Viva la yarn revolution!

It's been a busy week. After the rally on Saturday, I attended another Assembly on Sunday and I knew it would be too busy a week for me to do much else on the ground. In my spare time, I did get another hat done for the Occupiers and a set of mittens as a special request.

I'm not sure that mitten is what you think it is...

The mittens look like they just should not work. The thumb looks odd, the pocket for the fingers looks way too long, but I tried them on, and they are actually comfortable. They should also do well at keeping hands warm. The oddness comes, I believe, from making this up as I went along.

I tried to follow a pattern, I really, really did. I went and looked at no fewer than 10 patterns, trying to find one that didn't seem ridiculously complicated for a MITTEN. I was unsuccessful in my search. Me being me, I decided the best thing to do was DO IT MYSELF. So I did. I took bits of one pattern and bits of another pattern and decided to fake it. The result, as I said, was odd looking but functional. It won't win any awards for prettiness, but it should keep fingers from falling off.

So how did I make such an...interesting piece of crafing? Well, I started by creating a base chain. I stitched 10 and then started crafting around the base chainUsing the last two as a turning chain, I single crocheted along one side, putting two stitches in the final link and then stitched back around the other side, creating an oval. When I reached the other end, I put two stitches in that too, so I created a increase. It worked. I kept stitching and increasing until I felt the mitt was wide enough and then just crocheted a tube.

The thumb was going to cause me difficulties, I knew it. So, when the mitt pocket was long enough, I pulled a lesson from another piece of crocheting I had don and began to crochet in lines again, back and forth, creatiing a gap to go around the thumb. When it was wide enough, I slip-stitched the edges back together and continued to finish the palm. For the thumb, I went back to my gap and basically did the reverse of the mitt. Instead of increasing, I decreased every row and ended up with a thumb. Even more shocking, it worked. Mind. Blown.

I then attached a cuff to the bottom and voila... A mitten. I'm rather proud of myself. Boy, does it look MESSED UP.