Fingerless mitts

Is anyone else fond of fingerless mittens?

I know I am!

I always thought that to keep warm one needed big, bulky gloves made of insulating material. Maybe it is our climate with not very harsh winters but quite windy and wet autumn and spring, but I slowly became convinced that covering my wrists and palms usually is enough for my fingers to remain usable.

I saw a few interesting pictures on Pinterest and I began wondering how I can make something similar to the next three pictures. A little bit of thinking and backwards engineering and I came up with my version of mittens knit sideways.

Black fingerless mittens

Brown fingerless mittens

Purple fingerless mittens

 These are only three colors I finished lately. More colors are coming.
I love them because they are seamless, fairly tight, yet they still allow my fingers to move.

Talking about autumn weather, this gloomy, wet rainy weather doesn't help one bit with the photos. I had to ask my husband to take these pictures at night, with artificial light. Lucky that my camera is good enought to take decent pictures that can be easily edited. I tried to get the color of the mittens as close to reality as possible.

After I came up with my version of these fingerless mittens, I saw that there are more similar patterns available on Ravelry. Still I have the feeling it could be beneficial to write down my version of these. So my next project is up. Now I need to make a lighter colored version, so I won't have so much trouble with taking detailed pictures of every step.

Pig, piggy, piglet...

I love knitting.
I don't have much patience.
So, small projects are perfect for me.
That is why I love knitting small baby socks or pigs. Yes, pigs.

While looking for small items to make for my sons, I stumbled upon these beauties. It was a free pattern, so I went for a try. Let's just say, it took me many trial and errors to end up with these:

Rainbow piggy

Again, knitting is the easy part. 

At this point you have no clue how big they are... or how small.

Pictures are sooo important. Let me show you one of my first trials at taking a picture of the first piggies I made.

Pink piggy

Hmm, something doesn't look right... Ok, photoshop can help with clearing the background, but looking back at these... I just acknowledge it as one step on my path.

Now let's see if I improved anything

Autumn piggy

These became my best sellers at one point. 

Here is a little sense of scale:

Autumn piggy

Next improvement was, (besides clearer pictures, which could be taken outside in the afternoon on a white table) when I learned how to knit in beads as eyes.

New collection of pigs

This picture also shows size very well. 

Size can be shown by adding a ruler or a coin, but holding a small item in the hand seems the best for me. Yes, it would be even nicer to convince my son to hold it and stand still for 10 seconds, but I have to see that happen. 

Now back to the little rainbow piggies. In the next picture I'm barely touching it, but still you get a sense of the scale. A human hand also helps at judging the colors. Our eyes tend to adapt, and our brains recognize colors better if in the picture is a familiar object, not just plain white background.

Rainbow pig

And last but not least, a picture taken on my phone. That should really give you a sense of scale, since most people own a smartphone. Ok, most people out of the people browsing the internet. (My father doesn't have a smartphone... but he's not browsing the internet either)

Rainbow piggy

If anyone would like to see just how many colors and combinations I made so far from this pattern, you can check them out here.

Details, details...

Adding a macro lens to the collection is one of the most important things I did. A DSLR camera will reveal its true nature once you begin using the right lens for each job.

Autumn forest shawl

Dove gray shawl detail

Blue yellow crochet lace shawl

For the first weeks after receiving my camera ( NIKON D3300) i played around with the kit lens. It was fun! Still something was missing... I couldn't capture details, I had to crop the pictures to get rid of the unwanted bits.

So with the first occasion that an ad popped up on my facebook, that accessories for my camera were 20% off, I went for it. And never looked back. Enjoying the moment. :-)

More pictures of each shawl can be seen in my shop over on Etsy, here.

Or you can come back, to see what I have to share next...