Oh, No.

I don't know if I can do this!

It's amazing how stuff that happened to you as a kid can come back years later to bite you.

In the mittens' case, what happened was that this boy I used to play with when we were both 7 or 8 years old used to wear mittens his grandmother knitted him, long-cuffed, shaped woolly mittens.

And with the unreasoning prejudice of childhood, I thought they were the ugliest mittens on the planet!

Oh, no. These are the exact image of those mittens.

Okay, not 100%, since I don't ever remember him wearing anything but plain-colored blue or black mittens. But still, this exact shape!

I don't know if I can do this.

Anyway, here they are a day's knitting later, insides and outsides, backs and palms. (The "snowflake" side is the back.) I don't know if they really count as Fair Isle -- isn't Fair Isle stranded?

And here is the weird way I handle the two colors, knitting the front color and purling the back one.

Actually this is the way I always hold the yarn -- the tendon of my left index finger is detached (or whatever the medical term is) at the knuckle, and can slide to the side and over towards my thumb.

Curling this finger up like this is the most comfortable way for me to hold it for long periods of time. Which is a long-winded way of saying that while it works great for me, it probably won't work for everyone.

The fall color has been really spotty. Some trees have already dropped their leaves weeks ago, some are still completely green, and the odd few are finally changing color. I snapped this red one yesterday, and this morning it's half bare already.

It will be November (and maybe mitten-wearing weather) before we know it.