Tower Bridge Mitts

Finally, I've gotten the next pattern in the Southwark Collection finished and available.

These mitts are the perfect project for that special skein of luxury yarn you've been saving for a rainy day. Knit up with under 175 yds of fingering or sport weight yarn, these mitts are the thing to slip on for a cold March day, or to add an extra layer of warmth in February when the boiler is acting up.

The size is adjusted by changing the needle size and/or yarn weight. The teal mitts shown above were knit with 1 skein of Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca & Silk (size medium), and the variegated pair below were knit with 1 skein of Indie Dyer 100% Superwash Fingering Merino (size large).

Many thanks to Knitapotamus, knucna, lindseylou, Mistydawn, oddbird26, phoenixblue and vshawn7, my intrepid test knitters from the Ravelry Free Pattern Testers group.You can see some of their projects on the TB Mitts project page here (Ravelry link).

I'm hoping to have the last pattern in the collection out to testers by the end of January, which would get it out probably around the end of February. Stay tuned.

Southwark Collection Part 3: Tower Bridge Mitts

The third pattern in the collection is actually the first one that I knit, now almost two years ago.

When we came over to find a place to live a couple of springs ago, I spent one day down near London Bridge wandering about. It was one of those grey days that is gloomy and raw, and then suddenly the sun peaks through the clouds and highlights something - that something happened to be Tower Bridge.

I promptly went home and knit up a pair of fingerless mitts using a stitch pattern that reminded me of the bridge.

I can't really explain what the resemblance was/is, but there you have it. The first pair were knit in a fingering weight yarn (multicolored version) and the second pair are in Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca Silk. The pattern is just about ready to go out to testers, so I'm hoping to get it released soon. Shard should be out in the immediate future, since it's now with test knitters. Gherkin is about to undergo a major redesign, so maybe before Christmas, but I'm not holding my breath. That can be a post-Christmas knit for everyone to cast-on their new yarn.

Designing

In addition to doing some knitting and spinning, I've been playing around with some design ideas for a while, and I just now emailed off a couple of proposals for The Sanguine Gryphon's Fall pattern line.

The inspiration for the pattern line is Steampunk (hurrah!), and I came up with a pair of mitts and a vest that I'll be working on. Even if they don't get accepted for TSG, I'll still work them up and publish them myself or through someone else.

The mitts were inspired by Tower Bridge here in London, which is a veritable Monstrosity of Victorian architecture.

But it is pretty...the mitts look like this:

This pattern is even already written up and ready to go. Although now I'm thinking that an elbow length version might be nice, as well as a shorter, more manly wrist length version. We'll see...

The second pattern is for a women's vest with a deep V neck. The swatch looks like this:

This is knit in the same overdyed yarn I used for Manon, and I like the way the stitch pattern looks in a semi-solid. I'm torn between liking it better unstretched, as above, or stretched out.

I like the laciness of this, but am also drawn to the cushiness of the unstretched version. We'll see...all I've got beyond these swatches is a very poorly drawn sketch, and some scribbled notes. Maybe I'll get to working on it one of these days. I'll keep you posted on the proposals in any event.

Now back to your regularly scheduled blog silence.