Making Lemonade

I made this lovely multidirectional scarf in the time when I was trying to come to terms with my brother's death: I love the pattern and the yarn (Denali sock yarn by Pagewood Farms -- by the lovely Robin Page):



But I had yarn leftover, and yarn this good should not be left alone. So, since it was sock yarn, I sensibly started a toe of a sock:



I love this toe. It's a variation of a sock recipe by Merike Saarnit, who has not published it to my knowledge. My variation incorporates Judy's magic cast-on for a completely invisible toe.

On the side of the sock, you can just bareley see that cute little cable along the side? I wanted to have that as a fun small zing for the sock. But as I knit, I soon began to realize that my plans for two socks out of the leftover yarn was not going to happen.

I took a look again at that toe. A toe is another name for the top of the mitten, right? And hands are smaller than feet, so I figured, hey, I can do this. And then I realized having a set of a scarf and mittens makes a lot more sense than a scarf and socks! I'm onto mittens, great idea.

Well, I still wasn't all that sure that I had enough sock yarn, so I stopped the first mitten at the end of the hand, and then did the other hand, and realized that I was right, I didn't have enough yarn for the cuffs. I pulled out some nice Opal wool yarn and finished the cuffs. Here's one of the mittens.



But as I was playing around with the cuffs, I realized that my method of doing the thumbs (based on Kate Atherley's mitten recipe on Knitty), leads to having the thumb in the line of the mitten. What would happen if you decided that you wanted to have that cute little cable running down the front of the mitten so everyone, including the wearer, could see them? What would that look like? Well, if you put the "left hand" mitten on your right hand, the mitten looks like this:



And it totally, totally works like a mitten. Now this is a small, probably already-discovered discovery. An unvention, to use an Elizabeth Zimmermann term. But I have to tell you, it was such a lovely discovery, and I felt as though I was channeling Cat Bordhi as I did it.

And I really like having a pair of mittens to go with my lovely scarf!