Moving Right Along...

I am almost at the end of this self-appointed nonsense. 6 small baby projects done. I'm down to the 6 month sweater for my friend Fish and his wife's second son who arrived about a week ago. It's in this sort of state:

Clearly, some real progress!

Yeah...

Anyway, I was also on a deadline. We were heading to Colorado for a wedding where I would meet my new cousin-in-law W. Cousin R and J had Baby W in February, but I hadn't gotten anything done. I finished a hat really quickly and decided that 3 hours on a plane was a great time to knit.

All sorts of things

Note to self, double-pointed knitting needles are easily dropped and not easily recovered on a cramped airplane.
But sure enough, 3 hours on the plane and several long drives in Colorado, I got a small pair of mittens done.

Not going to lie, I love these colors 

So cute

So, a couple of things. One, this weekend was SO busy, I finished the knitting and didn't have time to really photograph them well. These were literally taken on the top of our rental car a few minutes before I handed them off to poor surprised mom Cousin J-F. (Seriously, why would twins R and J marry J and R, respectively? Madness. But handy, I can remember R and J's wives better than I can tell R and J apart on their own). 

Two, I actually did my first bit of crochet on this project. I wanted to make a cord to connect the mittens so they don't get lost. Making cord is so time consuming and boring and complicated in knitting. You can do I-cord, which is using 2 needles and circular knitting to make a thin tube, but I find that it pulls a lot and is irritating. You can also cast on a million stitches and then bind them all off again immediately. I've never tried this because I hate this idea just on principle, so I couldn't tell you how it looks. On the other hand, single chain crochet sounded fairly easy, proved to be, and was so much faster. 

Third, I love these colors. I love navy and green. My mother and color consultant was convinced that the frog green was going to be too obnoxious and I think these proved her wrong. 

Four, I have made too many hats. I have the pattern memorized. Multiple of 10 stitches, 1-2 inches of ribbing, stockinette stitch to length, K8 K2tog around, knit, repeat decreasing K# by one each time. Super easy. 

Five, color work, even simple stripes, on something as small as these mittens is...interesting. I was so worried about gapping at the switches between blue and green that I pulled too hard and there is an area up the side of each mitten where the green stripe mysteriously disappears, the stitches having been pulled all the way behind the blue background with the force of my tension. Ugh. Ah well. I am not a type A knitter, I am okay with these small idiosyncrasies in favor of the project being done.  

Being done with the hat and mittens, I was now able to cast on for my sister-in-law H who is in fact having twins, though we won't know genders till mid-August. This was not a problem for me as I had already announced my intention to knit christening blankets in cream or white, even though the babies probably won't be christened or baptized, dedication being more of the thing at our church. Still, it's the thought that counts and I really wanted to do something of more heirloom level.