winter grays

It's a bleak midwinter day. Cold, cold air. Gray light. Snow falling steadily all day, again. I've started to feel the chill and weariness of the season settling into me. I feel like this goose I saw on the riverbank this morning.

Sigh. Anyways, the upshot is that I've been getting a lot of knitting done, curled up by the woodstove in the evening with a glass of whiskey. I finally did finish those mittens I started in November, in gray wind-spun wool from Hope Spinnery.


All that I had left to finish was the thumbs, so I don't know it took me so darned long!

They're a simple mitten that I made up as I went along. I cast on enough stitches to fit around my wrist and knit a few inches in twisted 1x1 ribbing, which has such a lovely texture in a rustic yarn like this.


I made a simple gusseted thumb and did side-decreases at the top. In retrospect I wish I'd decreased evenly around in a circle; when I wear them, the mittens pull around my hand a bit so that the decreases don't lay against the edges of my fingers. But whatever.


I was going to embroider them with green leaves so that they'd match the hat I made in the same gray yarn. I fussed around with it the other night and couldn't get it to work how I wanted, though, so I'm keeping them plain. They reflect the season better this way.