These mittens had been in my Ravelry queue for over two years, but I've never really had any reason to knit mittens. (Besides a couple pairs of baby and toddler sized ones.) Lately, though, fingerless gloves haven't been warm enough when I'm driving on cold mornings. I'm planning on making a pair of full gloves sometime this year, but I didn't want to make them now so I decided on mittens.
The pattern is Emma's Mittens. It's one of those patterns that looks complicated and busy but is actually pretty simple to follow. Things did get a little off with the last couple of rows of decreases before you graft the top of the mittens closed...the instructions aren't very clear and I didn't have the correct stitch count, but it worked out fine. The only thing I changed about the pattern was to do one less repeat of the chart before the thumb. I always knit longer gloves and mittens, but these were plenty long enough with only four repeats.
I love all of the texture on these mittens: cables and bobbles on the front and seed stitch on the back. It makes them feel even thicker and warmer.
I used some Quince & Co. yarn: Lark in the honey colorway. When I ordered this yarn, I thought it was going to be a mustard yellow. (That's how it looked on the website, and that's what "honey" implies, right?) It turned out to be a rather unusual shade of greenish brown, so it sat in my stash for about a year before I finally decided it would work well for mittens. As usual, Quince & Co.'s yarn is wonderful to knit with, plus it's American wool.
{The snowy background seemed fitting since I knitted the second mitten while being snowed in over the weekend.}
Project page.