Mittens

The snow has started to fall in London this morning.

These are the mittens for the set I have knitted for my daughter.

They are knitted in sock wool, as it gives a thin but warm mitten. And the variety available is so good. I think this was one of the Opal ones. To produce a pair (as I have) rather than fraternal twins, start your cast on at a recognisable point in the yarn. Then you can start the second cast on at the same point in the yarn. You will probably have to wind on the yarn a bit to get to the same point. Save this discarded yarn for another project.

The pattern is just a variation of my usual fingerless mittens one (which you can find details of in October 2010's list of blogs).

With the thumb it is an easy matter to carry on in stocking stitch to the required length and then decrease rapidly for the tip.

For the finger section, remember to put a marker in the centre of the stitches you cast on after the thumb. Work straight until the knitting reaches the tip of the little finger. Then decrease both sides on every other row until the work has reached the tip of the first finger. Then add decreases both sides of the marker on every other row. This gives a mitten top that follows the shape of the hand (which many patterns do not) and stops the end of the mitten being loose and flappy. Once the mitten is almost long enough to reach the tip of the longest finger you can start decreasing more rapidly . But, remember that you have more stitches for the back of the hand than for the palm so at this point decrease the excess number of stitches for the back of the hand evenly across the row, leaving you with the same number of stitches on each side of the marker. Once you are down to a few stitches each side of the marker you can either graft the tip of the mitten together, or cast off. Then you just sew the mitten up.