mochi mochi!

it's been a busy end to august - there have been band practices, social engagements, extracurricular work meetings, and of course lots of knitting and designing to get done.  not much happened for me in that last category over the weekend, as i was too busy running around with my friend from kansas city on friday and saturday night after work, and sunday night my band played a show in logan square. 

(sometimes i need these sorts of things to force myself to give my hands and arms a break from knitting; it's harder for me to take a break if i'm just sitting at home.)

i am pleased to report that, despite all the general zaniness of the last few days,  i did manage to knit a pair of flip-top elbow-length fingerless gloves - although i have to confess it was a slower week at work, and most of the knitting got done on a day i had some client cancellations. 

you may recognize the yarn from last week's post - crystal palace's mochi plus - it's true, i just couldn't have these skeins staring me in the face for long.  be warned, if you buy this yarn, i guarantee it will not be sitting in your stash for long.  it begs - no, demands - to be knitted!  and really, why wouldn't you want to knit with it right away - it's exciting to see what color will come up next, and if you're knitting sometime that comes in pairs, you have the added anticipation of seeing what type of fraternal twins you're going to have.

besides the beautiful colors, the softness of this yarn will definitely have me purchasing more skeins in the future.  i love my noro socks and scarf - i'm convinced they will never pill and, most likely,  last forever - but i could never knit a gift for a non-knitter out of it, because a) it's not very soft (excepting the silk garden) and b) it's hand-wash.  

which brings me to my next point - you can machine wash this yarn!  that's always a big plus in my book, especially if i'm gift knitting, because i know that most people don't know that machine wash = felt for the vast majority of non-synthetic fibers. considering the fact that even the most experienced knitters have accidentally felted a project they've knit, i don't hold out much hope of a non-knitter carefully hand-washing the socks or gloves i made for them - nor would i want them to be burdened to remember such things. 

that said, i will probably still hand-wash my fingerless gloves - but i am curious to see how they hold up with daily wear and perhaps the occasional gentle machine washing.

the design of the gloves came fairly easy, and i wanted to try out a stitch pattern from the book i recently purchased (The Stitch Collection).  i chose the turtle track lace pattern from book 3 (lace!  imagine that!), which consists of a 16-round repeat.  I did three and a half pattern repeats before starting the thumb gussets, spent the next 16 rounds working on those, and then after binding off the stitches for the thumb, that left 16 more rounds to knit before doing a bit of ribbing and binding off.

after that, adding some flip-top mitts really didn't seem like such a bad idea, either - i still had a sizable quantity of yarn left, and wouldn't it be nice to have toasty fingers when i'm walking to work in the wintertime? 

all told, i still had two-tenths of an ounce remaining of each ball of yarn!  who would have guessed that a 95-yard ball of yarn could stretch so far?