Mora Mittens, First (Mis)steps

I started the Mora mittens on Wednesday -- it's slow-going, this two-end knitting, and the Mora Z-ply wool is rather a different beast from S-ply.  I expected the two-end process to require regular untwisting, which it does (I usually do this twice every round), but each strand is also untwisting itself as I knit, which means that quite often, it isn't really a "two-ply" yarn but "two plies lying next to each other", which makes it worm up on itself.

Then I was knitting blithely on, thinking I'm getting the hang of it and feeling pleased with myself, as one does, when I realized, looking at the gusset edging, that the purl stitches didn't stand out nearly as much as I expected them to.  I kept going for a few rounds thinking it might get better, but it didn't, so I looked at the instructions more closely -- you can see where this is going, I expect -- and discovered that I thought I knew how to make a purl stitch, but for the two-ended version, you don't just bring the yarn round to the front, purl, then take the yarn back, you have to bring it round a stitch earlier then take it back a stitch later, which gives you that little swoop on either side.  So I ripped the mitten back an inch or so -- although not far enough, as it turns out, since you can see at the bottom part of the gusset edging in the photo above that it looks a little uncertain just there.  It was a real bother ripping it out, because of course you work from a center-pull ball, and you can't just shove the center strand back in -- so I used a tip I'd seen somewhere, and stuck a spare double-pointed needle across the entry-point for the center strand, and butterflied both strands around that using the needle as a sort of cleat.

This morning when I looked at it in a rare patch of brilliant sunshine, I realized that, yes, the hook stitches I'd done earlier, around the cuff, were exactly the same -- viz., wrong.

See? they should all have that little swoop, similar to the chain path just above.  So I'm waiting a little this morning to make up my mind whether to rip it back to the beginning of the damask pattern and use the cleat trick to avoid rewinding, or just take the whole thing out completely and rewind the ball properly.  The first option might be more trouble than it's worth, but would (at least today) keep me from feeling like I've wasted all this time, but the second option would, in addition to having a properly-wound center-pull ball, also give me the opportunity to try and smooth out some tension blobs here and here.

On the bright side, I'm very happy with the cast-on, now that I've figured it out, wh. I must admit took some doing.  I will post some step-by-step pictures when I get to that point later.  It looks remarkably like the cast-on edge on the half-mittens in the Nordiska Museet, so that's a good sign!

Comments

[Toffeeapple]

Oh dear, I can feel your frustration from here! I hope that the rest of it goes more easily for you.

[mary lou]

I thought the Z ply was supposed to make this easier! I've never tried it myself. I might make the same mistake on the second mitten and call it designing.