Top Down Mittens

The Details.
Yarn: Lorna's Laces Sock Yarn
Color: Vera
Needles: US0 Pony Pearl double points (note - I did not enjoy knitting with these needles. The tips are quite rounded. I much prefer pointy tips. One good thing about them, though, is that they don't break in my death grip like some needles do!)
Gauge: 8.5 st/inch


Pattern: I made it up as I went along. I started the mitten body as if starting a toe-up sock and used the figure eight cast-on. I increased until I had the desired width (At this point I was still making socks. The correct circumference that I would use for socks for myself, just happens to also be the correct circumference for mittens). I then knit in the round until the body of the mitten was long enough to reach down to the "V" between my thumb and index finger.

I did the same thing for the thumb using fewer stitches.

When I had both pieces at the right length, I joined them together like you would join a sleeve to the body on a Lopi style sweater.

I left four stitches from the body and the facing four stitches from the thumb on holders and kitchenered them together at the end to create a thumb gusset (picture at right).

To figure out how many rows and decreases I would need to shape the thumb into the body, I got my row count and the number of stitches around the thumb and estimated the length that I wanted to cover with my decreases. It turned out that I needed to decrease every other row about 18 times and then every third row for the last two rounds to decrease all of the thumb stitches. Each decrease row consisted of a pair of K2tog and SSK just like you would do to decrease the heel stitches on a top down sock.

From there, I did a couple of rows around the body, decreased about 10 stitches (until I had a total number which was a multiple of five) and switched to a K3, P2 rib. A couple of inches of ribbing and a loose cast-off and I was done.

I had planned on photographing the work in progress on the second glove, but had three hour conference call on Thursday where I was able to knit about 70% of the mitten. By the time the call was over all of the interesting parts of the mitten were done! Sorry about that.

I like these mittens because they are not very bulky. They probably won't be as warm as most mittens, but they are very comfortable and I feel like I can use my hands while wearing them. A good thing!

I know that there are people aren't really interested in knitting socks, but I have to say that these mittens and my confidence to just make them up as I went along, are completely a product of the skills that I've learned from knitting socks. I like learning on socks because they're small and redoing parts to learn or experiment is a reasonable task that doesn't take alot of time.

So, go knit yourself some socks! Or some mittens. How about some gloves?