This one's for my fellow southern-hemisphere-dwellers, where the weather is settling in to proper wintery rain and cold right now. My latest knit design is Multifaceted Mittens, a pair of colourwork mittens with an all-over pattern of crystals, and optional shorter or longer cuffs.

The matching mitts pattern is coming soon, so if you prefer your mittens fingerless I'll have you covered shortly!

I became kind of obsessed with designing a crystalline colourwork pattern after watching some cartoons which had beautiful crystal shapes in their background artwork - here are some examples from Adventure Time and Steven Universe. I like my cartoons weird, and I like them pretty.

Both pics from Steven Universe, found here.

Hmmm, those columns would make an excellent cable pattern...

Features:

• all-over stranded colourwork pattern inspired by crystals

• thumb and mitten-top echo the shape of crystal points

• short-cuff and long-cuff options (mittens shown with short cuffs)

• requires less than 50g of fingering-weight yarn in each colour

• one size, to fit 7-8" palm circumference

• colourwork charts

The crystal pattern lends itself to playing with jewel colours, and the yarn I chose, Knitsch Sock dyed by Tash of Holland Road Yarn Co, comes in a wealth of rich, vibrant colours. I used 'Amethyst' and 'Silver Lining', two semi-solid shades with a lot of light/dark contrast. Solid, semi-solid, and variegated yarns will all work in this pattern, but do make sure you have enough contrast between your main colour and contrast colour - for example you could pair a darker variegated MC with a pale solid CC. One of my test-knitters switched MC and CC around for her second mitten, which looks really cool. :)

Knitsch Sock is a good choice for these mittens because its springiness helps you knit at a tight gauge without discomfort, and it's nice and hard-wearing (which I like for anything I'm going to wear on my hands).

You can see all the details and download the Multifaceted Mittens pattern from Ravelry or LoveCrafts. The mitts pattern is in the pipeline - look out for it (and the ebook containing both patterns) next week.