Clara's Maine Morning Mitts

Soooooooo... I asked for it: for a one-skein project for beginners like me. And you recommended Clara’s MMM. I just so happened to go by my LYS (to buy DPNs in size #2 for the socks), and the store just so happened to have Noro Kureyon in a very fabulous color pattern. You know what I bought besides the #2s.

And then I knitted one mitt (after teaching myself how to use DPNs). The result looks fine, but the photo doesn’t tell the whole story. Here are my troubles:

***Don’t you say you told me so. I know. I didn’t test the gauge. Had I knitted a swatch, I would have realized I needed to use larger needles. The mitt is almost too small (as in: my thumb isn’t enjoying herself).

***Apart from the mitt being too small, which by itself wouldn’t be a problem since I’d love to give the pair to a friend of mine who has tiny hands, the thumb is UGLY. There are big wide holes between the thumb and the rest of the mitt. I hope I can fix it somehow. (Weave? Sew? Pull the stitches hard together?)

***I think I’m running out of yarn! The pattern asks for one skein. I look at what’s left over, and it doesn’t look like much.

What to do? Buy more yarn? Consider this a failed project?

On the bright side, I fixed a mis-knitted cable in my sculptured lace scarf, and I felt like I was doing surgery! (House was doing TV surgery at the same time.) I think with this mitt I’ve just been too impatient and hurried myself too much. I didn’t take the care I use with the scarf or the sock (both projects are growing slowly but steadily). Today I won’t knit at all--I need to catch up on work!--and maybe a short break will teach me patience.

PS: Now that it's many hours later, I just discovered the KR discussion about the thumb. There seems to be some sort of agreement on 13 stitches for the thumb, not 9. The pattern says 9. Where do the extra 4 come from? And how come you found out about the extra 4? I assume with 13 stitches the thumb would fit much better. Time to undo the thumb!

PPS: Now that it's many, many hours later (the next day, in fact, but I'm tagging this post-post-scriptum on to Wednesday's entry): Last night I looked at the pattern again; its says: pick up 4 stitches. I didn't read it, or read it but ignored it. Something went wrong. Awfully embarrassing, but also a big relief. I was able to fix it quickly and easily: I undid the thumb, picked up 4 stitches at the base, redid the thumb. The thumb now looks great. The mitt looks great. I'll post another picture once the other mitt is done, for comparison. I'm so glad that I'm just too stupid to read, but not actually too stupid to knit!