Oh Mitten, my mitten

Hear me now, hear me clear. The comments on the last entry are exactly the reason why knitblogs are genius.  The opportunity to rely on not just my own resources and brain, but the collective intelligence of ever knitter who reads, is a special bit of wonder in the world, and if you’re looking for a mitten to knit, you can do no better than the listing provided to me in the last entry.  Ya’ll are brilliant good listeners with an ear to the knitground – let me tell you.  There’s a wonderful assortment given up there, and a whole bunch of great ones that almost made the cut:

Inga Snoflinga is almost perfect, and very close to being just the thing on the basis of the brilliant and charming name alone.  (Really. Say it to yourself a few times.  Inga-Snoflinga, Inga-Snoflinga…makes you almost wish it was winter so you could go out there and toss some snowballs around while developing an alter-ego. Inga-Snoflinga.)

White Witch Mittens were good except for maybe a little underpointed and perhaps a shred less fussy than I was hoping for (especially once they’re converted to two colours)

The Egyptian Mittens were very nice, except I feel that the thumbs are in the wrong place for my taste-thumbs on the sides of mitten always look to me like they are perennially hitchhiking and I like mine to be placed out of the palm, and (I know as soon as I typed that a whole bunch of knitters just had to put their coffee down and have a moment or two, because they thought that they liked me and now that it turns out the my thumb preference is the exact opposite of theirs, the world view from their computer is going to need a little shift. )

Deep in the Forest mittens are a thing of beauty (despite their thumbs) but aren’t quite right, even though I have totally let go of my knee jerk reaction to them, which is that they might harbour squirrels.  Secret, unseen squirrels, lurking in the trees.  (They don’t, I feel sure of that now, but if you say you’re not making mittens with squirrels on them, you have to think about their relationship to trees if you’re going to be totally spot on about it.)

The Amaryllis Mittens are very darn pretty, but would need to be converted for two colours, and I the edge isn’t quite what I wanted…

Ruba’iyat mittens were plenty pointy (and I do seriously respect the pointiness, and the way that the diamonds fit into the point, which is extremely sexy..) but they seemed a tad masculine (note to self, good mittens to add to the queue as 50% of the population is male.)

So all of this left me thinking, that there are a lot of almost perfect mittens out there, and then Schizospider left one of the best comments ever on the blog (go read it if you have time,  hers is one of the reasons why I read every single one..)  and she not only suggested several patterns, but ranked them off my criteria in terms of "good and bad". Very helpful, and a rare opportunity to use phrases like "squirrelless; free pattern" and I liked so many in her list, that I realized that the answer here is one that Sueinithica suggested.  Frankenmitten.

Yes, Frankenmitten – some cobbled together piece of wonder that takes all the best parts from all the nicest mittens, and comes up awesome – and that took me to the page for Heather’s Annemor #15, which had been rejected out of hand because in the brilliant and beautiful book Selbuvotter: Biography of a Knitting Tradition, Annemor #15 is a glove – and I’ve already said that a set of gloves was right out.  Thing is, that Heather did a little Frankenmitten action on that one herself, and stacked the motif twice and made it a mitten (a pointy mitten) and I was in love. Totally in love – and that settled it. Inspired by Schizospider, Sueinithica and Heather, I’m going to take all the best elements of all of my favourites and bash something up.

Frankenmitten.  Brilliant. I think I’ll start with a braid

(PS. I’ve switched blog clients, so if things are still wonky, please be patient. The learning curve is a tad steep.)