This year I am joining in on Spin Off magazine’s Mitt Along. Despite living in the lower mainland of British Columbia where we rarely see below zero weather, I decided to make a super warm pair of mitts. So in my experience, that calls for a stranded knitted pattern.

Last weekend I experimented with several fibres and made the main colour yarn. That’s the skein of green you can see below. For the contrast colour, I want to pick up on the pink noil flecks I put into the green yarn, and so the search is on for the right pink.

I want the yarn to behave just like the green yarn – meaning I want it to be the same thickness and have the same bounce. To do this I thought that adding a small amount of the dark brown Friesian (that’s the name of the breed of sheep from whence the brown fleece came) to some pink and white rolags I had in my stash.

I carded up a sample on my hand carders and this rolag below was the second sample. The first sample is the small skein of yarn to the left of the rolag.

And here is what it looked like spun up. It turned out darker than I wanted it to be. But the brown fibre produced the bounce I wanted. Back to the drawing board to find some white fibre with similar properties of the brown Friesian and make another sample.

Stay tuned.