tails from the cast-on edge out and use them later to sew the flower together, although you really only probably need one of them left out.

I made five of these, all the same.....you could make more, varying sizes and shades of red and all, but I was in a holiday hurry. Maybe you are Rudolph relaxed....but if so, keep it to yourself. Nobody likes a gloater.

Now you need the little balls.
CO one stitch, and make a bobble by knitting into the front and back of this stitch until you have five stitches altogether.
Purl across all five stitches.
On the next row, k2tog, k2tog, k1. You have 3 sts now.
Purl the three sts.
K3tog. You have 1 st.
Break the yarn and pass it through the one stitch, and then use this tail to make a little drawstring purse out of your bobble (i.e. weave the tail through your knitting around the edge and then pull it together to close the underneath side of the bobble.)
And you know that other tail, from the cast-on edge? Stuff it into the bobble for body.

Sew your poinsettia together, and felt it with the gigantic mitten.

This took three cycles of hot/cold through the wash; very little happened during the 2nd cycle, so all the shrinking really happened during cycles 1 and 3. I always have a moment of panic when I think I'm going to end up with, well, gigantic models of real-life items that I'm going to have to display as art because they will be entirely nonfunctional. But shrink they eventually will, and, hopefully, we end up with something like this: