Snowstar Gauntlet Mitten

The Snowstar Mitten is now done, and I'm rather pleased with how it turned out. I tried a new yarn, Lanaloft from Brown Sheep. It's a variegated wool and is the background or main color in the mitten. The contrast color is a variegated monotone of Lamb's Pride.

When using two variegated yarns for colorwork, one must be very careful to NOT match a color common to both colors being used or you can lose the patterning.

As I mentioned before, this mitten evolved rather quickly, and I really enjoyed doing it. It starts out with a few rounds of the contrast color in purl at the edge, then goes into the colorwork. The gauntlet on this mitten is a bit longer than on the first gauntleted mitten I did, and I was concerned about getting low on the Lanaloft since the skein is only 100 grams and therefore has less yardage than 4 oz of Lamb's Pride, but I weighed the skein both before and after making the first mitten, and I didn't use more than half of it. The only problem might be if someone wanted to make a larger size, then they might need another skein of Lanaloft in the main color just in case.

This time I tried shaping the mitten tip differently, and I'm very pleased with the way it turned out. Anna Zilboorg's book, Magnificent Mittens & Socks, has a couple of mittens where the mitten tip shaping occurs along the sides of a central band on the back and palm of the hand. The end result is a nicely rounded mitten tip. Since I make mittens from the cuff up rather than from the tip down like Anna, my mitten is finished with kitchener stitch to keep the tip smooth.

Due to the colorwork pattern, the handout directions will be sized for adults only, which is the case for the Ram's Horn mitten as well.

There are two sessions of the Snowstar Gauntlet Mitten class. One is on Wednesdays, starting 1/13, and the other is on Sundays, starting 1/24. There is only one session of the Ram's Horn Mitten class, starting on 1/24 also. The Ram's Horn class precedes the Snowstar, so folks can have a whole afternoon of mittens if they want! ;) Class information is at the Spirit Work website.