The Details:

These mittens are an interesting project, but my color selection left me feeling a bit down about them. They are generally a quick knit, similar to the Evergreen Lake Mittens. They are a good project for a Fair Isle beginner, although they are more advanced than the Evergreens in that they do require trapping floats. I think for me it’s the color choice that has me looking at them somewhat askance; Sunne Meyer’s recommendations (and what is sold in the kit on Craftsy) is a lovely gray-green combination. However, the price for the suggested yarn was more than I wanted to spend so I went with a substitution here.

Gotchas on this project are all about tension. I did a two-handed Fair Isle method here, keeping the main color in my right hand (the light pink) and the contrast color (dark pink) in my left. If you look carefully, you can see that there’s some rippling that’s caused where color changes happened; I over-tightened my stitches when I was trapping yarns, which Sunne warns against but is easier said than done. It’s definitely more pronounced on the first mitten I made than on the second.

What I really did love about this project is that the front and the back of the mittens are different patterns, which is fairly normal when it comes to Fair Isle. Also, this one uses a different thumb gusset than the Evergreen mittens, and it was fun to play with something new there for me as well. I found that I liked this thumb gusset much better as there were fewer gaps to close up when I was finishing the mitten and I love the braided cuff detail. I will definitely use that braided cuff technique again as I feel that it creates a really nice finished look.