YOP Update - Mittens, Pokemon and Corn

This week has me getting no where fast on my Year Of Projects list, but my knitting inspiration is running at high speeds!  Yup, that's right, nothing has been started, knitted on or finished from my planned year list of knitting projects.  Instead, I am being inspired by Kate Davies Seven Skeins club yet again this week.  My friend's "Baffie" slipper socks are now completely done (blocked too!) and all ready for their trip to Washington DC. 

While they were drying on the blocking mat, I launched right into another of the club's patterns (they are available to everyone come January 1st on Ravelry) called Kokkeluri - a stranded pair of mittens with a flower design on the back and a twill pattern on the palm side.  The flower reminded me so much of sunflowers that I had to knit them in yellow.  Kate's 7 skeins of Buachaille yarn does not include a yellow so I used her natural grey called "Haar" for the background and purchased some Jamieson's Double Knitting in the Scotch Broom colorway for the flower line drawing.  My goal is for the mittens to match my Michele hat that I knit a while back whose matching double knitted mittens are languishing in my WIP basket.  The double knitting was just getting too tedious and boring to knit, but these Kokkeluri mittens - they just beckon you to keep going.  The only sad thing about these lovely mittens is they are a little short for my long fingers.  The pattern talks about blocking them "vigorously"by pulling them down over the tall end of a sock blocker, so I am putting my trust in those directions that in the end the mittens will emerge the right size for me.

Even though I'm getting better at stranded knitting through these projects, it still is a bit tiring for me.  Thus, for something completely different, I started on a project for my son.  He is back into loving Pokemon again and requested some Pokemon mittens.  Here is what I came up with using this hat pattern as a jumping off point.  They are pretty straightforward with changing colored yarn and a bit of duplicate stitching being the only oddities.  The mitten came out a bit long and slim looking, but it fit my son just fine (me too actually.  He's only 9 and our hands are almost the same size! Sigh.)  Now, I just need to make the second one, which I think will be pretty quick, so I can get back to finishing my own mittens.  Although, I do think I may surprise him with a matching hat as I have plenty of yarn left over.  We'll see...

This week I am leaving you with a photo from today of my husband and son who attended the Sever's Annual Corn Maze.  It is a humongous maze cut out of a corn field with a different design each year.  This year it was a firefighting truck.  It was their first time going and boy did they have fun!  Pig races, a large bouncy play area (think bouncy castle without the top and make it the size of a baseball field), zip lines, giant slide, petting zoo, you name it. They also have a corn pit you can dig, play or in my son's case bury yourself in.  Yup, my guess is this is on the Fall "to do" list for next year.

If you want to visit the other Year of Projects, or YOP for short, participants you can head on over to Ravelry and find them here.  Have a great week everyone!