Pom Pom Beanie and Thrummed Mittens

Once again I've been neglecting the other half of my maker obsession on this blog.  I never seem to remember to blog my knitted projects so I thought I'd better do something about that.

First up is a new beanie.  A while ago I took a trip to a yarn shop about an hours drive from my place - the Yarn Garden at Mendon.  I went out there specifically because I'd heard that they sold the really cool shawl pins that I was looking for, but of course I couldn't resist buying other stuff whilst I was there.

After much browsing I decided on a skein of Malabrigo yarn.  Of course I managed to throw out the tag before writing down all the pertinent details, but I believe it was from the Rios range of super washable wool.

I knew that I wanted to make a new beanie out of it and decided on the Kulshan Hat pattern that I downloaded from Ravelry.  I really love the honeycomb detail on the band of this hat, however I didn't feel like I needed my band to split, so once the band got to the circumference of my head I joined it together and used the three needle bind off to finish.

I then started on the fisherman's knit as detailed in the pattern, however I realised that with all this detail work, the colours in the yarn were really getting lost so after about 3 or 4 rows I switched to a straight knit pattern.  This yarn really shows each stitch beautifully and each stitch is its own separate colour so it looks really lovely close up.

I knit it to the length specified in the pattern (10") and tried it on - I don't know, slouchy beanies look so good in the picture, but on me it just looks stupid, so after much ummin and ahhing I ripped it right back to just 4" of knit.  two rows of decreases later and I finished off the hat but pulling all the stitches in to gather it all together.

Now this sort of hat need a pom pom.  I wanted a contrasting colour for the pom pom and found in my stash a deep purple in Caron Simply Soft yarn.  I made a simple cardboard template and started winding the pom pom.  It turned out a lot bigger than I expected but I really do like it!

I had a small amount of the Malabrigo wool left so I decided I would use to to start a pair of mittens to go with my hat.  I used the same honeycomb pattern to create two cuffs for a pair of mittens.  I knew I wouldn't have enough yarn to finish the mittens so I split my remaining ball into two and worked a basic mitten pattern until I ran out of wool.  At this point I switched back to the same purple Caron yarn that I used for the pom pom and finished off my mittens.

The resulting mittens ended up being a bit wider than I had intended, and also since the fingers are made from an acrylic yarn they're not that warm.  This is where I got lucky.  During one of my knitting groups recently, one of the other knitters had mentioned thrummed mittens I had never heard of this technique before however now that I had a pair of large, not warm mittens I decided it was time to do some research.

Technically thrumming is a method by which you knit small pieces of roving (called thrums) into the inside of a mitten (Or sock or whatever else you want to make warm) at intermittent intervals.  Now my mittens were already made, but I figured why couldn't I just add the thrums in later, they won't be as securely anchored, but it's not like these mittens are going to have to withstand much.

So I pulled out some dark green roving that I had lying around and started threading pieces through the inside stitches of my mittens.

I quite like the way you get to see spots of the green thrums showing through the purple.

These mittens are now heavenly to wear, so warm and snuggly and cozy - not very practical mind you - you can't really do anything with them on, but they're great if you're going to be standing outside in the cold.