Open Source Tux Geek Penguin Mittens

Tux Mittens Your faithful dork recently had to be hospitalized for surgery.  Everything went well and full recovery is expected, but I did get a midline incision that incapacitated my core until it heals. You use your core for EVERYTHING, so that nasty little side effect could not clear up too soon!

While convalescing I knitted these geek mittens. I adapted a pattern created by flibbertigibbet bunny and graciously shared opensource style. Ain’t the internet amazing!!! If you are interested, the pattern is available on bunny’s blog, and I’ll only post it here if it ever becomes unavailable there. Bunny definitely deserves not only link luv, but a few clickthroughs from here as well. The blog is worth a perusal for some other interesting projects as well.

I believe in the mind-body connection, and as I knitted I visualized the corresponding knitting of nice strong healthy scar tissue in my belly that will prevent me from rupturing, because frankly, it still feels like that could happen any minute, though it’s getting better. 

The adaptations I made are as follows:

  • I wanted my design to be in the official Tux Colors:  black, white and yellow.  That entailed using three colors instead of two as suggested by the pattern.
  • I didn’t want my mittens to be pointy at the top, since hands aren’t.  So I used an accelerating decrease strategy to give a rounded shape,  instead of the linear one suggested by the pattern.
  • I used up a little more of the yellow by making a plain bumper at the end on the palm side  and making the back of the thumb yellow.  This also gives the mittens some color on the palm side: otherwise they’d be totally black and white.
  • I didn’t do any of the designs around Tux on the back side.  I wanted him to be the only thing there.
  • I altered the placement of the thumb in the downward direction, as that was where my husband’s thumb was when I lay the piece against his hand.  If I had placed the thumb on the fourth row of binary as directed, the ribbing would have gone way down his fore-arm.
  • I omitted the top row of binary as by then all the fingers were pretty much covered and I didn’t want to have a lot of slop beyond the fingers.

Next time I’ll try smaller needles and/or wool and see if I can’t build a pair of these for myself.   I will also tie more knots when I change color, so that the unused color won’t tighten up across the back.  Hey this was my first multi-color knitting project ever.   I was trained in childhood to knit Aran Island style, where all the design is all in the stitch patterns etc., and you NEVER change color!

Watch this blog for an even wilder adaptation of the Tux Mitten pattern in the future!!

27 comments to Open Source Tux Geek Penguin Mittens

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