The first official FO of 2008

Earlier this month, I found a very nice pattern for a pair of two-color mittens. The pattern looked complex enough to be interesting, but not enough to be intimidating. (Scroll past the Finnish at the top and you will find English instructions.) I grabbed some stash yarn and tried the pattern out, mostly to see if my ability to manage gauge while knitting with two colors had improved from my last attempt. Amazingly enough, it had! Since I didn't really like the stash colors, I promptly wandered out to Joann's where Paton's Classic Merino was on sale. I wanted to do the mittens in red and navy to match my jacket, but ended up with red and black. A few days of knitting later and I have these:

I love these mittens! They aren't perfect, but I don't care. I'm sure the next pair will be better, but considering how absolutely horrid my tension was on my last stranded project I count this project as a major success. The corrugated ribbing on the cuff is very even, it's mostly at the change from front to back that I can see the tension issues. *shrug*

I'm not sure how Celtic this pattern is, but it's fun, easy, and knit up very quickly on size 8 needles:



The palm pattern was harder to knit and took me through the end of the second mitten to finally figure out the repeat in the pattern.


I'm wearing these to work tomorrow and I'll find out how warm they are then. It's supposed to be bitterly cold, so warm woolen mittens will be a Good Thing.