It's not that I'm easily distracted

It's just that when I'm knitting rows and rows of garter stitch, my mind takes these little trips to Elsewhere. Lately the Elsewhere has been felting.

I have this Yeti mitten I made during my Stitches Midwest class with Gwen Bortner of Knitability. It's supposed to get transformed (read:felted) into an oven mitt. It remains untransformed because I'm one of those people with two hands. I need a pair. I'm afraid if I felt it solo I will never be able to recreate the process for the second one. I don't want sibling mitts; I want identical twin mitts.

Besides, family is coming over this Saturday for John's long-delayed birthday party. I want them all envious so I can justify making these for Christmas presents. It's time and past time to get the second one made.











Note the toddler-sized DPNs. Kind of like those crayons you see in preschool/kindergarten classrooms.

The nice thing about this project, if I can ever join the stitches in such a way that I don't end up with two inches of free-range yarn after I knit the first row, is that I can finish the knitting in a day.

Meanwhile, I'm collecting information on felting.

I picked up the Fall 2006 Knitscene for "Felt it UP! Fun, fearless felting 101."

Even though Knitscene styles make me realize just how old I really am.

Which leads me into the final stages of the Great Oven Mitt Plan. I want them to be pretty. I know I could just embroider something, but frankly, my free-hand embroidery closely resembles the attempts of a one-year-old to color. Before they closed, Tangled Web (another not-quite-local yarn store) had a felted bag on display that had been embellished with needle felting. That's how I want to finish off my oven mitts.

I Googled "felting needles." Turns out Jo-Ann's Online carries all kinds of needle felting supplies. Too bad they take forever to process and deliver an order. I had a clever idea. I Googled the name of their supplier: Wistyria Editions. Yes, an annoyingly precious spelling, but they are all about needle felting. And they are just across the lake in Grand Haven, MI. My order shipped out this morning.

I'm playing around with three possible designs. No laughing. My artistic ability is only slightly better than my free-hand embroidery.













Why can't I get Blogger to line these up?

I'm leaning toward the second one, although the third might be easier. And the swirly one is growing on me. Rapidly. Maybe they don't need to be identical oven mitts? Fraternal could work.