Toasty warm gloves and mittens

Well how are you all getting on in the autumnal weather and dark evenings? I find I don't sew much when I get home from work, it's just too dark to see the thread against the fabric. Maybe that's because I was working on a dark green wool jacket, yet to be blogged. I'll need some better weather and light before getting half decent photos of it but I only finished it on Sunday.

After my first knitted 'thing' in years, I've been busy knitting more! I bought a knitting pattern from Etsy for gloves, mittens and fingerless gloves with the convertible flip top. It's for double knitting wool so I went to John Lewis and bought some Rowan Tweed double knitting wool and some knitting needles and this is the result! 

Some tweedy gloves! It's a lovely wool to knit with even if I found knitting the fingers a bit fiddly to do. Here's more of a close-up of one glove so you can see the tweedy colours. The colour is black with pale grey or white and caramel flecks going through it. 

Then I decided to knit some mittens, something I haven't worn since I was a child but I did hear somewhere that mittens are warmer than gloves. Wanted to test that theory out! Anyone with a bit of common sense would say I should have started with the easier mittens project and then gone on to the slightly more fiddly project of gloves but...hey ho, what's logic got to do with it!

Again, I used Rowan Tweed double knitting wool. This is a 100% wool yarn and it's lovely to knit with. The mittens are a dark maroon colour with flecks of red and green in them. So what's the verdict on the warmth factor? The mittens may actually be warmer than gloves but knitted anything is just not wind proof so not as warm as fleece or Thinsulate gloves but they're fine at the moment. I still think I'll be wearing the usual winter requirement of two pairs of gloves to feel toasty!

This is not a knitting blog and I'll get back to my sewing soon. I've actually downloaded Named's Jamie jeans pattern and I'm just making the necessary adjustments to the pattern pieces before cutting out some pre-washed stretch denim I bought from Edinburgh Fabrics a couple of weeks ago.

I've also signed up to Ravelry so you never know, I might move on from gloves and mittens and knit something more substantial...so what's on your knitting needles at the moment?