Mitten Swap Part One

On a cold and snowy day in February I was sucking down my coffee and strolling through my twitter feed when I saw all this chatter about color work mittens between a few twitterers.... all of sudden I somehow signed myself up for my first ever swap.  This swap represented a great challenge for me as I had never knit a colorwork mitten before!  Then it got scary... I had been assigned to knit for Torirot, a knitter from Norway, in my mind, the home of the colorwork mitten, AND another amazing knitter from Norway, OsloAnn, would be knitting for me.... oh my!

I began trolling the internet and Ravelry for mittens and patterns I loved.  When I stumbled along these I knew I hit a chord.  Then it was time to go yarn shopping at Knitting Etc. I've always had a passion for Crazy Zauberball, and hadn't come up with an excuse to buy any yet and when I saw a red/orange/gold ball I was SOLD.  Knitting Etc has an excellent selection of Jamieson's and I spent a fair amount of time playing with colors until I fell in love with some purple.  When I got home, I read again about Torirot's desires, and saw she had red and purple at the TOP of her color choices, PERFECTO!

  

 

Somewhere in all of that I decided there was no way I could not design the mittens, and since I had Belize on the brain, Maya Mittens were conceived. 

 

Wee Mayan temples surround the palm, with a sun motif emblazoned on the back of each hand.  Parts of these mittens were challenging as there were many places that the floats were more than 5 stitches long, so a fair amount of "catching" of floats had to be worked. 

 

I just have to decide if I am going to write this pattern up or not, they are so different than my typical designs, but I LOVE them!

I'll be back tomorrow with Part II of this post where I share with you want OsloAnn made for me : )!