These are my new mittens!

The pattern is Stargazer Mittens by Natalia Moreva – that’s a Ravelry link, but here’s the pattern on her website. She provides charts for both mittens with the two options on the colours – either dark background with light detail, or light background with dark detail – which is great. I’ve knit her Gates of Moria mittens, too. These mitts are a close fit and I have small hands. They’re long, too.

Ha. Morning picture without my wedding ring. 🙂

The thumbs are long, as well. If I made them again, I’d make the thumbs four rows shorter. I didn’t do that on the second mitt because I didn’t want to rip back the first one.

I didn’t have a good yellow in my stash when I decided to knit these, and I wanted to use the same yarn for both colours. I bought Lichen & Lace 80/20 Sock in two colours, Huckleberry and Citron, at my LYS. It’s 80% merino and very squishy. I would have liked the green to be more of a sunny yellow or the blue/purple to have been closer to black. There are flicks of olive and copper in the Citron, and once it’s knit with the Huckleberry, those bits “read” as having a similar value to the blue and purple. The photograph maximizes the contrast, but in real life, I wish there was a bit more.

I do love these mitts. 🙂

I’m going to line them, so they aren’t done. My first idea was to knit a Citron cuff to extend beyond the existing one, but they’re already so long that I’ve decided against that. I knit my Gates of Moria mittens with one strand of Rowan Kidsilk Haze and one strand of fingering yarn held together, which made them thick, soft and very warm. In this case, I’m going to knit a liner in just Kidsilk Haze – that will keep it thin, since these mitts are already a close fit. Even though I never carry a yarn more than a few stitches when knitting fair isle, that will also ensure that no threads are ever caught in pulling the mittens on.

This pattern has two increases in the row count. You add stitches at the end of the ribbing, then 4 stitches more at the end of the first band of stars. I’m going to use the same size needles for the lining, so to have it fit more readily inside, it needs to have fewer stitches. I’m picking up stitches at the top of the ribbing, like this, so the lining will have 4 stitches less than the mitten:On the right side, that row of Huckleberry will just pull a little bit tighter. Mitten and liner will be joined forever. I’ll probably also make the lining a few rows shorter, maybe just two, in both the mitten and the thumb. I’ll show the finished and lined mittens to you when they’re done.