30 years ago when I was young and basically penniless I took up quilting. My mother had given me her old sewing machine (a Bernina from the 80s that I still use!) and my grandma gave me a bag of thread. I accepted hand-me-downs from anyone who offered with the intention of cutting them up for quilting. For batting I would sometime use an old blanket. A few of these quilts lasted over the years but most were destroyed by outdoor music concerts. Eventually they ended up as padding for furniture in a moving truck.

During this time I went to a quilt exhibit featuring modern designs. All the quilts were made of new fabrics, colors were carefully selected, and the “wall hangings” were machine-quilted. I thought to myself, “What would I make if I had unlimited choices of fabric and colors?”  As soon as that idea crossed my mind I refused to answer it and continued with my old way of thinking: true creativity comes from using what you have in a beautiful way.  

This wordy back-story leads us to my current project:  creating something useful with scraps of yarn.

With all the knitting of mittens and hats that I do I’ve ended up with small balls of fingering weight yarn.  My basket of scrap yarns look like a hodgepodge of colors that don’t go together.  I wrote the pattern Using Up Scraps to literately use up my scraps.  

You need 10 colors to make this hat: 11 grams of a main color plus 4 grams of 9 more colors. I used a kitchen/postage scale to weigh the yarn to make use I have enough.  I arranged the yarn in a circle so I can see how it looks and I took a picture with my phone so I wouldn’t forget the order.  These balls of yarn are so small I didn’t want to make a sample, although a person could if you have enough yarn.

There are many ways to use color in this hat. You could try to contrast light and dark with each color change or you could make the gradient change like the blue/green hat.

For this written pattern I used the color chart for the brown/green hat. You will need to substitute your own yarn colors. Here is the FREE pattern for anyone who would like to make it.

Sometimes I think “maybe I’ll keep these for myself” when I’m designing mittens. I usually give away the hats and mittens I make to people whom I determine are likely to handwash them. I ask people “what color is your coat?” to get an idea of what mittens they might like and use. Well, my coat is navy blue so I think I’ll keep these for myself.

For Icy Flowers I carried on with the flowers and swirlies motif that I’ve focused on lately. And like my other mittens I went with a checkerboard thumb and palm. These have a tight cuff that fits under your coat. They are worked from 5 charts. First the cuff chart, then a corrugated ribbing chart. After that the mittens are worked from 3 charts: The back of the hand, the palm, and the thumb gusset.

I’m posting this pattern for free here on my blog. If you make them I’d love to see your finished mittens. Please post on Ravelry or just send me a message.

If you follow my blog you might remember that I designed several mittens this past summer with the intentions of putting them out in the fall or winter. Jubilant Mittens were designed when I was in Homer Alaska visiting family. I had a series of poor designs where I thought I had a good idea and then after completing one whole mitten I look at it and say “nope” and chuck it. I actually did that a few time and then finally I came up with Jubilant Mittens and I like them.

When choosing colors I lay balls of yarn out on the table and then shuffle them around until I like what I see. Then I get on the computer and put the colors over a design that I’ve worked out. Then I shuffle the colors around on the computer until I settle on what I like. With Jubilant Mitten, I settled when I was halfway between switching from one color combo to another. I stopped doing the switch, looked and the screen, and said “that’s it”. I hadn’t thought of putting that turquoise-leaning blue with that olive-leaning green before it appeared on my computer screen.

Here’s the FREE pattern that I wrote for this project.

Nine colors in this one! That’s a record for my designs. I went about designing a hat that looked organized yet somewhat jumbled to get the “weeds” effect. I’ve been using that flower motif a lot in my designs and adding little swirlies.

Because I get tired of knitting plain ribbing I’ve been doing corrugated ribbings for my hats. It’s interesting to knit plus I can put colors in there that balance out the whole color scheme to give it symmetry.

I took a picture of the inside of this hat right before I began to weave in the ends. I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about weaving in the color changes as you go. (Especially since there are nine colors in this hat!)

There are several ways to change colors as you go. I do not weave in the first inch or two because those little ends would show hanging out of the cap. They yarns ends from the ribbing are woven in and up to hide the tails. This picture shows how long I leave the little ends when I am working in a color. It’s better to be too long and trimmed later verses too short where they don’t hold.

My method for weaving in ends is for people who knit colorwork with both hands. I knit along as usual with the dominate color (usually lighter color) in my left and the background color in my right (usually dark). With my left I “pick” and with my right I “throw”.

Weaving in ends as you go is essentially like trapping floats for every stitch.

When I get to 6-8 stitches before a new color is introduced I switch both working yarns to my right hand. I put the new color in my left hand and work the right hand like it’s trapping floats on every other stitch. When I get to the new color in the chart, I put the color that I’m no longer using in my left hand and the two working colors in my right hand. Now again I work like I’m trappy floats for 6-8 stitches. So your right hand is still working the colors in pattern and the left hand is holding the yarn that you no longer use so it is woven into the back of the work. After you’ve secured the unused color down over 6-8 stitches, cut if off leaving about an inch. After that I switch back to 2-handed knitting until I get to the next color change.

OK so that’s the written version of how I weave in ends as I go. There are already lots of youtube videos on this and I don’t think I could make anything better than what’s already out there. If this idea is new to you I’d try it out on a hat or cowl first. And on that note, here’s my most recent FREE hat pattern:

So this is how these mittens got named after a place I didn’t go to: While driving down from Alaska, we did a stop in Terrace BC. We tried to get a ferry ride to Campbell Island and were put on a waitlist. We didn’t get a ticket. We were so tired of driving that we chose not to do the long drive to Bella Bella either. However, I was working on a mitten pattern at the time that I called “Bella”. Once I had internet I checked and found out that that name was already used for a mitten pattern. I was attached to the word and didn’t want to change it so I started calling them Bella Bella Mittens.

All of the mittens I designed this summer have a checkerboard pattern for the palm and thumbs. I got obsessed with this feature. I love the way the yarns you are working with on the “pattern” side turn get carried around to make a sturdy fabric on the palm. This is probably more fun for people who knit like me with 2 strands. I hold the dominate color in my left hand and the background color in my right hand. I also weave in the yarns as I go which I highly recommend learning how to do if you don’t already know. Those 2 techniques make knitting these checkerboard palms fun.

I’ve written up the pattern to share with anyone who wants to make Bella Bella mittens. Here’s the Free Pattern to download:

We have been home for a few weeks now and I’m putting together some of the patterns I designed while on our road trip through Alaska. As usual, I mostly made mittens. I went on a Latvian Braid kick and made 5 pairs with that feature. Several of these will be written up into patterns to share with everyone.

The first pair that I’m sharing is Pretty Please Mittens. The Fair Isle-like design is all on the front of the mitten and the palm and thumbs are a checkerboard pattern. The main color is Asphalt (dark gray) and there’s one line of Orange in each repeat that really pops out.

If you like these mittens and you want to hear about other patterns that I’m putting out this coming fall, subscribe to my email list by clicking in the lower right corner where it says “Follow”. You can also follow me on Instagram and see the patterns a few days before they are published.

Here’s the FREE pattern for Pretty Please Mittens: