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Dino Surgery

I am happy to report that the Tyrannosaurus Rex Mittens survived surgery and are now on their way to New Zealand to make another special nephew very happy.

Followers of this blog will remember the Triceratops Gloves I made last month for someone’s special nephew? It was a romping good play at hacking a pattern and flying blindly by the seat of my pants, listening to my gut assure me that everything would be fine, only to have it all be SPLENDID at the end.

When I blogged about the gloves I was also most of the way through knitting the mitten portions of the TRex mittens. I was feeling pretty darned accomplished after kitchernering the top of the second mitten, and I laid them out together to snap a photo.
 

Yeah….I should have known better than to knit them individually. I was annoyed enough with myself that I had to set them aside for a little while to let the air clear.

I was very certain that I was not going to knit another mitten from scratch. No, no, no. There was hard work and thought that went into the first set of mittens, I wasn’t prepared to undo that. Especially not after last week’s frogging tirade in response to the Yarn Stash confrontation.

After pretending that little project didn’t exist for a couple of days in hopes that the darned mitt would get with it and grow on it’s onesies, I gave in, made myself a very large coffee and pulled out my knitting toolbox. I’d decided there was really nothing for it, I was going to have to operate.

I first picked up the stitches in the row below where I’d begun the decreases for the top of the mitten. Then, I pulled out my scissors and, after giving the mitten one final chance to acquiesce on its own, I cut the top of the mitt and ripped back to the picked up stitches. (No photo, sorry. But let's just call it patient/doctor privilege.)

I then proceeded to, very carefully and checking after every row like some poor paranoid soul, reknit the top part of the glove to match the first mitten. Luckily I didn’t have to reknit the thumb and the only other reknitting issue I had for the rest of the project was one of the cheek membranes. Otherwise, everything was easy peasy the rest of the way along.

 Here’s the final photo before post off the finished mittens. Hopefully, I’ll have a photo of these darlings in action soon. My hands are too big to get them to sit right for the full effect.


The original pattern did come with a child size this time, but I didn’t have the right weight of yarn for the pattern. Also, as these two lil’ dude’s are very close, I wanted these mittens to be obviously related to the Triceratops Gloves that had already made their way across the pond.

Remember the darling gift bags Liebling and I (mostly Liebling, let’s be honest) decorated for the little dudes? Bag no. 2 has been shipped off!


For anyone who’s interested, here’s how I hacked this pattern. 

Original Pattern: T Rex Mittens by Chelsea Nicole Spangler

Yarn: Fingering weight yarn in Cascade Heritage Solid in Cedar Green-5864 and Grey-56560)

Needles: 3.75mm (US-5) needles (I used a combination of circulars and dpns)

Hook: 3.75mm (US-F)

I cast on 44sts and did 5 repeats of a broken rib texture for the cuff. (See the Triceratops Gloves pattern for these instructions.)

I knitted 16 rows for the hand before knitting in a 6 stitch waste yarn for the afterthought thumb. I then knit until I had reached the last digit of the longest finger for the hand, (I had an outline of the kiddo’s hand to work from) and then began a basic two-row decrease pattern until I had 10 stitches left on each needle. Finally, I kitchenered the top together to close. (If you’ve done basic toe decreases for socks, you’ll be familiar with this)

In other news I seem to have placated the Yarn Stash. After frogging virtually everything last week that I’d cast on in a haze of New Relationship Euphoria with the acquisitions from my Melbourne trip (let us not speak of that weekend afternoon every again. It was painful to my pride and my heart) I have managed to make excellent progress on the Lace Socks and Liebling’s Tom Baker Scarf and gotten away with a new cast on. Yes it’s all from Stash yarn. Like I’m going to tempt fate any closer to Christmas than this...


(LEFT) Winter Rose Socks by Helen Stewart and (MIDDLE) Liebling’s Tom Baker Scarf (my own pattern, and (LEFT) Birds of a Feather by Andrea Mowry (yeah I know what you thought it was, go have a cold shower!)

  



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