Owl Fetchings//FO Friday and Year of Projects

You know when you find a pattern that you love, and it takes just a week to knit, bead and block the item? Yeah that. These mitts took me just 8 days to complete, I could have finished them quicker but I've been doing a little bit of designing and some painting. I absolutely loved knitting these AND I made a few modifications to the pattern:

 

Fetching Owls:

I purchased the yarn for these mitts back in April; it's Debbie Bliss Rialto Aran and I used about 1.25 balls. I cast on using a 3.75mm needle instead of a 4mm just to get a tighter knit:



 I made appropriate modifications for the length as I have quite long hands, and I wanted these to sit just past my wrists - so I added in some ribbing rows both before and after the thumb:

 I found these owls super easy to cable, and in actual fact the whole pattern was easy to memorize and just knit up - I love when you find an easy, fun knit that looks awesome:

 I had to pick up stitches for the thumb, and to be honest that was the only place I found a slight issue with the pattern - if I knit them again (which I probably will), I will pick up extra stitches as I had to reinforce the base stitches. However the thumb did come out well after those minor technical issues:

I chose to put just 2 beads on each mitt, because these beads really stand out and I wanted the owl pattern to show but to be quite strong. This last photo shows both the mitts, and our cat Bilbo who wanted attention!!!

I am super happy with my first autumn/winter project this year; I am hoping for chilly weather to come soon so I can wear them!!!

This post is part of my year of projects as I've used 2 of the techniques I wanted to have a go at - modification and picking up stitches. I'm also playing along with FO Friday and Tami.

What have you finished this week?

V xo