FO: Homage to Hello Yarn

Of all the Christmas presents, these were the hardest to give up, by far!

Backs

Palms

Pattern: Norwegian Snail Mittens by Adrian Bizilia
Yarn: Handspun BFL in natural brown and "Norway" (dyed by Adrian as part of the Hello Yarn Fiber Club)
Needles: US 00/1.75 mm (hoo boy!)
Gauge: ~ 9 stitches/inch
Start/finish: 8 November - 6 December 2009
Comments/mods: I've blogged about the spinning here. The 2.5 oz of brown BFL I originally spun up ended up being too thick as a 3-ply, so I spun up another ounce quickly and 2-plied it, getting ~70 yards. That worked perfectly. I ended up having to spin up another ounce later (72 yds) but didn't finish it all off. Let's say ~120 yds of the brown.

I didn't use up all of the Norway I'd spun either. As you can see, the stripes didn't match up as well as I was hoping, but I refused to let that bother me. Otherwise, I would have been splicing and swearing about small bits of handspun gone to waste and so on. I think I probably used two thirds of each skein, so maybe 3 oz total? Again, since I didn't measure the yardage, I have no idea how much I used. I'll have to measure the leftovers and weight them to get an estimate.

The pattern was great fun to knit, although I have issues with using sport weight yarn on miniscule needles. My bright blue metal size 00 dpns are now bent and tortured from the effort of trying to knit with this stuff. I adore the stripes on the palms. Maybe even more then the snails...

It's a very good thing these were a bit tight around the hand, otherwise my mother-in-law might be going home with very chilly fingers. I hope these beauties enjoy life in Vermont!

ETA (30 Dec): my MIL wore these yesterday on our poorly planned hike in the rain/sleet/snow and her hands stayed dry and warm enough that she had to take the mittens off. There's something to be said for teeny tiny needles I guess!