Dark Sky Mittens

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These mittens were inspired by two things, one being the color of Knit Picks Palette Abyss. It’s this amazing dark blue that reminds me of darkness of a truly dark sky. That dark sky–the one that you can only find in remote places away from light pollution is the other inspiration for these. The brightness you see from the stars is only there because of the dark sky. I felt like making a high contrast mitten using the beautiful color of Abyss (Knit Picks) and White.

Keeping with my theme of fancy thumbs, this one has a patterned thumb gusset. This is a charted pattern and while you are making the thumb gusset you work off of two charts at the same time. I’m a big fan of the thumb gusset style mitten because they fit the hand so much better than other styles. Enjoy this free pattern!

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Darling Children’s Mittens

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Size Large, with Autumn Heather as Main Color
Size Medium, with Aurora Heather as Main Color

With my abundance of Knit Pick Palette fingerling weight yarn I went to work on a children’s mitten pattern that nicely fits small hands. I have plenty of left over yarn from all the mitten-making so this seemed like a good thing to work out as a use for small amounts of yarn.

Since children have such different sized hands I simply could not say “age 4” and have that make scenes. My grand baby that is 2 years old has bigger hands than his sister that is 3 1/2 years old. I went ahead and knitted all the sizes and measured them, that way you can take a measurement of a child’s hand and pick the right size in the pattern for them.

Here’s the FREE pattern. Enjoy!

DarlingChildren’sMittens.updated2025Download

Big Cuff Mittens

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I can’t seem to get away from knitting mittens. Sure, I make other things, but I always seem to come to the mitten. I started this pattern by making the large pair, then I worked out the other sizes. The colors from the small pair turned out to be my favorite so I’m using the midnight blue ones as my “cover shot”. The funny thing about this pattern is that I designed it all with paper and pencil instead of using the computer. We were staying outside of Durango, Colorado and I didn’t have internet. I normally use an online graphing site, stitchfiddle.com, to design my colorwork patterns. Since I didn’t have a connection for several weeks I ended up making with 4-stitch repeat pattern on paper. So old fashioned!

Here’s the pattern for FREE!

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Gloves!

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This pair was given to a friend.

Starting at the beginning of 2022 I decided to learn to knit gloves. After dozens of mittens, it seemed like the next step. First I knitted a few patterns off ravelry.com but I didn’t like the fit of any of those gloves. I started to think I could design a better fitting glove myself.

My designs that didn’t make the cut.

The first thing I worked on was the thumb gusset—and I know thumb gussets from making mittens (my previous obsession).

This pair was made for me.

I got the shape down for my own hand, then I started working on standard sizing.

Working on size Large.

I thought that making gloves wouldn’t be fun because it’s so fussy to knit in the round with just a few stitches on each needle. The key to having fun with this is shorter double pointed needles that are specifically for making gloves. The first few pairs were made with 100% wool. The glove pattern I’m working on now calls for sock yarn – washable and durable. In the end, the pattern that worked well with fingers is a checkerboard. Each finger in my patterns has an even amount of stitches– the pinky has 16 stitches, the 1st finger has 18 stitches, the thumb has 20…. so the only pattern that would work in the round would be a 2 stitch repeat. That’s how I came up with this pattern that I will eventually publish here.

The inside of a glove waiting to be finished.

It’s time for Toasty Mittens

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It’s not really cold out yet, but there’s a slight chill in the morning. It’s not time to wear mittens, but it is time to start knitting them! Here’s my latest free knitting pattern called Toasty.

It’s a charted pattern worked with 2 colors. It’s best for the knitter who knows how to read charts. I used Knit Picks Palette yarn which is my favorite for mittens. Of course they will have to be hand washed since they are 100% wool. If you are making these for someone who won’t hand wash, you could substitute a superwash wool.

Enjoy!

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The Duds

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We are back from our trip to the American Southwest. We traveled in Nevada, Arizona, back to Nevada and then to Utah. I did A LOT of knitting on that 5 month trip. I was designing up a storm with more projects in the fail pile than being “Success!” category. However, I learned a lot from my mistakes! Just for kicks I decided to post 3 “fails” – poorly fitting ear-flap hats. They are now in the “Goodwill” pile at our house. Maybe someone with really low-set ears will be excited to find these hats at the thrift store! Seriously I just couldn’t get the ear flap length right. After these three tries I gave up on ear flaps. I did learn some things about color and contrast. The red hat, for example, doesn’t have enough contrast between the two colors. Sometimes what looks right on my screen during the design process doesn’t look right in the actual knitting. I’m learning!

ummm….are those upside down agave plants? Why? Why would you do that?

Spring Seeding Mittens

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During the last few months I’ve been doing a lot of stranded color work. I’ve been very interested in seeding patterns and have designed a few mittens where the seeding isn’t just on the palm in the traditional way. With Spring Seeding I have made the mitten the same on both sides thus creating a mitten set that doesn’t have a left or a right side. Here’s the FREE pattern for you to enjoy:

Spring Seeding MittensDownload

Travel on the Horizon

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This week I finished a pair of socks for my husband. I used a pattern from knitty.com called Java Socks from 2011. It took me a few weeks to get them done and during the knitting process I got glasses. I had worn “readers” before but this was my first prescription pair. They are multi-focal so it took me a week or so to get use to them. Halfway through the second sock I realized one of my size 1 needles was actually a size 0 and I had been using it the whole time! No way was I going to start over so I just found my missing size 1 and carried on. There’s a size 0 in the photo–can you see it? (I still can’t!)

The designer of this fine pattern is Cailyn Meyer and you can find her on Ravelry. I was checking out what else she had done and found a pattern called Albuquerque Gloves and I fell in love with it. I don’t really need fingerless gloves so I used the chart and started a hat. Ok where am I going with all of this? Not Albuquerque! Because I can’t go there. My husband and I were going to head to New Mexico for the winter to go rock climbing and exploring but that state has serious travel restrictions so it’s just not feasibly. Looks like will be heading to Arizona instead. Which is actually wonderful because I have never really been there.

When I started up the Fleece Love and Happiness blog again this year it was because I wanted a place to write about my TRAVELS since we are retired and were traveling full-time. Well, covid happened and travel stopped. Even though winter is coming (and virus love winter) we should be safe in our remote camping locations. In about 10 days we will be back on the road. Today I’m packing up yarn and tools for knitting on the road.