If you ask nicely...

Your friend's mom might make you Fox Mittens.

So I made Steph a scarf for Christmas and she posted a picture on Facebook of herself wearing it. With the required caption "My mom made it". The only suggested requirement  for acquiring a mom-made item.

Her friend saw it and wondered if fox mittens might be found in the Mama-Made-It box.
I had never tried fox mittens but figured there was sure to be a free pattern kicking about on the internet. Turns out there's not that I could find. So I looked at some mittens & scarves being sold and decided to give it a try.

Not bad!

Does this cable make my hand look fat?

So I STILL hate making thumbs.

I've finished another pair of mittens and this time they fit me. I used Caron Simply Soft that was left over from a project that got frogged (ripped out and shoved aside...ribbit!) and I suspect they'll stretch out of shape big enough to put both hands into one mitten, judging by socks I once made from the stuff.

But they are warm.
And soft.

I used all but about 20 inches of yarn for the first pair. I wish the thumbs had been longer but maybe they'll fit a 12 year old. We don't have any 12 year old's around to shove them onto. I'm thinking someone with freakishly short thumbs with long fingers?

I ripped out the top of the hand on the first pair as the fingers were too pointy. I'm still not loving the decrease methods I've tried so far.

So far. Did you catch that? Likely to be more. Mom helped me write out her basic recipe for mittens last week but I've lost it already. Should probably quit experimenting stick to mom knows best method.

Still making it up as I go along. The cables need to be ended in a less abrupt manner and tapered off so they don't look like they're designed for a platypus!

Mittens HAVE THUMBS

I can't explain this.
It goes against everything I've believed until now. I am knitting MITTENS. 

I got out my Barbara Walker Treasury Books 1 & 2, inspired by this picture of mittens, chose 3 stitch patterns from Book 2 and for some reason felt compelled beyond all understanding to rip out 18 rows of ankle knitting and make mittens instead. There's thumbs in mittens
(we don't likes thumbs!)

They started out as socks.
Really they did! A one Goodwill skein of yarn I hoped to use up from stash to make a pair of socks.

I cast on Saturday morning for some grocery store knitting-while-waiting (for mom) and by Sunday morning I was ready to do the heel flap. I hoped to repeat a recent triumph in optimal skein usage and knit up as much as possible from the single skein of yarn. There was no label, not that those are much help to me. I grabbed up some size 5 needles and cast on a random number and hoped for the best. They would be whatever size they wanted.
 
I knit until the voices in my head said to change direction.

Knit both at the same time and tried to guess how long the yarn would last. That little scrid of yarn next to the brown flecked socks is all that is left from that skein of yarn!  

BEGIN RANT: Dear SOCK YARN people: put enough in a damn skein of yarn to knit a damn pair of average (small even) socks. Most of us have 2 feet and this gimmick of "you need 2 skeins to make a pair of socks" is unacceptable. END RANT.

I've been knitting under the radar since the middle of October. My sister-in-law's grandmother mentioned her church was hanging items on a tree instead of ornaments and I thought I would Knit Unto Others a bit. Use up some stash yarn.

In between socks I started doing some more Fetching fingerless gloves. This probably explains how the thumb thing happened. It occurred to me that knitting the WHOLE THUMB might actually be easier than binding off a hobo half-thumb.
 
PLEASE NOTE: I seem to have conquered (for now) my lack of LEFT/RIGHT sense. There's going to be one of each!! These do not fit me however. The do fit one of my offspring, who points out she has a brown coat. I may have to buy a special skein for myself to justify the next attempt.
 
We'll see if this thumb business sticks.