not quite on target

I absolutely love the target wave mittens in Nora Gaughan's book Knitting Nature: 39 designs inspired by patterns in nature. I thought that I would be very clever and exploit the structure of the mitten by using a self-striping yarn, namely some Opal sock yarn that I bought in the form of a beanie and cardigan at the St Vincent de Paul op shop in Benalla quite some time ago (who donates hand knits?). Unfortunately the workmanship wasn't really up to scratch (perhaps explaining the donation) so I unravelled them.

Anyway, not quite so clever as I thought. Self-striping sock yarn is designed to self stripe around the circumference of an adult calf, not a two year-old's wrist so I really just ended up with chunks of colour in the hand of the mitten. The thumbs are stripier but only because I cut the yarn up, leaving me with lots of ends to darn in, avoidance of which was part of the point of doing it in self-striping yarn. And I cast on too tightly. And the thumb is too long, even though it's shorter than the pattern called for. And baby bear refused to wear it anyway (unwelcome theme emerging here - see previous post).

So, I'm cutting my losses, so to speak. There is one complete but there will be no pair. I'm not even going to bother frogging it for a few strands of yarn. There's quite a bit still left over. I might knit something suitable out of it - like, say, socks.