Aran Island Mittens

Pattern: Aran Island Mittens from Folk Mittens
Yarn: Rowan Pure Wool DK
Needles: US 2 for cuff US 3 for mitten body

I finished these about a week ago and finally got around to sewing in the ends this morning. I love this pattern (once I copied and blew up the painfully tiny chart), but was disappointed with the yarn. It splits extremely easily and the stitch definition was odd, as if the yarn doesn't have any elasticity. For example, no matter what I did the reverse stockinette stitches where two needles met were always stretched causing a noticeable vertical line of exaggerated stitches. I even tried, although not very hard, to even them out by pulling their neighboring stitches a little more taught, but it didn't help at all. It's unfortunate because otherwise it's a warm, soft, comfortable yarn. Except for the full ball I have leftover, I will never use this yarn again.

The mittens themselves are comfortable though, and I was pleasantly surprised that they were the perfect length for me as charted. I didn't make any alterations to this pattern except to use the smaller needles for the cuff, which I wish I would have done for my angora mittens.