One of the items I concentrated on this weekend when at home was the fingerless mitts in nalbinding.
I don’t think I mentioned, but I’ve discovered nalbinding isn’t the best travel project for me. I thought it would be great – typically projects are small, you work with a fixed length of yarn, so you don’t need to worry about getting tangled in your ball of yarn or it running off, and the wood needle is very non-threatening.
The challenge is when you get to the end of the yarn. You need to splice in the next piece. I like a spit splice – I untwist the two ends a bit, let them retwist together, lay them in my right palm, give it a (slobbery) lick and then rub my palms together vigorously. Works like a charm on anything woolie and non-superwash. BUT, its kinda gross in public and well, frankly, after holding bus and tram rails I don’t want to lick my palm either.
Actually spitting into my palm is far more noticeable publically but using water means having a waterbottle even on shorter trips plus I’m really bad at getting just the little bit I need. I keep spilling some on my legs, which is uncomfortable in the cold, and ending up with soggy yarn from too much water.
So, I’ve concentrated on spending time on them at home. This weekend I completed a little gauge swatch in the fingering weight yarn I’m using for the main mitt. It’s a wool and mohair blend spun worsted, so it should be tough and sturdy for the part which will get the most wear. In knitting or crochet, I’d just guestimate my gauge on something so small, dive in, and rip back if I’m wrong.
Nalbinding, however, is totally a pain to undo as you unpick one stitch at a time. So I swatched to see how much smaller these stitches would be than in the fluffy Lana Grossa I used for the cuff.
Two rows into the main hand, I also realized I need to step up my increases for the thumb, The width : height ratio is different for the nalbinding stitch than a single crochet (sc). A sc is pretty square, but the Oslo stitch gives you more height than width in each stitch – closer to a half double crochet (hdc). I’m increasing 4 st on the next couple rows to “catch up” and I think I can then settle on 3 st increased per row.
I told my husband it’s a good thing I love him and know how much he wants these, because they are turning out awfully pretty…