Fresco Mitts II

Here are the Fresco Fair Isle Mitts I mentioned on Saturday.  These have been shipped to my BFF, Kelly, in Idaho where I imagine in the last week they have already seen plenty of wear.  Partly because it's cold up there and partly because they make her look fabulous.  Okay, she's already fabulous and that is why I love her.

Technically I finished these mitts in August of 2009, but I had made a mistake.  I had made two major modifications to the pattern.  The first is that I increased they length by on repeat in the pattern to give Kelly's fingers more protection from the cold.  Second, I added a purled seam trying to copy the Endpaper Mitts.  This worked out so-so.  I should of just used the black as the seam instead of alternating between the blue and green.  Also, I placed the seam at the end of the palm chart, but this put the seam partly onto of the hand.   It wasn't upsetting enough to frog anything, so I continued on.

Here is where the mistake came into play.  With all the rotating WIPs that I was always working on, when I got to the colorwork of the second mitt, I forgot to put the seam in.  I didn't notice this until I was finished and fished out the other mitt to put them together.  The seam is very noticeable and makes the mitts look different.

Grrr.

My first thought was to make another match for each of the mitts and then I would have a pair for myself.  I'm not sure that I really want to make this pattern a third time?  I kinda would rather make a different pattern with different colors.   This is the second pair of Fresco Mitts (the first ones) in the same colors.

I also may not have enough black yarn.  So far with the black I've made two pairs of Fresco mitts and  two pairs of striped mitts for Kelly's children.  I probably do have enough of the black yarn to finish a whole other pair of mitts with the extra repeat, but I really would hate to take the risk and not have enough.

So the Fresco Mitts sat in a bag waiting to be worked on for a year.  I started once and knit two rounds and back into the bag they went.  I just wasn't feeling up to starting all over.  Then I thought about frogging back all the colorwork and reknitting it.  That would solve the possible shortage on black yarn problem.

When Senora came down for a visit I was able to finally figure out a solution.  Kelly said she didn't care if they were a little different and just to send them to her.  Senora concurred.  "Okay," I thought and I was officially without a WIP to work on.  I then organized my stash as Senora knit away and we chatted about our kids.

Sending off these mitts in "as-is condition" still didn't sit right with me.  Out of nowhere I came up with another new solution.  I undid the cast off, dropped the seam, then picked it up as knit stitches instead of the purled stitches.  This took about 20 minutes, if only I thought of this a year ago.

As you can see this is a dramatic improvement and would not be noticeable to the non-knitting eye.  And to the knitting eye, it just looks like my project has a little laddering.  (Laddering is when there is a small gap in the cloth where the double-pointed needles meet in a project.  It looks like ladder rungs.)

Kelly says that she can't tell which is which, but after reading this post she may.  I didn't get great pictures of the colorwork with this pair.  (You can check out better photos of the colorwork on the first pair).  It was a cloudy day and I didn't have a hand model so these are taken with the timer on my camera.   The camera was also more interested in LG playing in the background and kept focusing on her.

Hey, can you guess what I am reading in the picture?  I'll give you a clue, I'm on the chapter called The Forbidden Forest.