Mitten Deficit

I keep telling myself that one of these days life is bound to get less chaotic.  That work will calm down and the apartment will be back in good working order.  But at the rate things are going I think this is actually the norm and I am just along for the ride.  This week I actually managed to get away from it all.  One of my coworkers had a birthday so a bunch of us went to the mountains.  I took my husband, turned off my work email, and just relaxed.  Until a giant snowstorm hit and we got snowed in with 20 inches of rain and no way of knowing if our homes had power and our pets were safe.  Thank God none of us have children.

Today I'm back to the insanity of it all.  I was supposed to leave this morning for a business trip (I know!  I feel so grown up) but the airline cancelled our flight, leaving us with much more questionable weather conditions for our much later flight.  At the same time, I just got to watch USA beat Russia in an insane hockey matchup, so that was fun.

Last week I was starting to pull things together for the mountains and our work trip when I came to a shocking realization.  I don't own any mittens.  I knit a pair of Bella mittens about five years ago but since then it has been fingerless mitts all the way.  So what's a girl to do with less than a week before she takes off for frozen climes?  Why knit a new pair of mittens of course!

Two Hands Make a Snowflake!  I have had this pattern in my queue for quite some time but never got around to knitting because hello, fingers.  Plus it is knit out of worsted and I have plenty of sock yarn scraps in my stash, but very few worsted.

These are knit out of Cascade 220 (one of the very first skeins of yarn I ever bought at a yarn shop) and Knit Picks Wool of the Andes, leftover from all those stockings I still need to finish (grumble, grumble).  At times I yelled at myself for choosing to do these stranded rather than double knitting the chart, but I am really glad I did.  We spent a lot of time in snow this week, tubing, shoveling, and just digging out doors and cars and my hands were never cold.  The double layer of yarn made them super cozy and warm.  The only change I would make is a button to hold down the mitten flap because the shoveling and falling in the snow caused it to flip up a lot, exposing my fingers.

Overall?  A very positive experience.  And if we keep getting weather like this I'm going to have to make more.