FO: Eunny’s Endpaper Mitts

Pattern: Endpaper Mitts by Eunny Jang (free pattern)
Yarn: Jamieson’s Shetland Spindrift in Old Gold and Plum wine (lovely names!) they took less than 1x25g ball in each colour!!
Needles: 2.25mm blue sky alpaca dpns and 2.75mm Brittany dpns

I love this pattern. It was great fun to knit and as I’ve said previously gave me the opportunity to learn some new techniques. I really enjoyed colour stranding and will definitely be looking out for more colour knitting projects to do. I am always really impressed with the thought Eunny puts into every detail of her designs - like the purl fake ‘seam’ down both sides of these - just perfect! I think that I’m going to get lots of wear out of these gloves because the plum wine colour is one of my favourites.

I apologise for my scarily pale skin in the photos ! I've included a picture of the reverse side of the knitting because I think the colour stranding method produces such a neat tidy finish!

I finally gave into temptation this week and bought some cute stitch markers from Knitz and Glitz. I bought the mobile charm versions and they are now firmly attached to my knitting tool bag. Aren’t the little glass sheep adorable. The markers were so reasonably priced I couldn’t resist.

Acceptance

Yesterday I cast-on for the Endpaper mitts and I am in love with colour stranding. It is just so much fun (almost as fun as knitting lace - gasp!). I’m using the method described by Theresa Vinson Stenersen in the most recent issue of Knitty - knitting with one colour in my left-hand continental-style and the other colour in my right-hand English style. I always think it is so exciting to learn a new technique and on this project I have already learnt how to use colour-stranding, how to knit continental-style and how to do a tubular cast-on. The tubular cast-on is wonderful, it is so much more stretchy than a normal cast-on (it almost feels as if there is elastic in the ribbing!) plus it is so neat and tidy looking.

The pattern called for an Italian tubular cast-on but I have a confession to make- I couldn’t do it! This is where the title of my post comes from, one of the great things I’ve found about getting older (I’m 27) is that it is easier to admit that I can’t do something. The other day I overheard some teenagers talking in a pub and one of them was showing-off about how great they were at something, then the other asked her to show her how to do it. It then became apparent the first didn’t really have a clue - I was cringing in my seat because I could remember that as a teenager never wanting to admit that I didn‘t know something, that I hadn‘t seen a particular episode of Friends on TV, that I didn‘t know the latest gossip… But now I know that part of what makes life fun is that everyone is good at different things, there are some things that you are naturally good at, there are some things that you can get good at through practice and there are some things which will always be a challenge but there is no shame in admitting if you don’t know how to do or can’t do something - in fact telling someone is the quickest way to finding out how.

Here is my list of things which I can’t do:
I can’t drive (I had some lessons when I was 17 but I was BAD).
I can’t sing - it doesn’t stop me trying ;-)
I am not a linguist - I struggle getting my words out correctly in English!
I can’t play any sports - I still remember the look of shame on my Dad’s face when he came to watch my brother and I at our Junior school sports day…
I could carry on but I think you get the picture.