Sweet Fern Mitts

From my original project notes when I started this in 12/2017: I knit the first mitt, the right, fairly quickly but was perplexed by the fact that the cable seemed to be quite off center. I had also been rather confounded by the thumb gusset construction, but in hindsight I think that was me not reading the pattern correctly because I was watching TV at the time and I want using markers.

Anyway, I went to the pattern page to look at other people’s projects, and I had the realization that everyone else’s cables went the opposite was as mine. Turns out there was errata for the cable chart (the motifs were transposed in the book). I really didn’t care about that as I like how it looks regardless. But the cable looked much more centered for everyone else as well.

Undeterred, I knit the thumb, adding ribbing so it wouldn’t curl.( I also knit the thumb gusset a couple rounds longer before putting it on waste yarn )

Then I cast on for the left mitt and got to the point of doing the gusset and could see that the cable was going to be very well centered on this one. In comparing the two, the first is missing an entire rib column between the thumb and the cable. No idea if that was a pattern error or operator error (I suspect the latter), but in any case, I’ll be ripping out the first and completely re-knit it.

I have decided that these will not be a Christmas gift for Emma at this point. I’ll either keep them for me or hold onto them for a future gift.

1/26/22 – More than four years later, I finally mitigated the issue with the second mitt. A suggestion I’d gotten way back was to just rearrange the stitches on the second mitt so it matched the first, regardless of it being correct or not. So that’s what I ended up doing, though that created some problems of it’s own, but I made it work because seriously, after all this time, I just wanted this project done. Sometimes done is better than perfect, and this is one of those times. (I did almost have the second mitt’s thumb finished in this take 2 before realizing I placed it such that it was creating a second right hand mitt :face_palm:. Tore back AGAIN and fixed that too. Holy moly.)

The second mitt definitely looks a little different than the first, it’s a row or two longer and has some odd bits where I did the retrofitting, but whatever. FINISHED!