pretty::ugly

Posted by marne on November 16, 2007 in knit | 4 comments

Books. We have a lot of them. I’ve really thinned out my library as much as I possibly can but there are still so many. I got these two book cases for the guest room, but they’ve been kind of a mess since I put them in there. I love books arranged by color, but that wouldn’t have looked right in this little room, so I went the opposite way, and just put pale cream, white, grey and antique-y books in here. It makes for quite an interesting library.

Ahh! So much better than the jumble it used to be.

So that’s the pretty part for today. Now for the ugly.

I have a pair of mitts at work for days when the air conditioning is out of control, but I still have to type. I thought a new pair might be a thoughtful gift for a co-worker for Christmas this year, and half of Ravelry seems to have used the pattern for Fetching from Knitty. Cute and fast, that’s perfect! Right? Hmm, fast, yes, cute? I need to do a little work to get them to cute.

I know it doesn’t help that there are  bits of yarn hanging off everywhere. I guess I just have long monkey hands, because even with a few extra rows, these are nowhere near long enough. Of course the friend I am making them for has smaller hands, but I still think they should be a bit longer. I really like the idea of the picot bind-off, but it’s all loose and flared here. I think a regular bind off would work better. When I was looking at my mitt this morning, I thought, "oh, I messed up, I didn’t do a second cable at the end," but then I re-read the pattern, and nope, there isn’t a second cable. I think that would help it not roll back so much at the fingers too. So, I’ll give it another shot, with a few alterations longer body, two cables at both ends, and either a regular bind off or a picot bind off with the ‘picots’ closer together. I still think the pattern is really cute, but as written I think it only works for stubby hands. No offense to stubby handed people intended :o)