Finish It Friday

This week's Finish It Friday was actually finished on Thursday because I was working on it as a challenge that had to be done by the end of the month.

The project was a pair of thrummed mittens that had been languishing in a UFO bag for years. I bought the kit, which included both yarn and roving, on a trip to Celeigh Wool in Alberta several years ago. The yarn is by Fleece Artist, who is Canadian and does lovely yarns, and I knew I would end up with a lovely pair of super-warm mittens to wear on my trips to the Frozen North.

What I ended up with is this: The hands are too short, the thumbs are too fat, and I ran out of roving before I finished, so the tip of the hand and the thumbs aren't thrummed at all. I know what the problem is; the original pattern had almost no ribbing, so I added 2 inches of ribbing at the cuff. But because it was designed with no ribbing, the thumb gusset starts a good way up the mitten. On my mittens, I have a ridiculously long cuff. But there is no way I'm ripping these apart and redoing them. They're done, or at least I'm done with them. I'll put them in my Arctic Gear box, and wear my Vancouver Olympics mittens instead.

I'm glad that I experimented with thrumms. I don't want to think that there's some knitting technique that I haven't tried. I doubt I will ever do it again. I didn't enjoy fiddling with the little bits of roving, and had a hard time making them small enough. If I ever do decide to rip these out, I will ditch the roving and make a simple pair of mittens out of the yarn, which was quite lovely. In the mean time, there is one less project bag hanging on the coat tree, and a project that's been hanging over my head for way too long is done. Hooray!