I started this project while still on our trip and have just finished. In my last post I said that I took five skeins of sock yarn away with me. One problem I had was that I kept second guessing if I wanted to make socks with any of the yarns. With the last two skeins, one of them I could envisage as a particular pattern, a colourwork pattern, so not only did I need another ball of yarn it was also not a pattern that I was likely to knit on a trip. The other skein was a self-striping yarn that I had been given that I could not picture as socks. In the end I decided to make the mitten pattern that I had made on last year's trip. This is a relatively easy pattern and this year I had remembered to bring scrap yarn so I was able to work a provisional cast on. And fortuitously I had packed extra needles.
Once again, I made changes to the pattern. I decided not to make them as long as my first pair, and to make the turnover flap longer to really cover the thumb and to make the thumb opening closer to the edge - although I managed to mess that up.
The overall length is about 1 1/4 inches shorter than my first pair and I really need to wear both pairs (one of each?) with a jacket to get an idea of my preferred length. The turnover goes fully over my thumb and I could possibly make it a bit shorter - with the shorter total length of the mitt and the longer turnover the mitten is mostly turnover and I'm not sure if that is strange but is definitely preferable to the first pair with the shorter turnover. The pattern as written has the thumb hole centred. This does put the thumb in a strange position when the turnover is, well, turned over. The designer does say you can move the thumb hole without giving suggestions so I moved it one stitch in from the edge. The first mitt turned out well. The second mitt I remembered to move the opening to the other side of the palm but did not take into account that I had worked a different provisional cast on, resulting in working the mitten from the other end. So by moving the opening to the other side as you would normally, I had put it on the same side. I didn't notice until the mitten was finished. Usually I would undo and reknit but I couldn't face the thought of making sure I didn't lose all the provisional stitches. When I wear it, it feels like when I wear the one with the centre opening so not the end of the world, just don't look closely at them.
