Moebius and friend

Over the last week, I have become mildly obsessed with stranded mittens. I don't know if it's the Ready, Set, Knit podcast knitalong, or the fiddlehead mitten kits at Hello Yarn, but I spent hours looking at all the available patterns in Ravelry. As I've never knitted mittens or completed a full stranded project before, I decided to work up to it by tackling a simpler stranded project first.

I had bought a stranded tea cosy kit at Ally Pally in October, so this seemed the ideal starter project. I didn't have a 16" needle, but no problem, I had a 2.5mm 40" for the magic loop. I also decided to modify the pattern a bit and use corrugated ribbing - another first - at the bottom of the cosy. I cast on, and painstakingly managed a few rows of ribbing. I then looked more closely, and yes, I had the dreaded Moebius strip. A few muttered oaths, some frogging and start again. This time I didn't end up with a Moebius strip. Oh no. This time I managed to get a full twist in the circle. I finally realised that the problem was that somehow I just couldn't get all the stitches aligned with the magic loop caston. I finally solved the problem by casting onto a handy 16" needle in a larger size, joining the loop and ribbing the first few stitches, then transferring everything onto the original needle.

I really like the look of the corrugated ribbing, and it's not as hard as I had read, but it is slow.

Moving onto the main stranded section, I started off working with one yarn in each hand, as recommended by EZ and many others, but my throwing technique is so inept that it takes ages.

Some web surfing revealed a handy post from knitting in colour, which shows how to hold both yarns in one hand. I had unsuccessfully tried this before, but this time I followed her instructions very closely on tensioning the yarn, and it worked! It's still not super fast, but works for me far better than the both hands technique.

Here's the first part of my steek.