KnitPro Mindful Collection review ::::::: Blogtober 2022 : Day 14

The sun was shining this morning when the dog and I went out for our walk, which made a nice change from yesterday!

Do you remember when an empty play park was the most exciting thing?  You didn’t have to wait for a turn on the swings or the slide, you could just run in and go to whatever you wanted to first …

Yes, I might have done that myself, but the dog wasn’t allowed in.

The mounds next to the tree in this photo are a ramp for bicycle jumps.  There are a few of them just here and some big holes to go with them where the kids must have dug up the ground to make the ramps as they were playing – you wouldn’t want to come down here in the dark unless you knew where you were putting your feet!

The sun hadn’t reached this part of the grass and you could see the tracks of people and dogs who had passed by.  Our tracks are in the middle; my footprints on the right and the dog, dragging his feet, on the left.  He’s always dragged his feet, never quite bothering to lift his paws up properly.  Such a lazy boy!

Do you remember back on Day 4 of Blogtober when I showed you the sweet chestnut case on the pavement and said I thought it looked like a little bottom?  Well, there were a lot more little bottoms on the ground today!

These ones are all much more ripe and you can see the chestnuts spilling out of them and onto the ground.

These are edible sweet chestnuts, not conkers (horse chestnuts – mustn’t eat those!) and they do look very different so it’s easy not to get them mixed up.

If I’d wanted to gather these up, it turns out that I could have done something more with them than just roast them (over an open fire – go on, tell me you’re not singing it! 🙂 ) or made soup with them – this article suggests they can even be added to cakes and brownies, and whilst that’s not made me want to rush back to collect any, I’ve certainly learnt something today.

 

What I have done instead today, is moved my Split Mitten off my short circular needle and onto a long circular – I didn’t find the tips I was looking for but I have got some others – I’ll explain later! 🙂

If you’re new to the blog, you might wonder what Split Mittens are and they are exactly what they sound like – mittens with a split in them! 🙂  I designed them a few years ago because I was fed up of taking my gloves on and off when I needed to use my hands, I didn’t want fingerless gloves because I wanted warm hands, and those mittens where you take the top off didn’t help me when I needed to use my hands for something.  So … the Split Mittens were invented!  The pattern is free (currently only in one size but there will be news to share on that soon), there’s a tutorial to help and you can find them both here.

My original pair of Split Mittens are looking a bit worse for wear these days – still perfect for dog walking but sometimes I need to look a bit smarter! – so I thought I would start a new pair.

I first showed you this photo on Day 3 and I’ve got a bit further on as I’ve started the thumb increases.

The short circular needle that I’m using comes from a set called The Mindful Collection by KnitPro; I was sent a set to try out as I may have mentioned once or twice that I use short circular needles a lot … 🙂

The case folds up into neat triangle – it’s funny, in some lights it looks green and in others it looks turquoise!  The round cream circle is a magnet and that’s how the case stays closed.  You can also see the sock that I started when I went to the Harry Styles concert with not so small daughter in the Summer – I grabbed this Autumn Leaves yarn to cast on as I knew we’d be waiting for hours and took the wooden needle (also KnitPro – this is a Symphonie 25cm needle) just in case there were metal detectors that we needed to pass through.  I pulled that out of the drawer I’d stuffed it into as I thought I’d swap it onto a metal needle and then I might be more likely to finish it (I don’t knit very quickly on wooden needles for some reason).

This what the case looks like when you open it up.

The needles are all hidden beneath the white fabric around the edges although you can just see the tips pointing in towards the turquoise circle if you look closely.  The triangular pouch next to it is full of accessories, I’ll show you those in a minute.

When you open up the fabric, it looks like a flower – presumably a lotus flower as this is a mindful collection of needles.  It’s clever, isn’t it?  There are eight 25cm fixed short circular needles in sizes from 2mm to 6mm including 2.50mm and 3.00m which are the ones I’d probably use most often.  It’s handy to have the bigger sizes, though – I know that the chunky yarn for my mittens was just a bit bulky but if you were making sleeves for a child’s jumper in a smaller weight yarn, for example, this could save a lot of sewing up!

