Today Interweave Knits’ Knitting Daily store released their Wheat-Ear Cable Yoke sweater for purchase – came right to my emailbox, it did. Being a giant fan of cables I remember running across this pattern and thinking that particular cable would be a great cuff treatment for my now waiting-patiently Wheat Frost mitten pattern. So I decided to Google the motif just to see what else our universe’s clever knitters have done with it. The result was an incredible treasure: I stumbled across the Walker Treasury Project, a volunteer-run visual swatch library of Barbara Walker’s published motifs and stitch patterns.

And such was my luck, it included the Wheat Ear Cable.

Walker’s books have always been a treasure-trove of lace, cable, and color inspiration for me.

What a joy to see some of the graphs knit up and shared for posterity.

The photography is great – this is sure to be a source of inspiration for many knitters.

Just look at this sample of vine lace.

Makes you want to go knit, doesn’t it?

What wonderful, generous people knitters are.

So to the folks at the Walker Treasury Project get my hat tip o’ the day. Thanks!

OK I guess this is cosmic karma telling me I should have planned to knit two pair of these right from the start. I had thought about it. Or maybe the mittens really wanted to be two pair. Or maybe it’s just a testament to my own stupidity. Anyhow, the anti-humdrum mittens I had planned to knit somehow, in the thick of knitting, turned out to be two right-hand mittens.

Ack.

I suppose it should give me some comfort to know that the yarn harlot herself has done something like this. She sums up the choices rather well, I thought:

After sitting in stunned silence for the required amount of time, I have, after careful consideration accepted these three choices. You may choose.

1. Unravel the thumb on one of the mittens, graft the thumbhole closed in some sort of insane fair-isle grafting feat that will certainly involve hard liquor and curse words, then snip the threads where the thumb *should* be, unravel that part of the row, pick up the stitches and re-knit the thumb in it’s new and exciting location.

2. Knit a third mitten…one for the left hand.

or

3. Go into the backyard and begin heaping up snow until I have a pile at least 4 feet tall. Compact this snow into a firm heap and begin the tedious process of digging out a wee channel that will lead to a small interior room in the snow mountain. Then I will retrieve the mittens from the living room and take them out to the snow house, where I will remain until spring, lighting a small fire to warm myself while I drink myself stupid on screech, eat chocolate and use my very sharpest black handled scissors to snip the mittens into a thousand tiny little pieces that I will feed to the fire while aggressively and incoherently cursing my stupidity , sucking on icicles and trying to think of a reason to go on.

It should comfort me, right? But I’m still kicking myself. Eh well, plenty of winter left. Off to knit another. That cardi, and the mother of all mittens I was planning, are just going to have to wait.