Chrysanthemums

Every year around mid-October when I catch the first briskness in the air and realize autumn is properly settling in, I get a hankering to knit like mad. I am super behind on knit-blogging (literally – there are multiple, elaborate sweaters I have finished but haven’t photographed yet!) but I will be working through the catch-up pile soon. Meanwhile, as I finished a pair of socks and had some size 1 needles free, I decided there was no time like the present to have another crack at colorwork…

As I started working on the Chrysanthemums mittens from Knitty, it occurred to me that chrysanthemums are the birth flower for November, so these would make an excellent birthday present to myself (November 1).

In the first pass I made the background of the main section yellow and the chrysanthemums this purplish fuchsia, but it looked drab and I really disliked how much the strands in the back showed through with the tension issues I was having. I also realized that if my intent is to (ultimately) have these mittens go with a Selbu Modern beret as planned, they wouldn’t coordinate well in reversed colors.

Much better.

I ripped back to the cuff but decided to keep the picot trim and wrist section with a yellow background for contrast. I’m much happier with the color combination now and excited to see how these come out!