Narwhals sketching

I rarely have time to knit anything for myself that isn’t a design sample, let alone knit gifts. But when my brother first saw the Narwhal mittens from Whimsical Little Knits 3 he put in a request. He got the yarn for Christmas 2011, one mitten to try on for Christmas 2012, two mittens but only one and a half linings for his birthday last week and finally today two blocked, lined mittens. 

Struan got all of the height genes in our family, he’s almost a foot taller than me, so not surprisingly his hands are much bigger than the sizes in the pattern. To scale them up I used Quince and Co and Lark (instead of the Chickadee in the original version) in Cypress and Honey. Of course, I didn’t write down the gauge, or ever measure it, but I used a 4mm needle and good old fashioned trial and error to make them fit.

He has skinny wrists (like mine – looks like we are related after all!) and was concerned about them being snug so I did a folded hem in 1×1 rib instead of the picot hem. To avoid them being overly bulky I stuck with a fingering weight for the linings.

He’s an art student and tested out whether he could sketch with mittens on, doesn’t seem to cause a problem. His website is struanteague.com if you’d like to see some of his work.