After finishing the Hippocampus mittens and thinking my stranding could be better, I decided to do another pair of mittens with the leftover Kauni and try out the Philosopher’s Wool techinique for stranding. It’s basically similar to regular stranding, except that you don’t go more than one stitch in either colour without catching the other colour. In regular stranding I’d usually lock my floating yarn (the yarn not in use) every 5th stitch.
This endeavour was a trial. I wanted to try out a new technique, I wanted to try the yarn at a different gauge, and I wanted to try out a mitten with a different stitch count. I was not concerned about the final size or how the colours worked together. Essentially, this was about knitting practice and discovery.
If you look inside the mittens you can see the difference between the length of the floats in regular stranding (left) and the Philosopher’s Wool Method (right). The Philosopher’s Wool Method looks and feels almost woven:
These mittens gave me a really good feel for this technique. In the areas where the floats would be longer, I think the result is much better. However, I noticed that there was a certain area on the palm of the mitten where my non-dominate yarn (green) is too loose and pops out. In this case, because of the pattern, it looks okay, but it is obviously something I need to work on.
I also need to loosen up in the first 5 rounds of the thumb. There is a noticeable change in tension on the face of the thumb, though funnily enough, not on the inner side.
I think this was a great experiment and well worth doing. I’ve learned a great deal from doing it, including that if I were to do it all over again I’d go up to a 2.5mm needle. That would be the same size needle I used on the Hippocampus mittens and thought was too loose. It’s amazing how a simple change of technique can alter one’s tension.
In the end, the mittens don’t fit. The width is about right (though I couldn’t go any smaller), but the length of the fingers and the thumb are about four rounds too short. Also, I would like an extra six rounds between the start of the thumb gusset and the thumb hole. Since this pattern was designed for a heavier weight yarn, I’m not surprised at this outcome. A pattern for a fingering weight yarn would have accommodated this as it is simply a matter of a difference in row gauge.
I did really enjoy working this pattern. I’d suggest that a familiarity with a selbu-style mitten would be useful as the pattern is not long on verbiage, but all stitches in the mitten are charted. For the most part, it is a simple matter of knowing how to deal with the thumb hole and what decreases to use where at the top of the thumb and fingers.
The details:
Cast on: January 6th, 2012
Cast off: January 10th, 2012
Pattern: Rigmor’s Selbu Mittens (free Ravelry download)
Yarn: Kauni Effektgarn 8/2
Needles: 2.25mm
Mods: other that using a lighter weight yarn, none.