The second pair of mittens are coming along beautifully, I love how they're turning out. (I have made absolutely no progress on my pile of almost finished objects because these are so much fun). I have a thing for mittens, they're probably one of my favourite projects. I'm not sure exactly what it is that captivates me about them, it might be because they're visible when worn, or the fact that you can do so much with them, or the fact that they don't need a lot of yarn so it's easier to afford the good stuff, or the fact that they get done relatively quickly, or that they're easily portable, or maybe it's the combination of all three, but I do know that I love them.
Now when I say I love knitting mittens I don't mean that I like making plain ones out of worsted yarn (not that there's anything wrong with that) but fancy colourwork ones out of sock weight. I've knit a ton of them in the last three years, and as I was knitting these I was reminded of the book that really got me hooked, Colorwork Creations by Susan Anderson-Freed. It has patterns for toques, tams, mittens, fingerless mittens, and gloves with a woodland theme (birds, reindeer, etc), and they are beautiful. The patterns are clearly written and the charts are large enough to be read easily. The book is extremely well done and the reason why I have a ton of leftover balls of drops alpaca yarn hanging around (which is also amazing in its own right). I've made more projects from this book than any other pattern book I've ever bought and think they're all stunning.
One thing I really like about these patterns is that the mittens are knit top down (you make the thumb first). That way you don't have the entire weight of the mitten pulling on the thumb that you knit last while trying to force yourself to finish because thumbs are boring. Nope, this way you get it over with while the project is still new and exciting and you're not thinking about all the amazing things you're going to knit next.
As I made my current pair of mittens (not from this book), I started to look back through it. I think my next project is going to be a tam.
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