Mostly a Pile of Yarn

I struggled with a title for this post, because sadly I've discovered that a disproportionate amount of the time I want to title my posts simply "Well, Duh!" As I can't have eleventy-two posts with all the same name, I've decided that I can't use that one at all, even though it pretty much sums things up.

Summer is definitely in full swing, and it's finally really hot here at Chez Necessity. The weather has been very kind this year, and stayed at a pretty comfortable level until now. The humidity's been pretty good too, but that all seems to be over now. In an effort to both be green and save money on the old electric bill, we freecycled our air conditioner a couple of years ago (the woman who picked it up looked at us like we were nuts, and asked "Don't you know it's going to be hot?") and have been getting by with fans and drapes to cover the blinding amounts of HOT light that come through our windows. The amount of light is something I really like about this apartment, and one of the reasons we (well I - The Professor much prefers a more cave-like home, but he kindly humors me) bought this place. Unfortunately, this same amount of lovely light can make you feel as if you are sitting on the surface of the sun, rather than your living room in the middle of the day.

So, as it is so very hot, like any rational person I decided I needed to knit some wool mittens. These are from Mostly Mittens, and I've made a couple of patterns from this book. I really like it, and the patterns are spiffy. I always enjoy colorwork, and mittens are small enough that I can satisfy my need for an interesting pattern without having to spend 6 months on a sweater.

Sadly, however, I forgot one crucial component to making any item which someone is expected to wear. Yes, you guessed it - gauge. I can only blame the heat, because I knit quite a long way on this little (I do mean little) mitten before it occurred to me that it looked a tad on the small side, and that I hadn't bothered to check the gauge. Once I discovered that it would probably fit someone as long as they only had three fingers and a freakishly skinny palm (and I don't happen to know anyone like this) the lovely, tiny mitten now looks like this:


Well, duh!