Texting Mitts!

Found a new knitting project that I am really enjoying.  In the past month, I have completed five pair and am working on a sixth pair of what I am calling 'Texting Mitts' since the tips of your fingers and thumb are exposed so you can still use your "touch screen" device (phone, iPod) while wearing them.

The pattern is Nona's Rosy Fingerless Gloves, and it is a fabulous pattern for someone just beginning to knit with double-point needles.  The instructions are easy to follow, it does not take very much yarn, and it only takes a few hours to finish one of the mitts. For the first two pair that I knit, I following Nona's pattern exactly.  After that, I made some slight modifications to include ribbing at the top and to extend the length of the thumb.  Everyone who sees the mitts just loves them and has to try them on to see how they feel.  

While Samantha and I were visiting New York City for Spring Break, we visited two different yarn shops.  We found this gorgeous merino wool at Purl Soho, and I just love the look and feel of it.  The yarn is hand-dyed by artisans in Uruguay, and is ultra soft.  One pair of the mitts took slightly more than half of the skein, so I bought some neutral yarn to complement it and you can see that I am adding some stripes to the cuff of the next pair so that I can complete another pair of the Texting Mitts out of the skein. 

We also took a bus trip to Hoboken, New Jersey in hopes of visiting Carlo's Bake Shop (of TLC's Cake Boss fame).  Oh my, we were absolutely not prepared for the 2-block long line to get into the bakery.  Estimates were that it would take 3 hours to get in the doors from our starting point.  We waited just a few minutes and then decided against staying.  Afterall, it is just a bakery!  But we did not regret the trip to Hoboken.  It was such a lovely community, and only a 10 minute bus ride from the 42nd Street Bus Terminal in NYC.

Fortunately, I had researched yarn shops in Hoboken and we visited Patricia's Yarns on our walk to Carlo's.  We arrived just as the owner was walking up to the shop to open it for the day, pushing her sleeping baby in a stroller and carrying her small dog in a shoulder bag.  She visited with us for a while and even recommended La Isla, a Cuban place where we had a fabulous bowl of soup for lunch.  The yarn we bought from Patricia is not the correct weight for Texting Mitts, so we are still on the search for a great pattern to use with this fun, bright pink and yellow yarn.