Change in Projects

Now it's November, and although I've slowed down on the nalbinding project, I've finally gotten two mitten cuff edges that are tolerable in appearance. Not perfect, just tolerable, as you'll see from the picture.  I may yet re-do the one on the right, which has more mistakes, and more obvious mistakes, in it.

The beginnings of two mittens!

I finally decided to deal with the issue of changing threads (piece of yarn, actually) this way.  I work each thread until the working thread is too small to take a stitch without falling out of the needle.  At that point, I pull the needle off of the piece of yarn, thread a new piece onto the needle, and start my next stitch without taking the last loop off of my thumb.  After I have completed the stitch, I pull the thread through until only a short piece is left outside the body of the work (about 2-3 inches/5-7.5 cm). Then I take a second stitch, in the same place as before, and in doing so drop the loop off of my thumb in the normal manner.  My new working thread is now anchored in the work, and forms the new thumb loop.  From that point, I go on working as usual. This leaves a pair of 2-3 inch pieces of yarn sticking out of the work for each new piece of yarn I use, but they can be clipped off later without significant ill-effect, so far as I can tell.  

The next step is to change yarn color and begin working the appropriate rounds, decreases, and increases, as specified in the mitten pattern, but I prefer not to push on too far too fast--that usually results, for me, in a bad mistake and a re-start.  I will give it a day or two before taking the next step.

The next time I start a nalbinding project, though, I'm going to take more care to make certain that I have 100% wool that is not "superwash".  My local Jo-Ann's fabric store carries a few nice colors of 100% wool yarn of the Patons brand, and even though it costs about twice as much as the yarn I bought for the mittens, it may be a better choice for nalbinding.

In the meantime, it's now November, and the current Historical Sew Monthly theme is "Red."  Since my sprang yarn is pink, this may be a good time to re-start that project, especially since work is very slow for me right now.  The good news about sprang is that, once I have a sufficiently good sense of what I'm doing, it should go very quickly.  With luck, I'll have at least a progress photograph for this blog before the end of the weekend.