hot but wooly

(I was originally going to title the post "wool in heat" but realized that, unless I broke my three-word-title rule and called it "wool in THE heat," people might get the wrong idea of what I was talking about).

Still, it takes a certain dedication (or perhaps mania) to want to put woolen things on, even in an air-conditioned house, to photograph them, when the temperature outdoors feels like you could get nuclear fusion going on the sidewalk, if you just had a can of hydrogen.

But anyway.

I think this is the favorite item I knit over break. It's something I'd been planning for a while, ever since I saw the lone skein of Wildfoote in Ewe Knit. (The color is called "Acapella." For some reason, a run of their handpaints, they gave music-related names to).

One skein of Wildfoote might be enough to make footies with - maybe. But for real socks, you need one-and-a-part, so you have to buy two skeins. So one lone skein might not seem so useful.

Except, it is for fingerless mitts.



The pattern is the excellent Lepidoptera Mitt pattern that is available for free on the Simply Sock Yarn blog.

(I think these mitts probably took somewhere between 175 and 200 yards of yarn, judging from what I had leftover. So really, a very small amount of sock yarn will work to make these).

The colors are some of my favorite colors.



I think I can see why these kind of lace mitts were popular in the Victorian era - if you have pretty hands, they draw attention to your hands. Or if you're doing fancywork or playing the piano or holding up a fan to shade your complexion from the fire in the fireplace, they make your hands look a bit more alluring. And if you're in a chilly place (and oh, how I long for it to be just a little bit chilly here), they keep you warm.

(I've photographed the other finished items; they're on my Flickr stream. I'll dole them out a project at a time here on the blog over the next few days. By which time, I may have another half-a-pair of socks to show off...)