My very first pattern

The first half of October is already gone, and as of now I haven’t quite managed to learn much blogging discipline. I guess it might have to do with my research background. When you do research you do not tend to write – and definitely not publish – anything until you have read and mulled over much of what is out there. Of course this is impossible, that is why research is so disappointing sometimes. And blogging bears certain similarities.

Apart from this, I’ve also been away from home for about a week now, since we came over to the Budapest marathon, and spent the good part of this past week sightseeing in almost complete holiday mode.

Eventually, I managed to spend the last two days entirely in the company of my laptop, trying to catch up on work, blogging and knitting projects. In this time, I was  able to force myself to finally attempt to write up a pattern in publishable format.

The pattern and the knitted object actually involve a few (almost) firsts. It is a pair of fingerless mittens which sport a polka dot pattern and an afterthought thumb. I knitted it back around February for a friend. This was very much at the beginning of my knitting career, therefore it represented my first afterthought thumb, my second colour work knit, one of my first projects using the magic loop technique… Luckily at the time I made fairly decent notes, so that, even though I don’t have the finished object anymore (it is literally in the other and of the world… in Wellington, NZ), I was able to write up the instructions in case anyone might be interested to make them. If you are just the person, click here to download the pattern.

Another knitting venture undertaken over the last week or so involved the Portuguese Beiroa yarn from Retrosaria. Somehow the story and concept of Retrosaria have been on my mind for a good few months. I guess the leaving academia for researching traditional yarn making and knitting as Rosa did could not have been more attractive over the last few months of my dissertation write up. In any case, I was dying to try this single spun rustic wool yarn, both because of its story and because of the gorgeous colour and promising texture.

What I made out of it is another story – to be revealed hopefully soon enough – but I must say I cannot wait to try it on other projects. The fairly uneven looking yarn knits up nicely to create a rather even and strong fabric. It is not exactly smooth (although I haven’t blocked it, which presumably helps), but feels like something very desirable to wear indeed.