Mitered Mittens

We <3 the LJ Christmas Parade!

December is always such a busy month, I barely have time to catch my breath! Last weekend alone we had a parade, a triple birthday party, and a regatta...these were just the main events and don't even include the errands and life in general, or the things we couldn't do because we were busy with parades and regattas. And if you think I've made any progress on stimulating the economy, guess again. No progress. No stimulation has taken place.



I did make a gorgeous chocolate cake for the birthday people, though. It's the Chocolate Buttermilk Cake from Magnolia, with their chocolate buttercream on top. It may well be the best chocolate cake I've ever eaten. I ended up short on the unsweetened chocolate called for in the cake and had to substitute some very nice cocoa and even more butter, most likely bringing the butter-to-person ratio up somewhere in the this-cake-will-kill-you range, but it was definitely worth it.



On the knitting front, I've been working away on mittens, mittens, and more mittens. I just love them. These are the Elizabeth Zimmerman's Mitered Mittens and they are super fun to knit.



The pattern shows the Noro Silk Garden off beautifully, and the mittens are matched but mismatched at the same time - very cool. I cast on 40 sts, knit 5 rounds of garter stitch, 2.5" of cuff, and away we went.



Rather than using EZ's thumb method for this mitten (snip a stitch and unravel live sts), I used Kathryn Ivy's technique and put in a thumb gusset right after the cuff. She's right, it distorts the palm of the mitten less. I also quit decreasing at the top when I had 12 stitches total and kitchenered the fingertips. I bath in Eucalan and a rest flattened them right out to the shape you see here - they were a little gnarled before blocking.