VIVA LE TOUR! WITH HANSA MITTENS

It's been almost  two months without blogging, here's just a sample of the hectic last month.  Family member in intensive care after operation then goes home then back in hospital again,  phone line down for over a week! can you believe it, all calls redirected to mobile then internet connection down, that was fixed pretty quickly thanks to netspace. This month I decided to join the ravelry  Tour de France 2011  knitting kal, my project would be one pair of mittens using two colours Scandinavian style.  Colour selection was tricky the fingering balls I liked were just too expensive for a first project as there was going to be some frogging going on. On the second trip to my yarn shop and armed with at least ten different patterns all I came away with was another set of needles and several balls of black. I had some green DK that had four strands of yarn so I spent the evening unplying and rewinding to make a ball of fingering in a nice easy to see green.  All of my procrastination took up the first week of the tour, mitten on needles actually being knitted was on the first of the mountain stages. I chose the Hansa Mittens by Tuulia Salmela because of the nice pointy top and the gusset thumb, the colour pattern isn't  too  hard for a beginner. The bottom photo shows the gusset, Tuulia Salmela can be found on ravelry as Tuulia and her blog is   Knitlob's Lair-Louhittaren Luola . Will I get both mittens done by the end of the tour?  I don't think so but I'm sure I'll have one done. We had to take Furgus to the vet today he's having his teeth cleaned it's the first time I've had to leave him there. His meowing was so sad but the nice vet after hearing his cat home story let me leave my mohair scarf in his cage. There's always a risk with anesthetic so I'm waiting for the O.K. call.