It's that time of year again.

It’s time to create something to donate to a fundraising event at my children’s school. This year they are having their usual auction but they are also having a wine event for parents and adult friends of the school. With this in mind, I set out to choose a pattern.

On Ravelry, I found a great free pattern: Drinker’s Mitts by Jaime Kulick. They’re fun and practical at the same time, and will work well for either fundraiser.

I had a lot of fun knitting the mitts. I chose Cascade Yarns Cascade 220® Fingering yarn. I like the Cascade 220® line because it offers a good, basic wool at a reasonable price and comes in a wide range of colors. (No, I’m not affiliated with them.) It was fun to browse through the colors online while I was having a sick day at home.

The school’s main color is navy blue, so I kept that as the background color just as in the pattern’s photos. I made a point of using yellow and white, which are two of the school’s accent colors. The colors for the main local university are navy blue, orange, and white, and that helped me choose the orange for the bottom row of drinks. From there, it was a matter of choosing other colors that coordinated well while making sense for the drinks they represent: brown and purple.

The pattern was easy to follow, and it was fun to say things like “It’s time for another round of beer!” (Get it? Round of knitting, not round of drinks! Ha!) The biggest change I made was to add three rounds of stockinette stitch in the background color after the last beer stein round; I didn’t want the foam on the top row to get lost in the ribbing. To make up for the extra length, I then knit only eight rounds of ribbing at the top instead of ten. The only other change was to switch the direction of the beer stein handles on the second mitt so the mitts are symmetrical.

I went through about half a skein of the navy blue background yarn, but only small amounts of yardage for the accent colors. This would be a great project for scrap yarn.

I’ve been asked if I’ll make a pair for myself, and I don’t think I will. They’re not really “me,” although I’ll keep the pattern in mind for gift knitting because I know a lot of people who would love them. In the meantime, I have a pair of mittens in the works that are more my style — blog post coming soon!