Almost an emergency

In which a crisis was averted but I nevertheless shamelessly dredge up old photos from my iPhoto archives to distract you from the shocking lack of knitting content over the past week.

I was in a bit of a panic this morning. The temperature was a bit nippy outside and it was time to head to work so I reached into my bag and pulled out . . . one mitten. That's right, one mitten where there were supposed to be two. Not only are these my go-to hand warmers until the weather turns arctic but they were a lovely gift made several years ago by my good friend N.

See, they're really nice:

Naturally, I was rather upset at this situation and started to envision all of the horrible places I could have lost the second mitten in the pair. Visions of a poor, mangled mitten stuck on the subway tracks kept running through my mind. I pushed those thoughts aside and took off for work, all the while trying to conjure up what I would do for a replacement.

First, I thought I should hop on ravelry after work and find some nice new stranded colorwork pattern to use up some of the leftovers from this project:

This was a Christmas 2005 gift for my father that I had knit up using the guidelines and copious charts from Alice Starmore's fabulous book, Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting, which I was lucky enough to get my hands on (read: "borrow" indefinitely from my mother) when it was still out of print. I have a lot of fingering weight yarn left over from this project and really need to do something with it.

The plan sounded great during the first leg of my commute this morning. I would use stash yarn, I'd get to play with a new pattern, what could be better? But then I realized that I really wanted replacement mittens ready on Monday. I know I'm a relatively speedy knitter but I can't produce two brand new mittens knit in tiny gauge in some sort of intricate pattern all in just over two days, especially with everything else that needs to get done this weekend.

Time for plan B: see if I already had a finished mitten somewhere that just needed a mate. After all, one mitten sounds doable. Maybe. I was in luck! Hidden in one corner of the stash is a single Galileo Mitten (rav link).

According to iPhoto, I was working on this in late fall/early winter 2008 and that sounds about right. I really should finish this pair. It's a lovely pattern. It's even lovelier if I pay a bit more attention to the chart than it looks like I did about a third of the way up the hand. Sure I could go back and fix that bit, but isn't it better to just leave the mistake for Arachne?

Anyway, the whole issue turned out to be moot since what did I find on my desk when I got home this evening? The second mitten of course. It was just hiding under the scarf I had taken out of my work bag the night before.

What a relief. But I sure appreciate the walk through memory lane and the added incentive to finish a second (or even third!) pair of mittens. After all, my nightmare of losing a mitten to the CTA could still come true.