Maggie's Armywarmers

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Whoohoo! I'm actually posting about a finished object! Granted, I finished this project way back in March, but that's beside the point.



You may remember posting about starting my Maggie's Armwarmers a while ago. I bought the Malabrigo in part because of the rampant praise from podcasters such as The SavvyGirls, but mostly because I wanted to knit my sister a pair of fingerless mitts for Christmas. After careful consideration, finally decided that the color wasn't really her thing, and since it matched my Envy so perfectly, I might as well make mitts for myself out of them. It was fate!

Yeah, right. Try greed!

I whipped up the majority of these while at a hockey game with Monkey, his sister, and her husband. It certainly entranced all of the kiddos there! The pattern was deliciously easy, and I only changed a few minor things. For starters, I knit these in the round, eliminating the extra seaming stitches. I only made the thumbs 15 stitches around (picking up the proper amount, and then decreasing down), and knit them in the same ribbing as the rest of the mitt, because I didn't want it to curl. I love the combination of small and large cables, and the way the thumb sits in the middle of the cables is utterly brilliant. What wasn't brilliant was the yarn.

Like I mentioned before, I hadn't ever used Malabrigo Rios before, and I can tell you right now, I don't intend to purchase it ever again. I recognize that with kettle dyed yarn, you're not going to get a perfectly consistent dye job. However, that doesn't mean a crappy dye job still isn't acceptable. While you can see the gorgeous variation in tones in my project, what you can't see is that every place there was a tie was *white*. There was absolutely no seepage from the dye onto those parts. I can tell you right now, it was a giant pain in the ass making sure that didn't show in my finished project. I have a photo of one bit I cut out on my laptop, but there was a mishap and the laptop is currently awaiting repairs (argh). I'll be sure to update this post as soon as I have access to my files again.

Unfortunately, those white spots weren't my only issue with this yarn. When I first saw the white spots (which were especially infuriating since my yarn wasn't exactly a light color), I looked on Ravelry to see if anyone else had the same problem. I discovered that almost every person had a problem with winding the yarn. Since I hand wound it into a ball with no problem, I figured I was safe.

Nope.

It got tangled just sitting in my purse. Nearly the entire skein had slipped out of the ball (something I've never had happen to me before) and become a snarled mess. I wound up spending more time untangling this yarn than knitting it. It also fuzzed up like crazy. I would caution anyone against using this for a hard wearing garment.

After I had finished these mitts, I wound up with about half the skein left. I'm still contemplating making my sister a pair of mitts, but I haven't decided yet. I may buy another line of Malabrigo in a more suitable color instead.