In their Natural Habitat

Namely, Ontario and snow. These are my sister's Ontario mittens.


What a pretty design! I didn't actually design it, as a matter of fact. It was inspired by a pair of mittens by a brilliant Swedish Raveler called EvaL8, actually her name is Eva-Lotta and I suspect that if you say "EvaL8" in Swedish it sounds like "Eva-Lotta". Here are her "Svantar" mittens on her blog.


I have to say it again: these mittens are SO WARM! While my sister and I were taking these photos outside my Dad´s house, our poor frozen hands were just about to become gangrenous and fall off. As soon as we put our wondrous mittens on, they were Instantly Toasty. Somehow I have to patent this invention and mass-produce it for arctic crab fishermen and the like. I could make a fortune.

And these are the originals. I made the left mitten in Summer 2008! The right mitten I made this December. It's a much better mitten. Having made 2 full pairs since the first one, my technique was much improved. So my poor stepmother gets her left hand fingernails caught in the lining. Luckily she is a classical guitarist (who isn't in this family?) and so left hand fingernails are hardly an issue. The right mitten will leave her nails in perfect playing order.


I have much more to blog about my trip to Toronto. I met so many wonderful new friends! I had a crocheter´s holiday, it was awesome. But at the moment my eyes are self-closing from the enormous jet lag which besets me.

Also, my suitcase is still in Heathrow. Meaning, my newly acquired STASH is in Heathrow. I'll have to up my nerve medication to deal with this.

Will blog further tomorrow. For the sake of my readers, I hope my STASH has arrived by then.

My HOT little hands

They look like mittens, right? But what they really are, is little ovens for fingers. If you have cold fingers, make these. Hidden within, unsuspected by all, is a thick, warm and indescribably soft lining.
There are very few things that make me wish to live in Toronto again. But these mittens are definitely one of them. Here there is no call for wearing mittens of any kind, and much less these ones. So mine are all made for my Canadian family, and I dubbed them "Ontario" in their honour, and because they reminded me of winter night hikes across Ontario farmland. I have more mittens made up in other patterns, but I can't show them just yet because they are presents for my folks, and on the very unlikely chance that they will read this blog, I'd better hold off on posting them.

The pattern for these is in the Winter 09 issue of Interweave Crochet. They changed the name of them without bothering to tell me about it, and christened them with the unlikely name of "Mischa". "Mischa"? Why? What was wrong with "Ontario"? Do these look like you could play the cello in them? They also decided not to use the tutorial that I sent, so the main reason I'm posting here is to give my poor victims that tutorial.

So here we go. You see, we're doing Back Loop Crochet Jacquard with a strand of white and a strand of beige. Only we also have this big hunk of roving hanging there.

We'll just let it hang there for a while, meantime we'll be zipping along in our colour pattern.

Well, not quite zipping. You kind of have to nudge the roving from your last round down a bit to get it out of the path of your hook.

After 5 or 6 (or 7 or even 8) stitches, we're going to catch the roving and attach it to the back of the work.

Working in Jacquard, we always insert the hook underneath the secondary strand, right? Now we'll insert it under that AND under the roving, and draw up a loop.

This is the loop I drew up.

Then I completed the stitch. I've created a "float" on the inside of the work, and because it's such chunky stuff, it becomes a big fluffy puff of insulation.

And now, for your own sanity, grab that roving with a free finger, and pull it back out of the way. And then keep crocheting. You only have to hold the roving back for one or two sts, then it will leave you alone.

If you have to complete the pickup stitch in the secondary strand, which you will invariably have to do at some point, (Note: I'm assuming you know how to Jacquard or Tapestry Crochet already. If you don't, I'm sorry but you'll have to make yourself an iPod sock or wristband or something in that first, then try this technique, which is a bit trickier.) it's just the same, with one difference. The last step, i.e. pulling the roving back out of the way, should be done before completing the stitch.

What I try to avoid is starting a pickup stitch in the secondary strand. If it can't be helped, then I drop the two colours and reverse their position, so that it is no longer the secondary strand.

These are pictures from the magazine. I love these pictures!

Homage to Blueberries

So here I am in bright, bleached Spain, but my mind is still filled with images of Georgian Bay: dark river, lichens and mosses in a thousand greens, blueberry bushes and the sweet smell of forest. And a whole month of crochet time ahead of me! Joy! I've started working on patterns for mittens to send off for submission, but this is not one of them. This is a laboratory of experiments, some of which will be used, some not - some of them were way too complicated and not worth the effort! - but it was fun to try to recreate the North.