More mittens to show you - I'm calling these the Valencia mittens and they use 3 colors of Cascade 220.

It was a beautiful weekend so we decided to take a walk around Nob Hill and Ridgecrest in Albuquerque.

The catmint was in bloom.

Everything is starting to green up.

On the way to the park.

I'm not sure the name of this park in Ridgecrest but it is my favorite park in the city.

HAPPY EARTH DAY!

In honor of the festivities, Bubbles is hard at work on her telephone book recycling program.



Jack is planning on doing his part to save the earth as soon as he finishes his nap.

Here's what it looked like here on Friday:



And here is the exact same view on Saturday:



I think it has snowed more this month than in rest of winter this year.

My mitten progress is pathetic - I really should have finished all the mittens a few weeks ago. Anyway, I just have the thumbs to knit on this pair in Cascade 220 - here I'm showing the mitten inside out because I like the way the floats are striped.

Next I closely look at my knitting to determine exactly where the first stitch in the cast on edge is located. It is important to get this right to have a nice finished look. In this photo I put an orange line to show you where the first stitch is found - on the left of the line.




When picking up stitches I use my left thumb to slightly push up the cast on edge and I pick up the first complete stitch immediately under the cast on edge. I used orange arrows below to show you exactly where I'll be picking up sts.




Another view of the process of picking up sts. I always look closely to make sure I'm picking up the stitch right in the center of the stitch.




This is the side of the thumb so you can see the stitch I picked up along the side.





Okay I'm off to answer questions in the comments. Whew - updating two blogs in one day with lots of photos that need dealing with is quite time-consuming. I think I'll do them on different days from now on.

Here are my photos on how to pick up stitches around a thumb. I did do a step-by-step photo tutorial on how I do my peasant thumbs in two parts. Check my technique links in the right hand sidebar.

I begin the thumb by putting the stitches on the outside of the thumb back on the needles. I take the waste yarn off after I put the stitches back on the needles. The waste yarn usually pulls right out with no problem and it is even more likely if I've taken the effort to find yarn that is a lighter weight for the waste yarn.

I knit across the front stitches in pattern. Here I'm using a contrast yarn in pink to try to show this process better. BTW, notice the sharp Knitpicks' metal dpns - for picking up stitches, sharper is better. I always use needles to pick up stitches (I insert the dpn through the location where I want to add a stitch, then knit a stitch onto the needle.) but you can use crochet hooks as well.






When I get to the side of the thumb hole I am going to pick up a stitch on the side of the thumb as the pattern states to do. (I never pick up more stitches than the pattern specifies around a thumb or finger hole - I think it is noticeable and I prefer to use the reverse duplicate stitch to fix any loose stitches or holes after I'm done knitting.) On the side of the thumb hole between the stitches knit from the waste yarn and the cast on stitches on the back there are two stitches - a yellow green and a darker green. I pick up a stitch through one of these two stitches. If you look at both side stitches, the yellow green stitch is a bit looser. That is why I decide to pick up the stitch through the dark green stitch. (Picking up stitches through loose or large stitches often seems to make them more noticeable, not less.) I just pick up a stitch through the right side of that darker green stitch.




They're all on the needles now.

Next post - picking up the sts from the cast on edge.

Before I show how to pick up the stitches for the thumb I wanted to talk again about why I do the peasant thumb the way I do. The most common/popular way to do a peasant thumb (also called an invisible thumb or waste thumb) is shown at the top. You knit to the thumb opening, knit across the thumb stitches on waste yarn, and return those stitches to the needles and continue to knit with the regular yarn.




The way I do it is shown in the bottom of the 1st photo. I knit to the thumb opening, put the thumb stitches on waste yarn using a tapestry needle, and cast on the same number of thumb stitches using the backwards loop cast on. (If I'm doing colorwork mittens, I cast on using both yarns in pattern.) I prefer this method for two reason - it allows you to try the mittens on as you go to make sure they're the right length and I think it is easier to pick up stitches in pattern when knitting with 2 colors. While the first method is quite popular with knitters actually the second method of dealing with a mitten thumb is called the traditional method in Lizbeth Upitis' Latvian Mittens book.

If you do your thumb the first way, be forewarned that you will not get as many live stitches on the back of the thumb opening as on the front when you remove the waste yarn. This can screw people up in their stitch counts. The only place I've ever seen this phenomenon mentioned is Nancy Bush's Folk Knitting in Estonia. In the photo below after the waste yarn was removed there are 8 live stitches on the front of the thumb opening but only 7 stitches on the back of the thumb opening. (The missing mystery stitch will be a half stitch on the upper right hand side of the opening in the photo.)



My goal is always to make the colorwork pattern match up on the inside of the thumb as shown below to keep the feeling of a true invisible thumb. Of course this isn't always possible if the pattern itself doesn't give the right number of stitches to keep the colorwork pattern seamless.

I'm off to see if I can get some good photos of how I pick up the stitches.

Could these two be any cuter? It is nice to see a cat and a rabbit actually getting along. Maybe I should show it to Bubbles and Jack.

I hope to get some good photos of how I pick up stitches around a mitten thumb this week. I also hope to finish up another pair of mittens to show you in Cascade 220.




I finally started a cooking blog, Cooking in Color. It features vegan recipes and lots of New Mexico foodie adventures. I've been working on links of my favorite foodie stores and cookbooks and restaurants. I really want to make this new blog photo-heavy because that is the kind of cooking blog I like the best. Anyway all comments on the new blog are appreciated - I am still trying to figure out how I want the blog header to look.

Here's the 2nd part of my posts about our trip yesterday to the Jemez area. Below is the Jemez River.




We also went to Perea Trail near Bernalillo. It is right off the highway and has a lot of blinds set up for birding. Here's a pair of mittens in alpaca - I'm not really the best model for mittens because I want to make the mittens a medium/large size for the pattern but my hands are narrow and fit better in a smaller size.



If you look closely above DH's head, there is a tiny black spot in the sky he was looking at.




We were followed by a pair of golden eagles during our walk along the trail.

I have so many photos from our road trip yesterday I'm going to divide them into 2 blog posts. We wanted to get out and about and I brought some mittens from the mitten booklet along to photograph.

We first went to my favorite place in New Mexico, Jemez Springs. My photos never seem to do justice to all the beautiful colors of the landscape. Jemez Springs is right past the Jemez Indian Pueblo and there are signs up that you're not allowed to take photographs at the pueblo. Actually on the sign it also said "No Sketching" which I thought was amusing.



This is Soda Dam just north of Jemez Springs.



Here is a fingerless mitten knit in 2 colors of Palette photographed in front of Fenton Lake.




I'm so glad we checked out Fenton Lake before hauling our canoe there because while pretty it really isn't large enough for canoeing. Plus I can only imagine how crowded it gets during warmer weather - there is only access on one side and even on a cloudy snowy day there were many fishermen out.




Lately everywhere I go in New Mexico has landscapes altered by wildfire. Amazingly there were 2 houses right in the middle of all the burnt trees and they did not look affected.