This is my possum yarn being swatched up for a pair of mittens. It’s so soft when it’s running through your fingers and has just a tiny bit of a halo to it once it’s knit up. It’s going to be lovely mittens.

It might seem funny to swatch for mittens. Even if my gauge is a bit off mittens are small enough that it might not matter too much. The thing is I’ve made this pattern up before. It was right when I started knitting and I just picked some needles I had - they may have even been the size called for in the pattern (US 7) - and started knitting.

You can probably see my first problem already. I realized just how much of a mistake this was when I was reading over the pattern yesterday and noticed that it calls for “3.25 mm (US 7)” - that’s a mistake in the pattern - US 7 is about 4.5 mm! My second problem was that I’d learned to knit from a book (and not very well) and it wasn’t until I was half way through the first mitten and showed it to my grandmother that I discovered I was knitting through the back loop. I don’t know if that effects gauge but it definitely changed the texture of my knitting. At any rate the mittens were huge - I wonder if Jane still has them?

I need a new pair of mittens for myself (my current pair have a whole in the thumb) and I really want them to fit (or at the very least to not fall off) so I’m swatching.