I've not blogged in a while. I've been busy.......
Ready Fingerless Mitts is the first pattern in a collection of 3 designs to raise money for Refuge as part of my London Marathon training.
I knitted a swatch.

And then two whole mittens.

The idea behind these was pretty simple: I wanted something to keep my hands warm during cold training sessions. These Ready mitts are ideal for winter running. Pop them on while you’re warming up and your hands won’t freeze, while your fingers are still free to adjust laces, watch and so on. The beauty of fingerless mitts is also that you don’t need a pocket when your hands are warm. I usually just slip my thumbs out and slide them up my wrist to make a woolly sweatband. The mitts are quick to knit up and both the rib and pattern are sufficiently stretchy to give a close fit, without squashing fingers.
Ready Fingerless Mitts £2.50:

Ready, Steady, Go! eBook £5.00:

But that's not all. I've also hooked up with a crack team of UK hand-dyers to offer exclusive Refuge colourways to go with the designs. First up is
Fyberspates who have dyed this excellent shade of Ready Red for Refuge in their MCN Sport yarn (80% merino, 10% cashmere, 10% nylon; 265m/100g hanks; £16.00). One hank is enough to make 2 pairs of Ready fingerless mitts, and £10.80 from the sale of each hank will go to Refuge to support their work. The Fyberspates Refuge yarn goes on sale on Monday 4th February in the evening as part of the monthly update. Check out the
new arrivals page on Monday evening to be sure of getting a hank!
The next design in the series will be available at the end of February, and uses gorgeous Skein Queen yarn. The sample is nearly complete, so I'll post pictures soon. And the final instalment will go live at the end of March and uses Babylonglegs' wonderful yarn. We are particularly grateful to Babylonglegs for inspiring the whole project. Thank you so much!
Many thanks also to Andy Robinson at Bluefaced.com for kindly donating base yarn to the hand-dyers, thus enabling more of the money from yarn sales to go to support the work of Refuge! Grateful thanks as well to the ever-brilliant Nic Blackmore for kindly donating her formidable layout and design skills to the project. You're both fabulous!
With that, it's off the computer and on with the running kit to run into the teeth of the gale blowing outside.