#holst garn

I’m very excited to share these! I was super motivated and somehow knocked them out in a little over two weeks / about 20 hours. These are adapted from the pattern ‘Selbu mittens with six-petal roses’ from the book Mittens From Around Norway which is one of my favorites on my shelf. I shortened both the mitten and thumb by a few rows, added a few rows between the cuff and thumb increases to cover my palm better. I improvised the cuff design, including the braids, knitting some stockinette first & sewing it in to make a lining. I really enjoy this mishmash of Latvian and Norwegian styles and a little bit of my own thing. If I had to nitpick I’d knock a few more rows off the top and pick a design that fits on a narrower cuff.

Have since added the thumb but it’s too gross out to get a proper picture.

Not the best picture, but I started timing myself consistently for the first time and found this illuminating. One completed mitten vs. one hour of work. I averaged about 2 minutes and 40 seconds a row of 64 sts in plain stockinette, including fiddling with the yarn and fixing little mistakes. I have a feeling I’m pretty slow compared to others! I’m picky about tension and I’m mistake-prone so I’m always going back to fix something. The yarn definitely factors in too, it’s pretty thin and tends to stick to itself. And that’s just the cuff lining, we’re not even to the complex part yet.

Just sent off this hat and sweater set for my cousin & her husband’s baby 😄 Crossing my fingers they’ll fit by winter! I love this pattern and followed it pretty much as-is, the only change I made was threading a thin elastic loosely through the collar to give it some more shape. I used 2 strands of Holst garn Coast to make the hat and 3 strands for the sweater. I think both worked well, I’m slowly getting a better sense for yarn substitution.

Baby Bear Bonnet