it turns out that actually picking up the stitches for the mitten shell was harder than i thought, i got so far across the back of the hand feeling quite proud of myself and thinking it wasn't so tough after all until i noticed that my lovely straight row of picked up stitches across the knuckles had begun to migrate stitch by stitch towards the wrist, oops! passed the glove over to my mother, because if she can't fix it who can, right? anyway she had the opposite problem and the stitches travelled fingerwards. the problem did eventually get sorted though, and i'd advise anyone doing anything similar to run a thread of contrasting colour one row underneath where you want to pick up the stitches from as a guide just in case you hadn't thought of it before (i honestly hadn't, it was only when my mum came up with the idea that a lightbulb flashed above my head and i just thought, how could i have not figured that out before?) . the mitten shell seemed to be coming on quite well too, until i realised sometime on friday night that i'd come to the end of the shaping for the shell and realised that actually i'd hardly decreased at all and where i should have had less than 10 stitches, i had over 30. it serves me right to try and knit when i'm tired, and the pattern was misleading too, still at least it gave me the chance to practise and perfect my unpicking technique.