Knitting Mittens

Here's my latest project. I charted out the first stanza of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Christmas Bells" poem on a mitten. Longfellow had endured a tragic couple of years - first his wife died from a freak accident then his son was severely wounded in the Civil War. He wrote the poem on Christmas Day 1864 - here's the first stanza:

"I heard the bells on Christmas Day

Their old familar carols play

And wild and sweet

The words repeat

Of peace on earth, goodwill to men."

I'm using three colors of Knitpick's Palette - white, ivy and pimento (a really lovely red). This project is going pretty fast - I just love knitting letters.

Peasant Thumb, Step by Step, Part Two

I've put the stitches from waste yarn back onto dpns. To pick up stitches on the other side of the thumb hole, I take a dpn and insert it into the right side of each stitch directly above the cast on edge. Sorry I couldn't get a better photo of this. Don't pick up the stitches too far above the cast on edge or you'll get too much bulk inside the thumb.



All the stitches are picked up EXCEPT for any stitches that are picked up on the sides of the hole.



Here I am picking up and knitting only one stitch along the edge of the thumb hole. The tendency is to pick up lots and lots of stitches near a hole but this always ends up looking bad even if you go ahead and decrease them on the next row. I prefer to pick up the minimal amount of stitches and deal with any looseness or holes by using my favorite reverse duplicate stitch on the inside of the mitten.


All done. Again the pattern is Chapter 5, Pattern 9 from Anna Zilboorg's out-of-print book Magnificent Mittens.


And a side view.

Peasant Thumb, Step-by-Step, Part One

Thanks for all the nice comments about Miss Bubbles! Because she is older and came from less-than-ideal conditions, we're busy trying to get her healthier and giving her lots of love and bunny compliments.

I've heard from new mitten knitters who want more info regarding peasant thumbs for gloves and mittens. I'm going to divide this into two blog posts because of all the photos.



Most charts will have either a solid line or a rectangle like above showing where the thumb will be placed. I vastly prefer patterns that have two different placements for the thumbs on each hand so I can make sure the beginning of the row is at the outside of the hand next to the little finger. That way I don't have to look at any color jogs in the pattern when I'm wearing them. Don't be afraid to move peasant thumb placements on the chart to make the mittens perfect for you.

When you get to the line on the chart that shows the thumb placement simply put the number of stitches for the thumb on waste yarn. Some patterns will tell you to knit across those stitches in waste yarn and then go back and knit the same stitches in pattern but I prefer keeping the thumb open so you can try on the mittens in progress and get the length perfect.

BTW, the chart in the photo is upside down because I'm working the Zilboorg mittens (from the out-of-print book Magnificent Mittens) the opposite direction. That is another benefit of a peasant thumb - it is worked the same in either direction.



After you put the thumb stitches on waste yarn, return to your working needle and cast on the same number of stitches you just put on waste yarn. I cast on using the backwards loop cast on and I cast on in pattern, using both colors of yarn. If you cast on with only one color of yarn you'll unfortunately have a really long float when you rejoin the row.



Once you rejoin the row you just continue knitting around. When you get to the stitches you cast on using the backwards loop cast on, you will REALLY appreciate it if you did that cast on loosely or it will be a serious pain to knit those stitches.



Now you just finish knitting to the top of the mitten. I try on the mitten and generally begin the top decreases when the mitten reaches the top of my fourth/ring finger.

Tomorrow I'll talk about picking up the stitches and actually knitting the thumb.

Sea Mineral Mittens

Here are the Sea Mineral Mittens done in Knitpicks' Palette. I used Calypso Heather and Sky for the main hand pattern and then also all the shades of purple, all the greens, including the new heathers, and a few shades of blue.


I'm too impatient to wait for DH to take action photos so here is one mitten on my hand. I made a few changes to the pattern: I added a pattern repeat before the thumb opening, I made the mitten and fingertips a little flatter, and I moved the right hand thumb to the opposite side of the hand to keep the row join on the outside of the hand.

Spillyjane's free pattern for these mittens is HERE.

Cathedral Mittens by Lizbeth Upitis

Three color rows. A few really long floats. Braided cuff. Annoying slip stitch pattern. More than a half hour's worth of ends to deal with per mitten. Still I think these Latvian mittens will make a good Christmas gift.

