Dos Caracoles

(Two Snails)



I have hit my stride with the Norwegian Snail Mittens, and I'm totally obsessed.

I never would've thought I could get this into a pattern involving Fair Isle--the epitome of fiddly knits. But there's something addictive about doing just one more row to see the pattern progress. Then another, and another...

I've even worked out a little system for myself to mitigate tangles:

On the back (snail) chart, I twist over at each color change



& on the palm, I twist under at each color change.



This balances just about every twist with an un-twist. Although you can't see it in the picture, twisting the yarns in the same direction every time on the palm creates an adorable candy-cane stripe that just thrills me to death.

(the palm also looks pretty good on the outside, too)



See that little off-white bow at the top of the inside palm picture? That marks where the thumb will go, and the first pattern hiccup. It had occurred to me the other day to match the mitten schematic up against my own hand's dimensions. I was doing this to check the width of the cuff (as if I would rip that out anyways), but in the process, realized that knitting the thumb in where the pattern directed would leave enough space at the fingertips for not only the traditional pennies, but probably the rest of the contents of my wallet, too.

I agonized over making the change for quite a while--doing it wrong would mean ripping back a lot of mitten--but in the end, my phobia of too-long mittens, like too-long socks, won out, and I moved the thumb up an inch.

Note on colors: they're not that retina-searing in real life. I forgot about picture taking until the sun had started setting, leaving my room dark as a tomb and Hermanita's (where I was photographing) blindingly bright. I'll work on that one...