Helical Mittens

As a reader of Grumperina, I was amazed at the socks she recently knit, Helical socks. At first I couldn't wrap my mind around what they heck she was doing. How could you knit using 4 colors in every row and it turn out to be stripes? She has lovely diagrams and such but I didn't want to stretch my brain that far. It has something to do with spiral knitting, which is what you are always doing when you knit in the round. You just don't notice. People have praised helical method for helping get rid of small amounts of wool, not big enough for a project but combined enough to work.

I let the helical approach peculate in my brain and then one day when I was looking at my "stash" (not really a stash, just left over project wool) I noticed that I have several balls of Telemark wool. Single balls, lovely colors but not enough of one color to make anything I was interested in. Telemark is my go to mitten yarn. I love, love, love it for mittens. Then it hit me. Hey, I maybe I could take these single balls and combine them using the helically thing.

I casted on and blindly and followed the directions. And whaddayaknow. I have perfect stripes. The first row is mismash but the rest is perfect! And that first row isn't even noticeable. Awesome, and I can't quite stop knitting. It is too tempting just to get to the new color, just one more round...

Now with all that said, I'm tempted to frog. I think I should have gone down a needle size on the ribbing, but I don't want to stop helicalling long enough to make a decision. Maybe I'll just wait until knit night tonight. I love frogging a project in front of Laura. She gives me a shocked look every time! It makes me feel like a rebel.