Last week Meisterinne Kareina stayed with me here in Vienna and she told me that she wanted to buy some of the lovely wool I bought the last time she was here…

…therefore I just wanted to see if my favourite wool shop “Pinguin” at the Alserstraße here in Vienna (opposite the “Altes AKH”) still exists and if they still have the ‘Lana Grossa Basic’ thread which I normally use for embroidery on garb – garb embroidered with this thread can be washed in the washing mashine and it still looks quite good after a long time – because a friend of mine couldn’t find it some months ago…

…and I was very happy to find out that
a) the shop still exists and that I was now able to take Kareina to this shop for wool shopping and
b) they still have my favourite ‘Lana Grossa Basic’ thread and they are still surprised when I tell them that I use it for embroidery (100m of cotton thread which can be split up into 3 single threads -> 300m of embroidery thread for ‘just’ 2,99 € !!!! woohooo, what a bargain – the shop reduced the colors – maybe because I stopped buying this thread while I was working at my Weiberlisten Wallhanging – but they maybe will get more colors soon…

I found this lovely wool on sale for 2,99 € per piece (normally they were sold for 4,99 to ca. 10 € and I fell in love with this soft, cosy,… lovely wool

I thought that my very first try of nailbinded mittens was rather good but just too tight for my hands and I really learned a lot while making them therefore – and because it was time to practise nailbinding again -  I decided to make a pair of nailbinded mittens as my next “mundane” project

…and because one of my friends asked me how I made the thumb part I took some photos while working at the first mitten:

First I just continue the row of stitches with some nailbinding stitches ‘in the air’  and after enough stitches I reconnect the row to the next stitch of the row underneath and continue the nailbinding… here some close up pics:

…based on this nailbinding rows I work the next rows – for example the second row:

…after the first row I also start to ‘reduce’ stitches by taking two stitches from the bottom row and just making one new stitch (like knitting) – ok, I took a photo for you just to show it:

normally I just take one stitch from the bottom row like here:

when I ‘reduce’ I take two stitches from the bottom row for my nailbinding stitch:

and I also ‘add’ stitches by working two stitches just using one stitch from the bottom row… adding and reducing by following the shape of my hands… …maybe this small drawing which I made just for myself to be able to make two similar mittens makes sense to some of you

Here a picture of the ‘growing’ mitten:

…and to answer another question – how I start my thumb section – here some more photos:

I just start with sewing a new thread to the inside of the mitten and continue with the first stitch to get a first stitch around my thumb…

…I continue with making the next stitch to create a second stitch behind the first one – the first one is close to the fingernail, the second one behind it on the finger and the third one behind the second one…

…and then I start with the nailbinding for the thumb…

…here the progress of the first mitten after some hours:

Ok, more photos will follow soon

I hope this photos are helpful for some other beginners who struggle with nailbinding – this are just the solutions which I found on my way to a perfect mitten

short side note: during Kareinas stay here in Vienna we recognized that my surface differs from her nailbinding surface and we found out that she is nailbinding more stitches with one stitch than I do – it still works, I will try her version soon – just a small difference we discovered …but it still works – amazing! *lol*

…and last but not least – here a cute photo of Kareina and Cleo