I used size 0 dpns and 12 colors of sock yarn from my stash. The pattern is the Cathedral Mittens by Lizbeth Upitis from the book Homespun Handknit. I was worried I'd run out of black but as it turned out I had enough. If I had know I would have made the cuff background black. I did add some extra duplicate stitch to the cuff in black.

I am going to make some alpaca mittens next. I will use the baseball playoffs to help me finish all my holiday gift knitting.

Spruce Mountain Men's Mittens

I'm pretty happy with this design for men's mittens. I used three skeins of Andean Treasure alpaca yarn. I purposely started the sore thumb gusset an inch above the corrugated ribbed cuff which I think gives a better fit for men's hands. The only problem really is that of course the stripes don't line up at the end of the row but I put the end of the row opposite the thumb so it is less noticeable. I'll try to pin down DH this week to get a photo of him modeling the mittens.

Herrevott No. 4

Pattern: Herrevott No. 4 from the Norwegian booklet Selbustrikk (available through Arnhild or Nordic Fiber Arts)
Yarn: Nature Spun sport weight
Needles: Size 0 (US) dpn
I like the extra thickness and warmth from the heavier yarn and smaller needles.
There are chart errors in this pattern as well. In the column two columns over from the thumb gusset there are five errors - three dots need to be added and two need to be removed. Also, the thumb chart is missing a dot in the center of the left hand side of the thumb on the second row from the bottom.

My Mitten Collection

Happily my copy of Hafte Selbustrikk arrived yesterday and I'm already to the midpoint of the main motif in the hand of the gloves I picked out. (Herrevante alt. 5). The gloves have a rose-like motif and I could have sworn I've knit something like it before. First I thought it was the Rosebord mittens from Nordic Fiber Arts but that motif was very different. The Rosebord are the red mittens in the center.




I'm using red, pink, and white to emphasize the girlishness of the patterns used for the gloves. These gloves also have my favorite type of thumb where the thumb increases are all done on the back side of the glove. I'll talk a bit about thumbs tomorrow.

Kristi's Mittens

I wish all of you a Happy New Year full of time to knit. I also wish that the knitting book publishers and magazines will start to provide some challenging patterns. Here are my 2003 FOs:

4 Sweaters & Vests - Dale of Norway Sirdal cardigan, Starmore St. Enda, gray vest, Dale of Norway baby cardigan #12406

9 Pairs of Mittens - Child's mittens, Meida's mittens, Lavold Harald mittens, 2 pairs child's bunny mittens, Vinternatt mittens, Turkey Mittens, Paradoxical Mittens, Kristi's Mittens

6 Pairs of Socks & Slippers - Fuzzy Feet, Spin-Off Entrelac socks, 2 pairs adult bunny slippers, Blackberry Ridge Halloween socks, Aran Sandal Socks

6 Scarves - Red Spontaneous Scarf, Brown Spontaneous Scarf, Blue/green Spontaneous Scarf, Koigu Cross Stitch Scarf, Multi-Directional Scarf, Red & Blue Spontaneous Scarf

11 Hats & Headbands - Bea Ellis Telemark headband, 2 children's Bunnies & Carrots hats, 4 adult Bunnies & Carrots hats, Zilboorg Cone hat, Turkish Infant Cap, Shadow Hat, Wellington Hat

1 Pair of Gloves - Sanquhar gloves

3 Miscellaneous - 1 lizard, 1 mini-bunny

HAUNTED MITTENS




Here is the first Kristi's mitten photo. The pattern is from Nancy Bush's Folk Knitting in Estonia and is done in size 0 dpns and Elann's baby cashmere. The yarn is a bit hairy (due to the alpaca) and inelastic but it held up remarkably well to all the problems that needed fixing. I initially made some weird mistake at the beginning of the cuff which I couldn't ladder down to fix for some reason so I ripped the whole thing out. Then I managed to forget the entire center row in one of the early pattern repeats so I ripped out the mitten a second time. Then I must have ripped out the two different yarns unevenly because when I picked up the yarns each color was on a different row. It took me a while to figure that one out. duh

So I finished the second mitten. What is wrong with this picture???




Yes, that's right - I made two left mittens. sigh So I ripped that out and here's a photo of the mittens done the right way. You'd think I was finally done with this jinxed project, right? But noooooo.


In this scan of the inside of the mitten you can see that because of the long floats of this particular pattern the yarns are already starting to snag. So I had to tack down the floats on the inside of each mitten.



This particular project represented 2003 for me - many problems and much confusion but the only answer is to keep trying. You can still end up with something good.