I had been looking to knit these for a few months: lots of podcasters knitted these late last year and each pair I saw looked lovely. One huge advantage of these mittens over some others is that they are knitted in DK weight yarn, so are designed to be a quick knit, good for colourwork-mitten beginners. I had stashed the yarn for these mittens before Christmas: Willow and Lark Woodland DK, but when it came to knitting the mittens, I quickly realised that the yarn was going to be too thin, so did a bit of a stash dive to find something appropriate, and ended up using two balls from deep stash: Artesano Blue Faced Blend DK and Erika Knight for John Lewis Double Knit.
While I am an advocate of swatching, I didn't bother on this occasion. Mittens are small, and had the tension been wildly off I would just have unravelled them and started again on different needles. It happened that I guessed exactly the right needle size for the mittens to fit my hands, which was lucky!
I was very glad I chose this pattern for my first foray into colourwork mittens. Many patterns for colourwork mittens feature just a chart, with no written instructions. This pattern had just enough instructions to make the chart easy to follow, but not so many that it was patronising.
These were a quick knit. They took me a couple of weekends, but that probably equates to about 3 evenings if I had worked on them exclusively. I did have a bit of a struggle adding the thumbs, as my gauge didn't quite match that of the rest of the mitten and the thumbs aren't quite the same length, I have no idea what went wrong, I definitely knitted all the rows, so I suspect it's a minor tension issue!
The other thing I had an issue with was drawing up the stitches at the tip of one of the mittens. I have no idea why, and this was definitely user error, but I ended up being able to see the backs of some of the white stitches, so had to unravel a few rounds and re-finish the tip. Not the end of the world, but a little annoying!
The mittens got their first outing yesterday in the snow. They're lovely and cosy, and I am definitely planning on knitting more mittens in the future (though I probably ought to get on with a couple of long overdue baby knits for friends first!).
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Selbu Mittens Ravelry project page
Pattern: Selbu Mittens by Skeindeer Knits
Yarn: Artesano Blue Faced Blend DK in 03 Cream (discontinued) and Erika Knight for John Lewis Double Knit in 16 Nautical
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