Mawata Mittens

Last time I was in Portland, I was trying to find a suitable treat to bring home for some of my knitting pals.  I saw a bunch of silk hankies (aka mawata) on display and remembered the lovely mittens that Yarn Harlot once made from them.  I picked up a handful of brightly coloured hankies for each of the girls, thinking that maybe we might have a knitalong sometime.

A few months ago, one of them actually started to use the hankies to make some mittens, and we were all enthralled as we watched the process of drafting and knitting from them.  One by one, we grabbed our own mawata and began to make our own colourful and beautiful silky mittens.

My own mawata were not actually from that same trip to Portland, but instead came from wooliebullie on etsy, and are called Teal for Two.  The teal is quite a blue one, and what I took for copper in the etsy photos is actually a lovely deep chocolatey brown.  When I drafted the yarn, the blue smooshed into the drifts of white and the brown steeped through it all until it made for a lovely variegated yarn.  The yarn is, of course, a bit thick-and-thin, since I'm new to drafting mawata and knitting with it.  I totally improvised the mitten pattern, but it turned out pretty well.  They fit like... well, like a properly-sized mitten.  I did a more rounded top than I usually do (some of you may remember my penchant for the Norwegian pointed-top) and I really like it.

By the way, it's really hard to get a photo of your own hands in mittens.  All I could manage was one hand, unless I pushed the button with my nose.