The metal tips are 6cm long which are a nice size to hold.  As you’ll know if you’re a regular reader, my “usual” needle is a 30cm with 7cm tips but I find that socks which have less than 60sts are too stretched on that size needle so that’s when I’ll use 25cm (and sometimes, I just want to use that size of needle!).  I find that although it’s 5cm shorter than the needle I use most, it’s not that noticeable and I am quite happy to swap between 30cm and 25cm (whereas I can’t use 23cm needles as my hands cramp up).  Of course, these are not just for socks in smaller sizes and I’ve easily knitted socks of much bigger stitch cast ons as well.

Each of the needles has a mindful word stamped onto them, along with the needle size which is really useful when you find them in project bags and have forgotten which sizes they were (ahem) …

Even the tiniest 2.0mm needle has a word (“Hope”); 2.50mm is “Love” and 3.0mm is “Explore” …

It’s a nice touch, and must be something that KnitPro do with their needle sets as I’ve got other needles with “names”.

The triangular pouch is an accessories pouch …

and it’s full of useful things!

There’s a needle gauge, three sets of solid circular stitch markers, one set of split markers, some locking pins, two wool needles and no, that’s not a tiny pair of glasses, it’s a pair of scissors!

Nifty, eh?

They’re great for travelling (I’m not sure you could take them on a plane though) and they fit perfectly inside the pouch.

I have already tried out the bigger needle with my mitten but I wanted to see what these needles were like for sock knitting.  I’ve used KnitPro needles for many years and they’re one of the brands that I’ll always recommend to beginners, but there’s no point in being given new needles and not trying them out!

I switched over from my wooden Symphonie needle to the 2.5mm metal needle (“Love” – an appropriate word for me and socks!) and started knitting.

I haven’t touched this sock since the Summer so it took a couple of rounds for it to feel comfortable to knit – sometimes, when a sock (or any project) has been sitting, it’s as if it’s forgotten that it’s being knitted at all and you need to remind the stitches of what they’re supposed to be doing 🙂  Now, though, almost at the top of my cuff, everything is going very smoothly and if I hadn’t been chatting to you, I could very easily have been persuaded to spend my Friday afternoon knitting my sock.

I’ve also changed the needle on my Split Mitten – who knows what I’ve done with the 5mm needle tips as the ones with the jumper turned out to be 5.50mm and 6.00mm, but fortunately I remembered that I had another set of KnitPro needles and there would be some tips of the right size in there if I was lucky.  I have realised, writing these Blogtober posts, that I must sound terribly disorganised and as if I live in a state of continual chaos as I can’t find things on a regular basis and I would say that’s not true – although I can’t argue with the facts as they are presenting themselves … I think I may have to do a bit of sorting out of my stuff!

These needle tips were from the Knit & Sip set that KnitPro sent me a couple of years back (where would I be without KnitPro keeping me in needles when I keep losing them?!)

See what I mean when I said that KnitPro stamp the needles of their sets?  The needles in this set were all named after types of coffee drink – espresso, macchiato, latte etc – and even came with two tiny espresso mugs which I thought was very funny as I don’t drink coffee, but the needles have come into their own now that I need them! 🙂

 

Now, if I’m writing a review properly then I should tell you what I think of this needle set, and I actually think that it’s a neat idea.  I like the way that the accessories pouch fits into the needle case, I like that the accessories that come with the kit are useful right out of the box, and it’s really useful to have a set of fixed circular needles in lots of different sizes.  Having them all together like this makes it much more likely that you’ll actually put them away after using them!  🙂   KnitPro needles always have smooth joins and quality cables and these needles are no exception.  I would be happy to use to these for any project that would work with this size of needle and I can see quite a few pairs of socks being knitted on them in years to come.

Thank you, KnitPro!

 

Have a lovely Friday evening, I’ll see you tomorrow … with more socks!