Wrapping Up My Year of Weldon's

It's time to "shut that whole thing down"...I'm preparing to head to England for the holidays, so the Lady's Silk Mitts pattern is my last project in My Year of Weldon's.  I will be blogging about my trip, hopefully with good photos (my daughter the photographer is coming, so you won't have to rely on my horrible picture-taking skills)

It's been a fun year, and I come away with tremendous respect for the unjustly anonymous Weldon's pattern writers.  Their patterns are so well-written, with very few errors and clear enough that they can be used today, over 100 years after they were written.  While we may not want to knit all the fussy items in the Weldon's catalog of patterns, lots of them are surprisingly up to date in current yarns.  Some knitting fashions really don't go out of style (the fingerless mitts are a great example of a style that looks as good today as it did in 1895)

I'm hoping to donate my year of Weldon's projects to our local museum, which includes a home maintained with the furnishings and fashions of the 1890s.  Perfect for my box of Victorian projects.

Project 29: Lady's Silk Mitts Done

As usual, my picture is lame, but I will try for a better photo when my photographer daughter gets home tonight.

I'm very happy with these mitts, I already have one daughter who wants them in her Christmas stocking.  I will be adding the updated pattern to the list of downloadable patterns.  This one did require some mods in order to not be hugely long.  If you wanted to exactly recreate them, it would require using silk thread and size 0000 needles, not in my time constraints at this time of year!

Project 29: lady's Silk Mittens Update

One mitten finished. I switched to size zero needles. I had to make a few revisions in order to have a mitt that wasn't too long, even at 10 rows to the inch.

I shortened the length by starting the thumb gusset on round 4 of the hand section, rather than knitting 12 rounds first. I also increased for the thumb every other round, rather than every third round. I shortened the thumb considerably.

I like the pattern a lot even with the mods.