Tag Archives: fair isle knitting

Witch Hare Kit

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A bit ago, I treated myself to a knitting kit and it arrived yesterday. It’s from Virtual Yarns and is the Witch Hare kit, for mittens and a hat. You can see it on their website, right here. Virtual Yarns is Alice Starmore and Jade Starmore’s company, featuring many patterns, books and yarns designed by Alice and Jade. There’s some wonderful eye candy on their website, so treat yourself to a few minutes of browsing.

Here are the pattern cards in the kit. They really are lovely, full colour on sturdy stock. (Apologies for the flash!)

Virtual Yarns Witch Hare kit - patterns

I like this design, especially the mittens, and I was curious about the Virtual Yarns tweeds. A kit seemed a good way to check them out.

Here are the yarns in the kit. They look scrumptious.

Virtual Yarns Witch Hare kit - yarns

And here are the patterns on Ravelry, in case you want to check out some other projects. They’re listed separately – first the mittens, then the hat.

The plan is to make the set once as the kit instructs, then possibly make the mittens again with another yarn (what yarn?) held double with KSH. The ones by the kit might get a KSH lining. We’ll see. Lovely yarn, though. I can’t wait to see how it knits up.

Mummers from Saltwater Mittens

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Things have been quiet here on the blog. I had a bit of a crazy January – I was (as usual) racing toward deadline on a new book but got sick with a mild case of Covid-19. It still pretty much flattened me, which makes me glad we’re vaccinated. I’ve been working like mad on that book ever since and now need to catch up on everything else.

Of course, I’ve been knitting, too, just not documenting it all. Today, we start to fix that.

Saltwater Mittens by Christine LeGrow and Shirley A. Scott

These mittens are from a book called Saltwater Mittens by Christine LeGrow and Shirley A. Scott. Here’s a Ravelry link to the pattern book, and here’s a link to the book’s landing page at the publisher, Boulder Books.

This pattern is called Mummers. I was so excited to discover that they have mummers in Newfoundland – yet another reason to visit one of these days. How amazingly blue the light is here right now. I took these pictures at midday but in the shade since the snow was so bright.

Mummers mittens from Saltwater Mittens knit by Deborah Cooke in Harrisville Highland

I knit mine in yarn from my stash. One of the recommended yarns is Briggs & Little Regal – that’s the B&L website. You can order directly from them. I have some of that, but I also had Harrisville Designs Highland left over from Mr. Math’s sweater and I like the colours together and thought it similar. This is an interesting yarn because it’s put up in two different ways – washed and skeined which is the link above, or unwashed on cones which you’ll find on this link. It’s cheaper on the cone if you need a lot and I like seeing it full when the finished garment is washed.

Mummers mittens from Saltwater Mittens knit by Deborah Cooke in Harrisville Highland
Balkan by Brandon Mably knit by Deborah Cooke in Harrisville Designs Highland

On the left is Mr. Math’s sweater in the same yarn – the pattern is called Balkan by Brandon Mably (that’s a Ravelry link) and here’s the link to my Ravelry project page. I made a yarn substitution – it’s supposed to be knit in Rowan Colourspun (Ravelry link) which is a yarn I like a lot and is now discontinued. The mister thought it was too soft plus he wanted a more graphic color combination. Done and done. (Hmm. Did I blog about this project? Yes! I did! Balkan sweater for Mr. Math.)

And now there are mittens to coordinate!