Here's another project I picked up again.
I am working on a pair of mittens with the first stanza of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Christmas Bells poem. I told this story previously on my blog but it was a few years ago when I started these mittens so I guess I can tell it again.
Longfellow had endured a tragic few years. First his wife died in a freak accident - she was sealing a letter with wax and her dress caught on fire. (Longfellow wore a long bushy beard after that to cover his burns from when he tried to save her.) Then his son was severely wounded in the Civil War. On Christmas Day 1864 he wrote this poem. The first stanza is, "I heard the bells on Christmas Day, Their old familiar carols play, And wild and sweet, The words repeat, Peace on earth, goodwill to men." You can read the entire poem HERE - it is really lovely.
I contacted Knitpicks' and they sent me the yarn to knit these mittens in two colorways. If they accept the final product the pattern will appear in their Independent Designer's Program on their web site for $1.99. The pattern comes in three sizes (depending on needle size used) and uses 3 colors of Palette. The mittens feature a peasant thumb and a twisted rib cuff. The one in the blue colorway is a size small knit with size 0 (US) dpns and the one in the red and green is the large size with size 1.5 (US) needles.
Now I'm off to knit the other two mittens.