The donuts? The donuts are delightfully mellow knitting. All stockinette, all in the round, nothing too weird going on at all. Except for one little bit where it just absolutely positively for sure looks like you've made a terrible error and it will never ever possibly come together and be a donut. Except that it will. It totally will. You just have to trust me on this one.

We have two options. Either you can talk me out of this nonsense, or you can tell me about donut-colored yarns. Either one is fine...I am certain one can live a happy life without a whole bunch of knitted donuts.⁠ Though the idea of knitting a half dozen of these (this is the prototype, the real ones would be a bit bigger) and doing something hilarious with my favorite local donut shop does have a certain appeal.⁠ So...the donut's fate is in your hand. Either provide good, solid reasons why a fine, upstanding citizen such as myself should not knit [...]

I'm going to talk about swatching & blocking. That always makes some folks a bit touchy. So I'll start by saying you are the boss of your knitting, and you can or not do whatever you want. ⁠ But holy wow do I have a whole bunch feelings about what gives you the best chance to end up with knits you like. And since I get a fair number of folks saying 'ooooh, I wish my knitting looked like yours,' I'm going to go ahead and talk about them a bit. Here we go.⁠ One of the things I hear [...]

Ok, this is a lovely example of how pairing fuzzy bits with your yarns does magical things.⁠ We've got three yarns here. The fuzzy one is Shibui's Silk Cloud in Cove. It's held with two different colors of Hypothesis Yarns' Tweed Dk. ⁠ On the hat (the larger piece of knitting on the bottom), it's held with the Wildcat color. On the mitt (the smaller piece of knitting on the top), it's held with the Royal color.⁠ The leftovers of the hat yarn are by the hat, the leftovers of the mitt yarn are by the mitt.⁠ You can see [...]

Did I use the same absurd increase from the pattern at the base of the thumb? Why yes, yes I did. And it's unspeakably lovely if I do say so myself. ⁠ I mean I'll understand if you can't quite see it yet, because this is not yet blocked and it will for sure look better after it's blocked.⁠ But I can, and I know it's nifty (why yes, yes tidy thumb gussets are almost as satisfying as tidy hat crowns, why do you ask?)!

I am unreasonably fond of how fast mitts are. No really...I'm pretty sure I could knit one in a day or two without doing myself any particular damage. Especially one like this where every ten rows or so you get to do The Giant And Unspeakably Satisfying Increase, which somehow always motivates me to do enough more rows to get to do the nifty bit again.⁠ Tell me I'm not the only one so easily amused...

Ok, let's talk about the matching mitts. So, when I buy yarn, I usually try to buy two skeins of the same kind, because I usually end up knitting hats & mitts or hats & cowls or some other sort of set. That's what I knit most, and it's what works best for me (my sympathies to all you garment knitters who have to add to stash in sweater quantities...that sounds daunting). But every now and then, I fall in love with a yarn and there aren't two of the exact same color in stock. So sometimes I have to [...]

Someone is absolutely bound to ask about the needles. So yes, they're square! They're made by Kollage. ⁠ I like them! But there is one thing to look out for. ⁠ They used to come in a bronze color, and I had problems with the bronze coating wearing off on the tips of the needles over time. I've actually got a bunch of sets I don't use any more because the spots where the coating wore off catch on my yarn as I knit, and that will send a person into a screaming rage in short order. ⁠ But they've [...]

Alrighty, all done and rather charming if I do say so myself. ⁠ I've got mitts to match on the needles already (mostly match...there's a yarn thing going on that I'll explain in a future post that means someone out there is bound to think that they don't match they way they want them to, but I think we can work it out), and I'll be sending this out for testers here fairly shortly.⁠ I'm sliiiiiiightly torn as to when I should bring this out. ⁠Part of me says have it and the matching mitts come out in June, because [...]