Blocked times three
Usually when I say that something “just needs blocking”, what I really mean is “all the interesting knitting is done, it needs blocking, sewing up and the boring bits knitting on it and so I’ve buried it behind the settee in a carrier bag until I feel guilty enough to get on with it”. 
To avoid the carrier bag mummification phase I blocked the mittens straight away before I lost interest in them, they needed it to eliminate the line on the palm where the needle join was. You can see it on the right hand mitten, there wasn’t much of a line on the left mitten because that was the second one that I made. I can learn quickly when I put my mind to it.
These are my second pair of Anemoi mittens, made because my aunt lost one of the original pair that I made. My notes were patchy on the first pair, I know that the one I started with 2.5mm needles was too small but I don’t know whether I ended up on 2.75mm or 3mm. With these I got 9 stitches per inch with 2.75mm needles, it’s a lovely fabric but they wouldn’t have wanted to be any smaller. They fit, they’d still fit with an extra four stitches but they’d be too small with four stitches less. I didn’t do the tubular cast on, I couldn’t get the mitten on when I tried that last time around so this time I didn’t even try.
This has been more or less finished since Christmas Eve, that was when I stuffed it behind the settee to see whether it would block itself and sew itself together. I’ve made this pattern before in grey, this is the same yarn dyed brown so it was a no brainer to knit it again, same yarn, same needles. This time I eliminated the side seam because we all know how much I love sewing up and I changed the shaping on the sleeves to two decreases on alternate rows rather than one decrease every row. I dug it out last week, blocked it and delegated sewing up to my mother. It turns out that I’d knitted one of the button bands before succumbing to terminal boredom so there was less boring knitting to do than I’d expected. I didn’t knit buttonholes in the bands, when I knitted this pattern before my mother created two extra buttonholes with a needle and thread. As I don’t know what buttons she’s got stashed for this I decided that she could add buttonholes wherever she wanted them. 
The pattern calls for two rows of crochet around the neck and I wasn’t sold on the result the last time I did it. This time I picked up stitches around the neck and cast them off on the next row. It’s finished the edge without adding any width and there isn’t the bulk of a facing to deal with. It had the added benefit that I didn’t have to dredge through the bottom of the needle bag looking for a crochet hook.
When I block things while they are still on the needles it’s usually a sign that there’s something wrong. Blocking is the last chance for it to prove itself to be worthy of my knitting time. I’m not fully committed to this, partly because it involves purling with two colours, partly because there are more ends than I care to deal with but I could forgive it for both of those sins if it looked good. There’s not enough contrast, the two dark greys vanish into each other and the brown could have been more black. The fabric feels lovely, the tension is right but the end result is less than stellar. I’m trying to decide whether it’s worth carrying on into the hat or whether I should call this earflap a swatch and be done with it. I’m still undecided, this might need a spell of confinement down the back of the settee while I make my mind up.
